> Why make the act of reading about programming hard These books are not really programming books, they are math books. There are oodles of "programming" book

> Why make the act of reading about programming hard These books are not really programming books, they are math books. There are oodles of "programming" books out there that teach algorithms, like how to implement a quicksort and why X algorithm is better than Y for problem Z. Knuth's books are more like a graduate level algorithms or discrete math course. >then spews dense mathematical notation when he gets into details Because the Art of Computer Programming isn't really about programming per se, it's about the theory and analysis of programming IMHO. I'd say O'Reilly books for more famous for learning programming.