I have read through about eight pages of one of Knuth's most recent pre-fascicles.[1] It took me about a month (on and off). I did all the exercises (trying the harder ones for at most a couple of hours or so before giving up), wrote programs to explore the things introduced, etc. It was good, quite doable, and a lot of fun. (Also, I found a few errors and got some of those Knuth checks.)

The best way to view Knuth's project with these volumes is that takes in all published computer science on a particular topic, digests it, and outputs into the books some sort of "summary" of the field, or whatever he considers the most important bits, but still organized as readable/learnable textbook material, and in the way he thinks makes for best exposition. (In other words: he's doing his best to explain, and his best is very good indeed. Often Knuth's writing is clearer than the original papers, and a lot more fun.)

[1]: http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/knuth/

Working through the volumes is possible: http://commandlinefanatic.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.cgi?articl...

I read the volumes roughly 30mins a day, and try most of the exercises. Like the above linked blog post I at least attempt to just understand the question on the M[40]+ exercises which still can teach you something by merely understanding why it's a difficult problem.

I read all 3 volumes of the 2nd edition in the 90s. A couple of the long difficult proofs I glossed over. IIRC I read all the problems, but can't say I worked through very many. Vol 4a is on the coffee table in my office and I occasionally read some random passage.

I'm sure Donald Knuth has! Seriously, this is a life goal for me to read and understand these works, especially after I read that Bill Gates said he would hire anyone that had done.[0] Not sure that its going to happen though, as the maths is slowing me down! [0]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/bill-gates-once-s...

I'm sure someone has. If I was interested enough I supposed I could over a sufficiently long length of time? I do love reading Knuth, but I struggle with sticking with single books/topics for long lengths of time so I doubt I could keep it up for all the volumes.

I read the pseudo random number generation very carefully and skimmed around the rest. But reading everything...

You'll definitely enjoy this: https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/papers/poll.pdf

Edit: sorry, misread your comment, thought you were wondering what was Knuth's opinion. Still, I'll leave the link here, since it's a great read nonetheless

I think he just got tired of being asked the question and decided to start messing around.

Or C more. :)