"One of the CS bestsellers which is seldom read. That puts it right next to Bible"
From the practical element, mostly No. People won't use this as a first book - or the second or third. But if you wanted a reference on something deeper, which missed any of the standard textbooks, this is the book for you.
As an illustrative layman example, lets say you are modeling server usage with a mathematical model, most textbooks will tell you "hey, the pings and handshakes closely follow Poisson distribution". You pick from there and build on that information or mental model. But why Poisson model happens to be that way, why not something else - and how closely the server model cross-correlates will be realm of where TAOCP starts building the problem. It goes a layer or two deeper of yak shaving IMHO
"One of the CS bestsellers which is seldom read. That puts it right next to Bible"
From the practical element, mostly No. People won't use this as a first book - or the second or third. But if you wanted a reference on something deeper, which missed any of the standard textbooks, this is the book for you.
As an illustrative layman example, lets say you are modeling server usage with a mathematical model, most textbooks will tell you "hey, the pings and handshakes closely follow Poisson distribution". You pick from there and build on that information or mental model. But why Poisson model happens to be that way, why not something else - and how closely the server model cross-correlates will be realm of where TAOCP starts building the problem. It goes a layer or two deeper of yak shaving IMHO