Programming

There is a specific sound that defines the childhood of a generation: the high-pitched screech and rhythmic thrum of a data cassette loading into an 8-bit computer. In the early 1980s, the United Kingdom underwent a transformation that was arguably more profound than the arrival of the internet a decade later. While the US was falling in love with the office-centric IBM PC and the “appliance” feel of the Apple Macintosh, the UK was building a nation of bedroom coders. ...

I’m sitting at a desk with two machines. One is a 1981 ZX Spectrum, 16KB of RAM, sitting on a desk in my garage. The other is a 2026 MacBook running Claude Code. Between them lie 45 years of computing history. And here’s the thing that struck me recently: I’m still doing the same thing. On the Spectrum, I’m typing: 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" 20 INPUT A$ 30 IF A$ = "YES" THEN GOTO 50 40 GOTO 10 50 PRINT "YOU SAID YES" On Claude Code, I’m typing: ...

Most engineering concepts are easier than they look once someone explains them clearly. This page collects short explainer notes on the fundamentals I find myself re-explaining most often, each paired with the best external visual or video I have found on the topic. APIs An API is a contract: this is what I will accept, this is what I promise to return, this is how I will behave when something goes wrong. Everything else - REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets - is just a different way of expressing that contract over the wire. ...

A working DevOps engineer draws from several disciplines at once - distributed systems, operating systems, network engineering, software development, and the organisational side that keeps it all moving. The books below are the ones I have either read cover-to-cover or regularly pull off the shelf to reference. I have added a one-line note on why each one is on the list. Culture and Practice The hardest problems in DevOps are usually not technical. ...

A short list of development courses I either learned from myself or have recommended to others starting out. Most of the best teachers charge for their work - I have pointed out the free options where they are genuinely good. Python and Django Code With Mosh - The Ultimate Django Series - structured end-to-end path, best if you already know Python basics Corey Schafer’s Python tutorials - free YouTube series covering Python, Django, and Flask in genuine depth Real Python - article- and video-driven learning with a strong practical slant Django Girls Tutorial - free, beginner-friendly, the cleanest on-ramp to Django I have seen JavaScript and React The Odin Project - free full-stack curriculum that takes you from HTML through to JavaScript frameworks Code With Mosh - The Ultimate React Native Series - covers cross-platform mobile development with React Native Kent C. Dodds - Epic React - paid but widely regarded as the deepest React course available React official tutorial - free, well-maintained, and the right place to start for the current React model C and C++ Code With Mosh - Ultimate C++ Series - modern C++ taught from first principles learncpp.com - a free, comprehensive, and regularly updated C++ reference-and-tutorial hybrid The C Programming Language (K&R) - still the canonical text for learning C, forty years on Fundamentals and Computer Science CS50 (Harvard) - free introductory computer-science course, famously well-produced Missing Semester of Your CS Education (MIT) - shell, Git, debugging, and the tools a CS degree usually skips Teach Yourself Computer Science - a curated syllabus for self-taught engineers who want to fill gaps Related Pages DevOps Courses DevOps Books