Maybe I've exaggerated and downplayed my ability a bit for more drama. Of course I could digest the books if I absolutely wanted or needed to.
But probably I won't need to, because others have done it already and have implemented those ideas efficiently enough that I can just use their work.
There are a lot more problems that need to be solved at higher levels these days and many of them aren't even in computer science. That's were I spend most of my research time - the coding/cs stuff is easy now.
The point I was trying to make was that Knuth is one of the granddaddies of this whole reality that we populate and that was my attempt to express my gratitude.
I'm infinitely curious about everything, but at some point in life you realise that you can't go too deep in all directions, because it's a fractal of knowledge out there, so some things you just have to trust to be true and move towards new grounds.
I know, I've tried it, maybe one evening read a thing, another evening another. And I would probably be able to understand it if I wanted to.
But I can't possibly allocate so much time reading these (long and complicated) books, because, well, all these problems are solved and implemented by people smarter than myself.
They're in the libraries, codecs, standards or embedded in the programming languages.
Problems I'm trying to solve are further and further away from that deep abstract level - and more in the realms of social psychology, perception, etc.
Thanks to Knuth and others, I can move away from the abstract to the concrete, from the computer to the human mind, even if I couldn't possibly explain the fundamentals in such detail as he does.
If this is art then I'll have to admit - after 20 years of learning and practicing programming, I'm still a mechanic (or craftsman), not an artist.
I will not be able to read and understand this book fully and I probably won't even try, unless I'm locked in a cell with it.
Although I've helped build software used by millions, what I did was stitch together things that are too brilliant (or insane) for me to fully understand. And I assume that most of my colleagues did the same.
There are pylons of brilliance on the shoulders of which everyone builds, and Knuth must be one of the strongest.
Thank you Mr Knuth for holding so much weight on your shoulders.
Would be interesting if you could have a bunch of these shooting from different angles, positioned so that they don't shoot each other.
Basically it's like having your own cameramen, so you can have spectacular camera angles without involving huge crews.
This could be cool for TV shows, documentary and indie films.
There are a lot more problems that need to be solved at higher levels these days and many of them aren't even in computer science. That's were I spend most of my research time - the coding/cs stuff is easy now.
The point I was trying to make was that Knuth is one of the granddaddies of this whole reality that we populate and that was my attempt to express my gratitude.
I'm infinitely curious about everything, but at some point in life you realise that you can't go too deep in all directions, because it's a fractal of knowledge out there, so some things you just have to trust to be true and move towards new grounds.