Cure your imposter syndrome

Let’s build your career’s foundations.

For a lot of developers, the number of things to learn can feel never-ending. Particularly so if, like me, you are self-taught.

We’re constantly keeping up with new technologies, tools and frameworks, but we also need to find time to learn all that foundational computer science knowledge. It’s awkward when colleagues casually refer to some concept we’ve never even heard of.

Even worse is when we don’t learn about an important concept until it’s too late. I didn’t learn what a file handle was until I wrote a logging utility that used them all up and brought down a system!

All of this leads to imposter syndrome: the gnawing fear that any day now our colleagues will realise we don’t have a clue what’s going on. I firmly believe that imposter syndrome is caused by not knowing what you don’t know. The ground underneath us feels unsteady because there are so many unknowns lurking there.

Imagine having a solid grasp of computer science. You’d confidently use all those terms your colleagues use. You’d fearlessly take on new tasks. You’d understand your work on a deeper level and spot opportunities to apply ideas and innovate.

I did it the hard way: spending over five years reading huge textbooks and watching hours of lectures, always searching for the most valuable details in a sea of information. Let me show you an easier way. I’ve spent almost two years condensing all of that reading, studying and work experience into…

The knowledge you need to succeed.

The Computer Science Book is not like other textbooks. It’s a highly selective, single-volume introduction to the whole of computer science.

I’m not promising comprehensiveness. I’m promising a complete, practical introduction to the knowledge you need to be a great programmer.

Before adding even the tiniest thing I challenged myself: “do people need to know this?”. Only the essential made the cut. The result is ten concise chapters covering:

• Computer architecture - how computers actually work
• Operating systems - process management, memory, and file systems
• Algorithms and data structures - the building blocks of efficient code
• Computer networking - how data flows across the internet
• Databases - storage, indexing, and query optimization
• Concurrent programming - threads, locks, and parallel processing
• Theory of computation - what’s computable and what’s not
• Programming languages - how languages work and evolve
• Compilers and interpreters - from source code to execution
• Distributed systems - building scalable, reliable applications

Each chapter functions both as a standalone introduction and a launch pad for further, independent study. As a programmer you will deal with these topics literally every single day.