The Art of Computer Programming

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I am a hardcore mathematician. And I am soon close to achieve my Ph.D in CS. I believe I am a pretty decent programmer (my code from my co-employees was never submitted in r/badcode or r/horrorstories.) But as regular users should know, I speak more English than code while talking about programming. That's because when I was younger (in my 20's) my users and even my co-workers fell asleep whenever I explained them how I programmed their software. When I DO get techy, I get extremely tech-y. I actually read and understood Discrete Mathematics (by Donald) at the age of fifteen.

Now, don't get me wrong, as any scientist or any decent person should be, I try to be humble. I believe that there's always room for more learning. And I after all couldn't read the Art of Computer Programming at the following ages.

1. First time : Age is 13. Couldn't understand a word. I had nightmares, shifting from Pascal to Assembly, was a terror for me.
2. Second time : Age is 16. With three years of more experience in coding and first year in CE (engineering I took but later switched to science, I like theoretical side more) I understood only a bits and pieces.
3. Third time : Age of 27. I was suddenly reminded of TAoCP by a friend of mine, still used to work for the FBI. Then I joked that I helped Knuth to write this book and then I "gave a tuition to him." I was quickly humbled when I read the first 20 pages. I read the first two pages and quickly realized his mathematics is extremely hardcore.
4. Fourth time : Age of 27, the highest I got was Volume 1's 100 page.
5. Fifth time : Just yesterday, and I gotta say I am happy I was improved a lot during a period of roughly six years.

Now the "time" is not literally, at the age of 13 I tried to read this book for two months, at the age of 16 I tried to read it for three months, at 27 I tried to read it for a year, and at the fifth time I tried to read it for like 18 hours.

Now I actually UNDERSTOOD the first twenty pages. I was never an Assembly programmer and just learnt x64 Assembly in 2014. But I was damn good in C/C++ so the programming background helped me a lot. Now, I was humbled a lot that there's a lot of room to learn in CS and as Donald said, "two pages of my book can make a one's career." I mean, seriously, he is on the same level of popularity as Dennis Ritchie (how many of you knew Dennis' name?) and he deserves more popularity than let's say Bill Gates. Bill Gates created a simple OS family and he is regarded as Christ Jesus of computers (travel to India, ask anybody about Bill Gates, then ask the same person about Dennis or Donald, and then ask about Windows XP, and then ask them what K&R/TAoCP is) That's totally unfair.

But now politics aside, I find it really, really hitting to face.

According to almost every review, this book is a monster to read. I haven't dared to go to the 21st page yet (probably next week) but I am glad I understood the first 20 without much problem (only if the code was written in C....)

Have you read TAoCP? What's your experience? Any trouble?