Jonathan Blow's advice on learning programming

What he said

Watch the clip yourself; it is short, and a summary is no substitute. Two lines stand out. On Volume 3, Sorting and Searching: "If you actually go through [it] for real, you will know way more data structures than anyone with a CS degree." And on the books in general: "You have to do the exercises."

The rest, paraphrased: the Zachtronics games (but not the visual novel) are worth playing for programmers, as are Factorio and Satisfactory, and Knuth is where the deep knowledge is.

Why it makes sense

The games train the loop of understanding a constrained machine, planning, debugging and optimizing, in a form that is fun enough to do every week. Knuth trains depth: exact analysis and the real versions of the data structures. "Do the exercises" is the important part. Reading TAOCP without them is like reading about the gym. See is TAOCP worth it.

How cracked.guide turns it into a schedule

cracked.guide takes that advice and adds dates and checks:

• The Play track: eight Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, EXAPUNKS, SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Opus Magnum, MOLEK-SYNTEZ, Last Call BBS), Factorio and Satisfactory, one at a time, each with a checkpoint. See the games ranked.
• Knuth, every volume: Volume 1 to 4B, one section a week, with exercises picked for each section and a log.
• An on-ramp he did not mention: Crafting Interpreters first, for 28 weeks, so you arrive at Knuth able to program well in Java and C. That part is our addition.

It is inspired by his advice and not affiliated with him in any way.