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.