I learned programming from TAOCP, but that was in the mid-70s, when good expository texts were rarer. I mostly skipped over the math then, and tried to figure

I learned programming from TAOCP, but that was in the mid-70s, when good expository texts were rarer. I mostly skipped over the math then, and tried to figure out the algorithms. Actually wrote a MIX assembler/simulator, which taught me a ton of low-level programming. If you're into the math side of this, I'd highly recommend the book "Concrete Mathematics", which Knuth wrote with Graham and Patashnik. I got it to get better at solving problems over at Project Euler, but it's a fun read, like TAOCP. As deep as it is, it's amazingly light-hearted, down to the graffiti in the margins from the students who proof-tested the material in a Stanford course.