Why I failed when I read TAOCP the first time.

Believe it or not, this is actually the second time I read TAOCP seriously.  The first time is when I first came to U.S. (around 8 years ago)  I was motivated by the success of reading "Elementary Number Theory".   I finished all the exercises in the number theory book and felt very ambitious another book.  I thought that I can gain a lot by reading TAOCP after I bought its international edition.

There's nothing wrong with that thinking.   Unfortunately, I made mistakes which many people made,  let me summarize at here.

• I simply tried to read Chapter 1 too deep.  TAOCP Chapter 1 gives a general introduction of computer science.   This introduction is not gentle.  In a way, it brings the reader to the frontier of each of these basic topics.  (So if you go deep for TAOCP in one section, you are likely to be a deep experts in a field.)   This is too difficult for me (or perhaps for many) to finish. 
• I was scared by MIX.  This is simply a bias.  At that time I was crazily in love with C and has a lot of prejudice.   I have since changed.  
• I tried to read other CS text.   Ah, one of my biggest problems, after reading something and have success, I liked to move on and go for breadth, than depth.  Not a good habit for deep subject such as Math and CS. 
• At that time, I wasn't proficient in basic programming skill.  For example even though I finished a master already, I still have basic misunderstanding why writing good program is a good thing.  Experience is my teacher. 
• Just like many, I thought TAOCP was meant to be a reference.  (Conform to the 99%, Big mistake.)
• I only think about algorithmic problem when I need to.  (Conform to the 90%,  Biggest mistake)

Learning from my mistakes, my conclusion is - if I want to get good in algorithm, I need to first stick one and only one book.   Not splashing my effort around. So I don't care how attractive is the content in TAOCP, I will simply keep my pace and read on CLRS.  The way I am doing with CLRS - having 3 pointers of read. Each is deeper than the other is the real way to go.