I've also read volumes I-III closely enough to do the easiest problems, and would like to find the time to go back and perhaps study some of the more interestin

I've also read volumes I-III closely enough to do the easiest problems, and would like to find the time to go back and perhaps study some of the more interesting parts in more depth. Knuth gets accused of being abstruse, but compared to most math books I've read, he's very clear. Moreover, he has a genuine unpretentious fascination with the things about which he's writing, and that enthusiasm comes through in his writing. For that reason I'll be buying and enjoying the fourth volume, although I'd like to wait until all three "sub" volumes are published so I can get them in a box. Unfortunately, though, I don't think Knuth would be a good reference for garbage collection anymore. That particular problem (and several others covered in the books) have moved so quickly that Knuth's descriptions haven't aged well. His most advanced example of GC was a crude mark-and-sweep system, which would be horribly archaic if implemented today. PS: I had occasion a while back to implement a random number generator that produced numbers from a normal distribution. It was a lot of fun to crack Volume II open and use it as my reference (after poking around a bit to make sure the information wasn't obsolete).