[jefferickson]

I'm not sure I can answer that question for anyone but myself. I've worked through quite a few pieces of TAOCP when I've needed to understand a particular topic, but I always find that I lose interest.

But then I've never been able to learn anything by just reading. I always have to have a target problem in front of me, and then I'll read (and get frustrated by) every book ever written to figure out the best way to think about that problem. (Which means I've read a few dozen pages from hundreds of books, and I have pretty huge gaps in my math background -- abstract algebra and category theory being two big examples.)

For some target problems, TOACP has been incredibly helpful, but for most of them it really hasn't. Knuth and I just care about different things.

For the same reason, I can't recommend that anyone work through EVERY problem in my book, either. Find the parts that are interesting and/or useful to you, and work on those. If you get tired or frustrated, work on something else; maybe you'll discover another reason to pick up my book again later. Or not.

Climbing the mountain is much more rewarding than studying the trail map.