You don't need to know how to code.
But you should understand what's possible.

A structured path through the concepts that matter. For product managers, finance professionals, vibe coders, and anyone turning an idea into something real.

Start Learning Jump to contents

Who this is for

Product Managers Understand what engineers are building so you can ask better questions and scope work accurately. Finance and Business Evaluate technical proposals, costs, and risks without relying entirely on the engineering team. Vibe Coders Use AI tools to build software by understanding the vocabulary. You direct. The AI writes. Students and Switchers Build the mental model before you write a single line of code. Start here. Founders and Entrepreneurs Know what you are building before the first sprint. Scope, hire, and make the right calls early. Consultants and Advisors Speak AI fluently with clients. Governance frameworks, technical vocabulary, and strategic tools.
Level 4
AI and Building Vibe coding, production AI, working with language models, directing rather than writing
Level 3
The Infrastructure Databases, servers, APIs, the cloud. Where software runs and how it connects
Level 2
Managing Work Version control, Git, open source. How teams collaborate on code without destroying each other's work
Level 1
How Code Works Terminals, code, the logic behind software. What happens when you run a command
Level 0
The Foundation Computers, the internet, how hardware and networks function. Start here
01. Five levels, one foundation.
Level 0 The Computer
What is Coding? Plain-English explanation of coding for product managers, founders, and career changers who want to build with software. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is an AI chatbot built by OpenAI on top of the GPT-4o language model. How it works, what it can and cannot do, and how it compares to Claude and Gemini. What is Generative AI? Generative AI is software that creates new content: text, images, audio, video, and code. Plain-English explanation of how it works, why it matters, and what it cannot do. Video What is Machine Learning? Machine learning is how AI learns from data instead of following programmed rules. Plain-English explanation of supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning. Video What is Natural Language Processing (NLP)? Natural language processing (NLP) is the field of AI concerned with understanding and generating human language. Plain-English guide covering how NLP works and where you encounter it. What is Software? Software is code organised to do a real job from start to finish. It is the many small parts of an app, wired together to work as one. What is a Computer? A computer is a machine that follows instructions. Understanding this one idea explains everything that comes after. Video What is the Internet? The internet is a global network of computers that have agreed to speak the same language. Here is how it actually works. Video
Level 1 How Code Works
A Short History of Computing: From the Abacus to the Microchip Plain-English history of computing, from counting beads to mechanical calculators, programmable machines, and the silicon chip. For product managers, finance professionals, and anyone building with technology. Frontend vs Backend: The Layers of an App A plain-English guide to the frontend, backend, database, and infrastructure layers that make up every modern app. Number Systems: Binary, Decimal, and Hexadecimal Explained A plain-English guide to how computers count using binary, decimal, and hexadecimal, and how numbers turn letters into text. What is a Programming Language? A plain-English explanation of programming languages, compilers, interpreters, and just-in-time compilation for complete beginners building with AI. What is an Algorithm? A plain-English explanation of algorithms: the step-by-step recipes that tell computers and AI exactly how to solve a problem. What is Bootstrapping? A plain-English guide to bootstrapping, the practice of building a company on your own savings and revenue instead of outside investment. What is Timeboxing? Plain-English explanation of timeboxing, the habit of setting a fixed time limit for a task and stopping when the time is up. What is a Large Language Model (LLM)? A large language model is the AI behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Plain-English explanation of how LLMs work, what they can and cannot do, and how to choose between them. Video What is a Neural Network? A neural network is the core architecture behind modern AI. Plain-English explanation of how layers, weights, and backpropagation work, with no maths required. Video What is AI Hallucination? AI hallucination is when a language model produces confident, fluent, factually wrong output. Why it happens, how to detect it, and how to reduce it. What is an AI Agent? An AI agent is software that uses an LLM to plan and take actions autonomously, not just answer questions. Plain-English explanation with real examples. What is Computer Vision? Computer vision is the AI field that enables software to understand images and video. Plain-English guide covering how it works and where it is used in 2026. What are Environments? An environment is a separate copy of your software: one to experiment in safely, one your real users actually touch. What are Prompts? A prompt is how you tell an AI model, in plain words, what you want. Clear and specific gets a good result, vague gets a guess. What are Regions? A region is a place in the world where the cloud keeps its data centres. You pick one so your software runs close to your users. What is a Framework? A framework is a ready-made starting kit for building software, so you do not begin from nothing and only write the part that