The Missing Semester — CS Tools

reading · we frame, you read MIT or the canonical taught · we author, no canonical fits ↺ spirals back to earlier lessons

Course locked

Complete Systems Programming (C and Zig) first.

This course unlocks once you've finished its prerequisite. Open prerequisite →

reading · 30 min + ~156 min canonical

Shell, Pipes, and Regex

You've been using a terminal since the first lesson of this path — typing gcc, make, git status. What you may not have done is programmed the shell itself. The shell is a small pr…

primary The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (MIT)

after L0 locked

taught lesson · 50 min + ~156 min canonical keystone

Git Internals: Objects, Refs, and the DAG

You use git every day. You know git add, git commit, git push, git pull, git merge. What you may not know is that all of those commands are thin wrappers around a much smaller ide…

primary The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (MIT)

after L1 locked

reading · 40 min + ~156 min canonical

Your Daily Toolkit: Editor, Debugger, Containers, Dotfiles

Three lessons in, you have the shell and you have git. The remaining slot in your daily toolkit is the cluster of tools you'll touch every working hour — your editor (where code i…

primary The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (MIT)

after L2 locked

exercise reading · 15 min L1

Exercises: Easy (Warm-up)

- [ ] Write a bash script that organizes files by extension into directories — Shell scripting - [ ] Configure tmux with custom key bindings and status bar — ~/.tmux.conf - [ ] Co…

after L3 locked

exercise reading · 30 min L1

Exercises: Medium (Core)

- [ ] Create a git repo, make 10 commits, use rebase, cherry-pick, bisect to find a bug — Git advanced - [ ] Write a Makefile for a C project with multiple source files, headers, …

after L4 locked

exercise reading · 45 min L1

Exercises: Hard (Stretch)

- [ ] Trace a Ruby process with strace/dtrace, explain every syscall during require 'json' — Syscall analysis - [ ] Write a shell script that parses Apache logs and reports top 10…

after L5 locked

exercise reading · 60 min L1

Mini-Project

- [ ] Create a complete dotfiles repo — vim/neovim config, zsh config, tmux config, git config, setup script that symlinks everything; push to GitHub

after L6 locked

project reading · 360 min L1

Project: Git Internals Explorer

Write a Ruby script that reads .git/objects, parses blob/tree/commit objects, and reconstructs the commit history. Display a simplified git log output from raw objects. This teach…

after L7 locked

assessment reading · 56 min L1

Self-Assessment: The Missing Semester — CS Tools

- [ ] How does Git store data internally? What are blobs, trees, and commits? - [ ] What is the difference between a Docker image and a container? - [ ] Explain what a pipe (|) do…

after L8 locked

L10

assessment reading · 60 min L1

Quarter 1 Gate Check: Mathematical Foundations

- [ ] Course 1.1 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 1.2 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 1.3 knowledge check passed - [ ] Course 1.4 knowledge check passed - [ ] RSA Cryptosys…

after L9 locked

10 lessons. Read in order; spiral back when you need to. By the end you'll have used the core ideas twice — once on the abstract, once on something you'll meet at work next week.