The older editions of &quot;Sorting and Searching&quot; contained a lot of information on efficiently reading and writing to sequential storage devices [tape]. Don&#x27;t know about the current edition. [1] That said, &quot;Combinatorial Algorithms&quot; is all about efficiency that is relevant today. Combinatorial problems are the sort of thing where good algorithms stomp caching, branch prediction etc. because the fundamental problems are in NP and NP&#x2F;32 is still NP.<p>Knuth has spent 50 years creating computer science that we can take for granted. But in the end <i>TAoCP</i> is a &quot;little book on compilers&quot; and if that&#x27;s not relevant to one&#x27;s vocation and the topic isn&#x27;t intellectually interesting in and of itself then it&#x27;s probably not the right book for a person.<p>Knuth always reminds me how hard this stuff really is.<p>Good luck.<p>[1]: edit. The First Edition has a centerfold showing the sequences of different society&#x27;s executions across multiple tape drives.