Learning paths

Trace one connection from the CPU on your laptop through the operating system, the network, and the web browser.

• CPU
• Memory
• Operating System
• IP Address
• +3 more

The topics that take you from "I can write some JavaScript" to "I can ship a real product on the web that respects users".

• Programming Language
• JavaScript
• Type System
• Web Browser
• +11 more

A historical arc through the people and ideas that built modern computing, from the Analytical Engine to the open-source era.

• History of Computing
• Ada Lovelace
• Alan Turing
• Turing Machine
• +7 more

A beginner-friendly path from bits to operating systems — the smallest mental model of a modern computer.

• Bit
• Binary Numbers
• Boolean Logic
• Transistor
• +15 more

The concepts behind designing interfaces that people can actually use — from visual fundamentals to accessibility and usability testing.

• User Interface
• UX
• GUI
• Command-Line Interface
• +5 more

From binary to big-O — the foundational structures and analysis that underpin every program ever written.

• Bit
• Binary Numbers
• Boolean Logic
• Hexadecimal
• +16 more

The minimum set of topics that turns a programmer into someone who can ship and operate a backend service in production.

• Programming Language
• Data Structure
• Big O
• Version Control
• +15 more

The landscape of modern software targets — web, mobile, embedded, and IoT — and the trade-offs that define each one.

• Web Browser
• Native vs Web
• Mobile App
• Embedded System
• +4 more

The smallest mental model of concurrent programming — processes, threads, the scheduler, locks, deadlock — and why your multithreaded code keeps breaking in weird ways.

• Process
• Thread
• Scheduler
• Context Switch
• +4 more

A practical tour of the cryptography most engineers actually use — symmetric and public-key, TLS, password storage, and the auth flows on top.

• Cryptography
• Public-Key Cryptography
• TLS
• HTTPS
• +5 more

The ideas every working programmer should know about relational databases — model, query language, design, indexing, transactions, and the NoSQL alternatives.

• Database
• Relational Model
• Normalization
• SQL
• +10 more

From pixels to ray tracing — how images are represented, compressed, and rendered in real time and offline.

• Pixel
• Color Space
• Image Format
• JPEG
• +7 more

From source code to execution — how compilers, runtimes, type systems, and memory management work under the hood.

• Programming Language
• Syntax vs Semantics
• Type System
• Compiler
• +10 more

Trace one connection from raw packets up through addressing, transport, encryption, and the web — the minimum mental model of how the internet works.

• Packet
• IP Address
• Router
• NAT
• +10 more

The continuous and statistical mathematics that modern computing runs on — sets, calculus, linear algebra, and probability, and where each one shows up in practice.

• Set Theory
• Discrete Mathematics
• Boolean Logic
• Calculus Basics
• +5 more

From algorithms to large language models — the sequence of ideas that explains where AI is in the mid-2020s and how it actually works.

• Algorithms
• Data Structure
• Machine Learning
• Supervised Learning
• +13 more

The minimum viable mental model of an operating system — processes, threads, scheduling, memory, files, and the kernel that ties it together.

• Operating System
• Process
• Thread
• Scheduler
• +12 more

The security topics every backend or full-stack engineer needs to know — not security as a specialism, but the part that's table stakes for shipping public software.

• Cryptography
• Public-Key Cryptography
• TLS
• Authentication
• +9 more

The discipline behind writing code that teams can maintain, test, and evolve — from version control to deployment pipelines.

• Version Control
• Git
• Code Review
• Semantic Versioning
• +10 more

Trace a single HTTPS request from the browser down through HTTP, TLS, TCP, UDP, IP, packets, and routing — the whole stack in one walk.

• Web Browser
• HTTP
• REST API
• HTTPS
• +9 more

From transistors to the instruction pipeline — how a modern CPU actually executes code, and how that shapes software performance.

• Instruction Set
• Register
• RISC vs CISC
• CPU Pipeline
• +8 more

The ideas behind systems that span multiple machines — consensus, replication, consistency, and the infrastructure that glues it together.

• Distributed System
• Consensus
• Replication
• Sharding
• +10 more

How sub-millisecond software is built — cache-aware data layout, pool allocation, and lock-free concurrency, grounded in how the memory hierarchy and cache coherence really behave.

• Memory Hierarchy
• Cache
• Cache Coherence
• Cache-Line Alignment
• +6 more

How a single web app survives going from "100 users" to "100 million" — caching, replication, sharding, queues, edge networks, and the orchestration glue.

• Database
• SQL
• Indexing
• Query Plan
• +14 more

How to keep software running reliably in production — from SLOs and observability to incident response and safe deployments.

• Deployment
• Monitoring
• Logging
• Observability
• +7 more