We might think. It's unfortunate that Knuth is not more widely read or understood. He's a great writer, it shows in his writing and coding work.
I liked his quotes in 'Coders at Work' where he said he didn't expect anyone to read his books cover-to-cover, and he writes such detailed books in part to avoid forgetting stuff.
Because if these kinds of ideas were articulated 35 years ago, I'd expect that by now we would have progressed much more.