is actually yours. What is a Function? A function is a named, reusable step in code. You write the job once, give it a name, then run it whenever you need it. What is a Model? A model is the learned thing an AI produces from data and then uses to make predictions. Training it is the slow part, using it is fast and cheap. What is Data (and JSON)? Data is information organised in a shape software can read. JSON is the most common shape: labelled values a human and a machine can both understand. What is Deployment? Deployment is the step that takes your working code off your own computer and puts it online, at an address anyone in the world can reach. What is Frontend and Backend? Frontend is the part of an app you see and touch. Backend is the part doing the work behind it. They talk to each other through an API. What is Monitoring (and Logs)? Monitoring watches your running software live and warns you when something is wrong. Logs are the written record of everything it did. What is Scaling? Scaling means handling one user or a million without falling over. It is how software stays fast and online when a crowd shows up. What is Security and Auth? Security and auth are how software lets the right people in and keeps everyone else out, by checking who you are and what you are allowed to do. What is State? State is what a system remembers right now: who is logged in, what is in the cart, which step a job reached. Change something and the state changes. What is Storage (and Files)? Storage is where software keeps the big, heavy things, images, videos and backups, so they survive and can be found again later. What is Testing? Testing is checking that software works the way it should before real users ever touch it. It catches mistakes in seconds, not in front of a customer. What is a Terminal? The terminal is a text-based interface for controlling your computer. It looks intimidating but it is just a faster way to tell the computer what to do. Video What is Code? Code is instructions written in a language a computer can understand. You don't need to write it yourself to understand what it does.
Level 2 Managing Work
How Search Algorithms Work A plain-English guide to linear search, binary search, and hash table lookups, and why sorting and indexing make finding data fast. How Sorting Algorithms Work A plain-English guide to how sorting algorithms put data in order, from simple swaps to merge sort, quicksort, and the Timsort that ships in Python and Java. Library vs Framework vs SDK vs API: What is What A plain-English guide to the difference between a library, a framework, an SDK, and an API, so you know which tool to reach for. Programming Paradigms: Procedural, Object-Oriented, Functional, and More A plain-English tour of the main ways to organize code, from procedural and object-oriented to functional, declarative, and logic styles. What is a Data Structure? A plain-English guide to data structures, the ways you organize data in memory so that search, insertion, and sorting run fast. What is Big O Notation? A plain-English guide to Big O notation, the language for describing how an algorithm's cost grows as the input gets larger. What is Fine-tuning? Fine-tuning adapts a pre-trained AI model to a specific task or domain using your own data. When it makes sense, what it costs, and when prompt engineering is better. What is React Native? React Native lets you write one JavaScript codebase that runs as a real native app on both iOS and Android. Not a website in a wrapper: actual native components. What is Git? Git is the version control tool used by almost every software team on earth. Here is what it does and why it matters for anyone building software. Video What is GitHub? GitHub is where the world's code lives. It hosts Git repositories, enables collaboration, and is where you manage your project's issues, roadmap, and releases. Video What is Open Source? Open source means the code is publicly available for anyone to read, use, modify, and contribute to. Most of the internet runs on it. Video What is Version Control? Version control is a system that tracks every change ever made to a file. It is the reason developers can work in teams without overwriting each other's work. Video
Level 3 The Infrastructure
What is a Database? A database is an organised system for storing and retrieving data. Every app that remembers anything uses one. Video What is a Server? A server is just a computer that runs continuously and waits for requests. When you load a website, a server somewhere in the world responds. Video What is an API? An API is a contract that defines how two pieces of software talk to each other. Almost every modern app is built by composing APIs. Video What is the Cloud? The cloud is other people's computers, rented by the second. Here is what that actually means for building software and why it changed everything. Video
Level 4 AI and Building
What is AI? AI is software that learns patterns from data instead of following hand-written rules. Here is what that actually means, without the hype. Video What is Vibe Coding? Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting AI write the code. Here is how to do it well. Video

Handpicked tutorials

Crash Course, 12 min Crash Course Computer Science: How Computers Work Code.org, 4 min How Does the Internet Work? freeCodeCamp, 1 hr Git and GitHub for Beginners: Crash Course MuleSoft, 3 min What is an API? Plain English TechWorld with Nana DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes, Git: all beginner-friendly 3Blue1Brown, 19 min But What is a Neural Network?

Start here

Start with the first question.

You don't need to read everything at once. Start with "What is a Computer?" and everything else builds from there.

What is Coding?