Developer Fundamentals for Builders
The CS concepts that will make you dangerous
A practical course for self-taught developers. Every lesson connects to the Laravel apps you deploy, the servers you manage, and the code you ship.
How Your Stack Actually Works
3 lessons · 36 min
The HTTP Request Lifecycle
Follow a request from browser to server and back: DNS resolution, TCP handshakes, TLS encryption, HTTP verbs, and status codes.
Nginx, PHP-FPM, and OPcache
Understand how Nginx routes requests to PHP-FPM worker processes, and why OPcache means your deployments sometimes serve stale code.
Laravel's Bootstrap Process
Understand what happens inside Laravel from the moment index.php executes to the moment your controller returns a response.
Database Mastery Beyond Migrations
3 lessons · 38 min
How Databases Actually Work
Understand B-trees, index lookups vs full table scans, the query planner, and how to read EXPLAIN output.
Indexing Strategy and Query Optimization
Learn practical indexing strategies, composite index design, the N+1 problem, and eager loading patterns.
Schema Design and Data Modeling
Learn normalization, denormalization, polymorphic relationships, and migration discipline for production applications.
PHP and Object-Oriented Programming
3 lessons · 37 min
PHP Beyond the Basics
Master type declarations, closures, array functions, null coalescing, and PHP 8.x features you should be using daily.
OOP Concepts in Laravel
Understand the object-oriented programming concepts that Laravel uses everywhere: interfaces, traits, abstract classes, and the service container.
Design Patterns in the Wild
Recognize the Facade, Observer, Strategy, and Builder patterns as they appear throughout Laravel.
Security for Web Developers
3 lessons · 36 min
How Web Attacks Work
Understand the three most common web attacks — SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and Cross-Site Request Forgery — and why Laravel's protections exist.
Authentication and Authorization
Understand how password hashing works, how sessions maintain login state, and how Laravel's Gates and Policies control what users can do.
Environment Security and Deployment Safety
Learn .env management, secret handling, HTTPS enforcement, and production hardening for Laravel applications.
Git and Professional Development Workflow
3 lessons · 37 min
How Git Actually Works
Understand Git's internal model: commits as snapshots, the working directory/staging area/repository, branches as pointers, and the reflog safety net.
Branching, Merging, and Collaboration
Learn feature branch workflows, the difference between merge and rebase, conflict resolution, and pull request practices.
Git Power Tools
Master advanced Git commands: bisect for finding bugs, cherry-pick for moving commits, reset for rewriting history, and gitignore patterns.
JavaScript, APIs, and the Frontend
3 lessons · 41 min
JavaScript Fundamentals for Backend Developers
Understand JavaScript from a backend developer's perspective: the event loop, DOM manipulation, promises, async/await, and modern ES6+ syntax.
Building with Fetch and REST APIs
Learn REST API design principles, how to build API endpoints in Laravel, and how to consume them with JavaScript's fetch() API.
Testing Your Code
Learn feature testing in Laravel, what deserves tests first, TDD basics, and how to assert API responses with confidence.