Yes, it was understandable to this non-Swede. Here are phrases which stick out for me as not-quite-English (I'll ignore things where I thought the preposition was a bit odd, like "to his honor" instead of "in his honor".)

"At physical education they said it would be really difficult." . That should be a physics education, not? And that preposition is weird. Perhaps "Regarding a physics education, they .."

"yesterday the retired Stanford professor filled 80 years" - "filled"? He turned 80. Is this a Swedish idiom?

"We had specialist equipment" - perhaps "special equipment"? Is it for specialists to operate, or is it unusual equipment?

"the world's premier computerist." - I haven't heard the word "computerist" before. It's only been mentioned a few times in all of HN history (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopul... and https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22computerist%22&sort=byPopul... )

"How does a computer do when it's going to search for something like when you googlar?" - Perhaps it's supposed to be "What does a computer do when it's going to search for something, like when you use Google?"

"when he began to study physics in the 1950s, he first happened on a computer." I think that "happened" should be "came across"?

"there would be a total of seven bands" - What is "bands"? Volumes?

"Now Donald Knuth writes on Part 4B" - I believe "Now Donald Knuth is writing Part 4B" is better.

"To make music of Revelation book he he dreamed about since the early 1960s" - I know what it's saying, but it's a very odd sentence.

"and stands in a fantastic hall" - The word "stands" sounds odd.

But again, yes, the machine translation here is quite good.