# The path, explained

> What happens in each of the 145 weeks of cracked.guide: two interpreters, five volumes of Knuth, NeetCode, ten games, and how pace and catch-up work.

By Dane Dolph. Published 2026-10-20 on the cracked.guide blog.

cracked.guide is 145 weeks long at full pace, about 2.8 years at about 8 to 10 hours a week. It has six phases (Crafting Interpreters, then five volumes of Knuth) plus two things that run alongside: NeetCode practice and a Play track of games. Here is what each part is for and why it sits where it does.

## Weeks 1 to 28: two interpreters

You build both interpreters from Crafting Interpreters: jlox, a tree-walker in Java (weeks 1 to 11), then clox, a bytecode VM in C with its own hash table and garbage collector (weeks 12 to 28). It comes first because it is the most fun phase, it gets you writing a lot of real code in two languages, and it introduces ideas (hash tables, garbage collection, interpreters) that Knuth later treats with full mathematical rigor. [The chapters](https://cracked.guide/crafting-interpreters).

## Weeks 29 to 145: Knuth

- **Weeks 29 to 63, [Volume 1](https://cracked.guide/taocp/volume-1)**: the mathematical preliminaries, the MIX computer, lists, trees and storage allocation. The math weeks are the hardest stretch of the path for most people.
- **Weeks 64 to 89, [Volume 2](https://cracked.guide/taocp/volume-2)**: random numbers and arithmetic.
- **Weeks 90 to 117, [Volume 3](https://cracked.guide/taocp/volume-3)**: sorting and searching, the most directly practical volume.
- **Weeks 118 to 133, [Volume 4A](https://cracked.guide/taocp/volume-4a)**: Boolean functions, bit tricks, BDDs, generating combinatorial objects.
- **Weeks 134 to 145, [Volume 4B](https://cracked.guide/taocp/volume-4b)**: backtracking, dancing links and satisfiability.

Long sections are split across weeks, short neighbors share one, and each volume ends with a review week for the exercises you skipped. Each week is planned at about 8 to 10 hours by the reading guides' own time budgets, so no week asks for much more than the others.

## Alongside: NeetCode and the Play track

Two NeetCode 150 problems a week for the first 75 weeks covers the whole list, in NeetCode's order, keeping interview skills warm while the books do the deep work.

The Play track is ten games, one at a time, each with a start week and a checkpoint: TIS-100 from week 1, Shenzhen I/O, EXAPUNKS, SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Opus Magnum, Factorio from week 79, MOLEK-SYNTEZ, Satisfactory from week 108, and Last Call BBS from week 122. [Why games](https://cracked.guide/blog/playing-zachtronics-as-homework).

## Pace, cohorts and falling behind

You pick a start date and every week gets a due date. Full pace is a week of the path every calendar week. Half pace gives each week two, 290 weeks in all. There is also a faster pace, a week every five days. Monthly cohorts start on the first Monday of each month, so the people around you are on the same chapter.

Everyone falls behind. Catch-up re-dates the rest of the path from where you actually are, instead of leaving a wall of overdue weeks. A weekly email says what is due, and the schedule exports to your calendar or Things.

## Try the dates

The [study plan generator](https://cracked.guide/plan) shows every week of the path with real dates from any start day and pace, no account needed. If it looks right, [sign up](https://cracked.guide/signup) and it becomes your schedule.

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Source: https://cracked.guide/blog/the-path-explained
cracked.guide: A free, dated 145-week path to getting genuinely cracked at programming.