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The foundations — shared by every subject

Common Foundations

Understand the plumbing every app rides on, and handle the everyday tools that every engineering role assumes.

33 guides & blogs·2 stages·≈ 5 hr·2 more being written

  1. 01

    How the internet works

    ≈ 1 hr

    What actually happens between typing a URL and seeing a page — the plumbing under every role.

    How the Internet Works (No Jargon Required)A plain-English guide to how the internet actually works — what happens when you type a URL, IP addresses, DNS, packet switching, TCP/IP, routing and BGP, the undersea cables underneath it all, and who really runs the internet. No jargon.8 chapters·≈ 1 hr
  2. 02

    The working engineer’s toolkit

    ≈ 4 hr

    The tools around the code that every role assumes you know: version control, shells, containers, tests, and production awareness.

    Git & Version Control, DemystifiedA plain-English guide to Git and version control, from the ground up — why version control exists, how Git actually stores history, branching and merging without fear, the staging area, remotes, resolving merge conflicts, rebase vs merge, undoing anything, and the pull-request workflow. The foundation every developer role shares.9 chapters·≈ 1 hr
    Linux & the Terminal, from ZeroA plain-English guide to the Linux command line from the ground up — why the terminal beats clicking, what the shell actually is, navigating the filesystem, working with files, composing tools with pipes and redirection, permissions and sudo, processes and ports, reaching servers over SSH, and reading logs to debug what you can’t see. The toolkit every engineering role assumes.8 chapters·≈ 1 hr
    Docker & Containers, DemystifiedA plain-English guide to Docker and containers from first principles — why containers exist and how they kill "works on my machine", the image-vs-container distinction, writing a Dockerfile that builds fast, and persisting data with volumes. Then networking containers together, Docker Compose for multi-service apps, sharing images through registries, and what changes in production. The packaging layer the whole modern toolchain runs on.8 chapters·≈ 1 hr

    Testing fundamentalsbeing written

    Will cover: unit vs integration vs end-to-end · test doubles & fixtures · what to test (and what not to) · CI pipelines

    Observability & monitoringbeing written

    Will cover: logs, metrics & traces · alerting without alert fatigue · debugging production incidents · SLOs & error budgets

Shelves don't teach. Guides do.

Start: How the Internet Works