Stage 2 of 7 · 9 lessons · ~4 weeks

Technical literacy

How software is built, how the web and APIs work, and enough Git, JSON and SQL to read what engineers produce. You will not become an engineer, but you will stop being lost in technical conversations.

Start: How software is built: the lifecycle

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Do this

Call a public API in Postman, read the JSON response and note what each field means.
Trigger a 401 and a 404 on purpose and write down what they mean.
Complete a beginner Git course and open a pull request on a practice repository.
Write five SQL queries on a sample dataset, including a GROUP BY and a JOIN.
Read one real pull request in an open source project and summarise the change in two sentences.
Draw how a product you use works, from the app to the server to the database.

Start with· follow one of these

VideoFree
Crash Course Computer Science
CrashCourse · Beginner
Short free videos on how computers, networks and software work, pitched at beginners
CourseFree
Select Star SQL
Zi Chong Kao · Beginner
A free interactive SQL tutorial on real data, enough for product and docs analytics

Practise

Postman
Make real API calls and read responses without writing code
GitHub Skills: Introduction to GitHub
Free hands-on course: branches, commits and your first pull request

Keep handy

MDN: HTTP
Clear reference for HTTP methods, headers and status codes
Learn OpenAPI
See how an API is described formally, which all three roles meet at work

Also worth your time

CS50: Introduction to Computer ScienceGo deeper
If you want real programming foundations, the best free course to take

Before moving on: A short technical literacy notebook: five real API calls made in Postman with notes on each response, three SQL queries on a sample dataset, one pull request opened on a practice repository, and a one-page explanation of how a product you use works from client to server.

Tauseef's advice

Engineers quickly notice whether you have done the basics yourself. Make real API calls, open a real pull request and write a few queries. You will ask better questions within weeks, and that is what earns trust.