My first boss (who was pretty good in forth hacking) told me not to spend too much time to read Knuth's books. He said those books are great, but people who rea

My first boss (who was pretty good in forth hacking) told me not to spend too much time to read Knuth's books. He said those books are great, but people who read them tends to not able to write great programs. He advised me to try to finish some stuffs that works and learn from it. I thought he was joking. but later I know any one can learn a lot when doing a significant project of his/her own! In reality. Knuth had to learn to program computers by himself then because few was programming computers then, he can only rely on his own mind, logic and experiment to write better programs and later he tried to summarize what he had learned in "textbook" and deliver them to us, and we know most of time, it takes more text to say it clear than do it. Of course Knuth is not ignorant of fundamental stuffs. But probably the only way to gain knowledge in any unknown territory is to explore them directly. It maybe dangerous but it is the only way.