ZeroCourse · est. May 2026

A long-arc learning platform for engineers.

Free while we're building. No certificates. No streaks. A guide on the technical you'd find at MIT — and a teacher on what nobody else teaches engineers. $3/mo when we're ready — the price of one coffee, for a platform you'll keep for years.

The Engineer
Ten years in. Still shipping. · founder & sole editor
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02 · who this is for

Find your line.

Five readers. We built this for. If one of these sentences is you — even halfway — you'll know within thirty seconds of opening Lesson 1. If none of them are, that's good information too. We'd rather you find that out now.

01
The absolute beginner.
Never written a line of code. Curious. Wants in without being condescended to.
02
The student.
In a degree, or just out of one. Wants depth a syllabus won't provide and a pace a job hasn't yet stolen.
03
The mid-career engineer.
Shipped for years. Wants to relearn the principles before the LLMs make recognition cheap and understanding rare.
04
The would-be founder.
Wants technical depth and the things no engineer is taught — money, negotiation, sales, and the politics of building something.
05
The engineer who wants leverage.
Cares about civic conscience, depth, craft. Tired of platforms that mistake compulsion for engagement.

If a line lit up — that's the one. That's how we built this.

03 · how this works

Two registers, one platform.

We don't pretend to teach what MIT already teaches better. And we don't pretend negotiation can be learned from a book that doesn't exist. We're a guide on the first, a teacher on the second.

a guide on
The technical.

CS, math, systems, algorithms, distributed systems. We point you at MIT, at canonical books, at the few honest YouTube channels — then verify you actually got it. No rebuilding what works.

framedDiscrete Mathematics for Computer Science · MIT 6.042J
framedAlgorithms · Erickson
framedDesigning Data-Intensive Applications · Kleppmann
framedStructure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
a teacher on
What no one teaches engineers.

Negotiation. Money. Politics-at-work. The craft of teaching. The conscience of the trade. Authored originally — because no canonical text exists, and the absence has cost us.

authoredNegotiating like an engineer who finally learned how
authoredThe money you don't talk about — comp, equity, dilution
authoredPolitics-at-work without becoming someone you don't recognise
authoredThe craft of teaching · for the engineer who is asked to mentor
verification · ours regardless of register
Meet Bodhi — the AI tutor who probes your understanding instead of solving for you. Asks one question back, sometimes a smaller one. Never writes your code, never gives you the answer. The accountability is the feature.
04 · what you'll experience

Three concrete things, not adjectives.

Most of what platforms promise is unfalsifiable. "Personalized." "Engaging." "Bite-sized." Here are three things you can verify on day one.

01
Real Git, real CI.

You fork the lesson template, push to your branch, and your CI runs while Bodhi reviews. The same toolchain you use at work — because you'll use it at work.

$ git push origin l3-induction
ci · 17 tests passed
bodhi · reviewing
02
An AI that won't write your code.

Bodhi asks. Bodhi probes. Bodhi sends you back to the part of the chapter you skipped. Bodhi never hands you the answer — even if you ask. That refusal is the lesson.

I won't solve this for you. But — your inductive hypothesis assumes k, you proved it for k+1, and the gap is the part you skipped. What can we deploy from k → k+1?
03
Spaced review that catches what fades.

Concepts have heat. Cool ones come back — at the moment they were going to leave you. Not at the moment a streak demands a tap.

M
T
T
S
S
last 7 daysdarker = warmer
05 · what we won't do

A short list, kept short on purpose.

Most platforms tell you what they will do. We think it matters more, sometimes, to tell you what we won't.

We won't run a streaks-as-shame mechanic. The work doesn't expire.
We won't promise jobs we can't deliver, or sell you a bootcamp story.
We won't surveil your reading. Your time on a paragraph is yours.
We won't teach material that builds surveillance, predatory finance, or weapons.
We won't pretend AI will leave the field unchanged. We won't pretend it makes us obsolete either.
We won't brag about ten thousand lessons. Depth, not volume.

If a single line on this list relieves you — you're our reader.

06 · welcome

If that sounds like the kind of platform you want to learn on, welcome.

— signed
The Engineer
Ten years in. Still shipping. · founder of ZeroCourse