For anyone looking for an easier on-ramp for algorithms -- i.e. not a textbook -- I got an email last night from Manning about a book-in-progress of theirs called "Grokking Algorithms" [1], which looks to be pretty user-friendly (i.e. it's conversational, has pictures, etc.). There's a free sample chapter on the book's page if you want to see the style.
Sadly, the book was 50%-off yesterday as their daily deal, but if you sign up with Manning, there will likely be other sale categories that'll include the book (e.g a 50%-off sale on all books-in-progress or whatever). Given that only the first 2 chapters are available at the moment, you might be able to wait for another sale to come round.
The Art of Computer Programming is amazing. Its honestly one of the most difficult and impenetrable books you'll read, and that's being generous. That being said it is amazing. If you enjoy math and programming (and have post calculus mathematics skills) you can stumble your way though it mostly, it will be challenging.
But what you will learn even skipping parts, getting frustrated, coming back, leaving again. Is a lot. Knuth crams a lot of knowledge into, well a lot of pages.
Complete disclosure I have honestly haven't completely cover to covered every single volume. I skip around a lot.
FYI, if you download the course materials, there are transcripts of the video lectures included, so you can get a good feel for what the lectures are like and, maybe, not have to spend over an hour per lecture. You can download the course materials here:
Note: you may still want/need to watch them since there's notation that is likely easier to read off a blackboard vs reading a transcript of someone describing it, e.g.
"The conclusion is the same thing, but summing over
all k. So, k equals one to n, alpha_k x_k. Take f of that versus taking the sum of
the alphas times the f's. k equals one to n. So, the definition of convexity is exactly
that statement, but where n equals two."
Sadly, the book was 50%-off yesterday as their daily deal, but if you sign up with Manning, there will likely be other sale categories that'll include the book (e.g a 50%-off sale on all books-in-progress or whatever). Given that only the first 2 chapters are available at the moment, you might be able to wait for another sale to come round.
[1] http://www.manning.com/bhargava/