[random314]

Taocp is absolutely not a good introduction to computer science and is also not advisable as an undergraduate algorithms book.

It is only partially complete and does not touch concurrency, parallelism, complexity theory or the theory of computation. It is more of a comprehensive reference work for a small selection of topics.

The fact that you think taocp is the backbone for everything else tells me that you have not actually read the book, just like everyone else.

[tracer4201]

You're free to disagree with the advice given here but don't turn this into personal attacks.

[brudgers]

I’ve been reading TAoCP for about thirty years. Most of it is still outside my understanding. But nothing has done more to increase my understanding.

Nobody is going to master the material in Knuth. Including Knuth. Even when he finishes.

[random314]

Can you explain with reference to appropriate section of TAOCP

1. How to parse a context free grammar

2. Cooks Theorem

3. Hindley Milner Type inference algorithm

4. No free lunch theorem in Machine Learning

5. The 2 phase and 3 phase commit protocols

6. The PAXOS consensus problem

7. The Bakers algorithm for mutual exclusion

8. The Diagonalization argument of Alan Turing - The Halting problem

9. The RSA public key encryption algorithm

10. A proof of undecidability via Lambda Calculus

I have a copy, and I could find none of these topics discussed in TAOCP. You can pick up any of these topics and absolutely none of the original works describing these works uses the TAOCP as a front bone/ back bone or anything else.

In fact, TAOCP uses original research work such as those described above as its backbone and summarizes them in a reference. With additional rigorous analysis using MMIX, which the original papers probably skipped.

Either you haven't read the book in any detail or have no idea about how CS research works and how research scholars and professors arrive at new results.