Maybe I'm just not seeing it but I don't see how anyone could have really used it as a reference for algorithms in the first place. There are much better books

Maybe I'm just not seeing it but I don't see how anyone could have really used it as a reference for algorithms in the first place. There are much better books for that. Beyond that anyone in their late 30s or younger probably started learning in a managed environment which means a lot of what the books says was never useful in a practical sense (for example unless you already know the algorithms being referred to you aren't going to be able to make heads or tails out of assembly) What it does do is give you depth of knowledge. It helps you to understand the part of the computer you've never even thought of if Java is the first language you ever learned.