The answer to that question may come down to philosophy. Does it help your daily work to really understand things that are only slightly connected to what you a

The answer to that question may come down to philosophy. Does it help your daily work to really understand things that are only slightly connected to what you are doing? I've only read a tiny bit of TAOCP but I believe reading it would be quite useful in the long run. But if I were to read it, I wouldn't do it for the usefulness but rather because gathering knowledge and understanding is the right thing to do. There must be a million things that are more useful in the short term, and really reading TAOCP is bound to take years.