Learn
Learn: guides to Knuth, interpreters and teaching yourself CS
Guides to the questions people actually ask about Knuth, interpreters, programming games and teaching yourself computer science, plus free tools and a study guide for every chapter and section on the path.
Free tools
- Study plan generatorYour dates for all 145 weeks, from any start day. No signup.
- MIX emulator and MIXAL assemblerRun Knuth's MIX in the browser, with graded exercises.
- NeetCode 150 listIn order, by category, with Premium problems flagged.
The books
- The Art of Computer ProgrammingA study guide to every volume, 1 to 4B.
- Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms38 weeks, 932 exercises, about 240 hours.
- Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms30 weeks, 918 exercises, about 198 hours.
- Volume 3: Sorting and Searching33 weeks, 964 exercises, about 217 hours.
- Volume 4A: Combinatorial Algorithms, Part 117 weeks, 1498 exercises, about 122 hours.
- Volume 4B: Combinatorial Algorithms, Part 212 weeks, 1202 exercises, about 93 hours.
- Crafting InterpretersAll 30 chapters, about 163 hours.
Reading Knuth
- How to read TAOCPA practical way to read Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming: pace, pencil, which exercises to do, what to skim, and how to keep going for two years.
- TAOCP reading orderWhich TAOCP volume to read first, what order to read the sections in, what to skim, and a week-by-week plan from Volume 1 to Volume 4B.
- Knuth exercise ratingsWhat the numbers and marks on TAOCP exercises mean: the 00 to 50 difficulty scale, M and HM, the triangle for recommended, and how to choose what to do.
- Is TAOCP worth it?Is Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming worth the time in 2026? Who gets the most from it, who should skip it, and what it actually teaches you.
- Which TAOCP editionThe current editions of TAOCP Volumes 1 to 4B, whether an older used edition is fine, why to avoid Kindle, and the cheapest legal way to get each.
Building interpreters
- How to build an interpreterHow to build your own programming language interpreter: scanner, parser, evaluator, then a bytecode VM with a garbage collector, and the book that shows how.
- Crafting Interpreters study planHow long Crafting Interpreters takes (about 160 hours) and a 28-week, chapter-by-chapter plan for jlox and clox with hours per chapter and tests.
- jlox vs cloxjlox and clox, the two Lox interpreters in Crafting Interpreters, compared: design, speed, memory, difficulty, and whether you can skip one.
- Lox test suiteHow to run the official Crafting Interpreters test suite against your own jlox or clox: Dart setup, test.dart, chapter suites, and running it in CI.
Programming games
- Best programming gamesThe Zachtronics programming games ranked by what they teach programmers: TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, EXAPUNKS, SpaceChem, Opus Magnum and more, in a sensible order.
- Factorio for programmersWhat Factorio and Satisfactory teach programmers (throughput, bottlenecks, modular design, refactoring a running system) and what they do not.
Where the path comes from
Teaching yourself
- Get good without a CS degreeHow to get genuinely good at programming without a CS degree: build hard things, learn the fundamentals deeply, practice deliberately, and prove it.
- Self-taught CS roadmapA self-taught computer science roadmap: the broad path (OSSU, Teach Yourself CS) and the deep path (interpreters, then Knuth), and how to choose between them.