Concept catalog
27 concepts, indexed
The full taxonomy of programming knowledge this platform claims to teach. Each concept points to the tutorials that practice it.
Languages
10JavaScript
foundational · js
The language of the web. Dynamic, prototype-based, single-threaded with an event loop.
Variables
2foundational · js/variables
Named references to values. `let` for mutables, `const` for one-time bindings; `var` exists for legacy code.
Primitive types
1foundational · js/primitive-types
string, number, boolean, null, undefined, symbol, bigint. Compared by value, immutable.
Operators
1foundational · js/operators
Symbols that combine values. Arithmetic, comparison, logical, ternary — the verbs of the language.
Conditionals
1foundational · js/conditionals
`if`, `else`, `switch`, and the ternary. Branching control flow on a boolean test.
Functions
2foundational · js/functions
Reusable units of behavior. Take inputs, return outputs. The fundamental unit of JS abstraction.
CSS
2foundational · css
The language that styles the web — selectors, the box model, layout, and color.
The box model
4foundational · css/box-model
Every element is a box: content, padding, border, margin. Master this and layout stops being mysterious.
Flexbox
foundational · css/flexbox
One-dimensional layout — distribute space along a row or column with gap, justify, and align.
Selectors
1intermediate · css/selectors
How you target elements — combinators, pseudo-classes, :is/:where/:has, and specificity.
Data structures
2Paradigms
4The DOM
5foundational · js/dom
The browser's tree of nodes representing the current page. The bridge between JS and what the user sees.
Events
5foundational · js/events
Notifications that something happened — a click, a key press, a network response. Programs subscribe with listeners.
Closures
intermediate · js/closures
A function carries its lexical scope with it. Lets you build factories, currying, and stateful callbacks.
Async / await
2intermediate · js/async
Sugar over promises. Reads like synchronous code, runs without blocking the event loop.
Systems
3Authentication
1intermediate · auth
Proving who someone is. Distinct from authorization, which is what they can do.
Password hashing
1intermediate · auth/password-hashing
Storing a one-way transform of a password rather than the password itself. bcrypt, argon2, scrypt — never SHA, never MD5.
Sessions
intermediate · auth/sessions
A server-side or signed-token record that links a request to a logged-in user.
AI & ML
8Prompt design
8foundational · ai/prompting
Writing inputs that lead a language model to do the work you actually want. The skill that replaces "Google it" in the AI era.
Context windows
foundational · ai/context-window
How much text a model can keep in mind at once. Bigger isn't always better — relevant beats abundant.
Tool use
intermediate · ai/tool-use
Letting a model call external functions — file reads, database queries, API calls — to take action, not just answer.
Architecture-first AI
2intermediate · ai/architecture
Deciding the shape of the system — boundaries, data flow, contracts — before asking a model to fill it in. The senior skill AI makes more valuable, not less.
Spec-driven prompting
1intermediate · ai/spec-driven
Writing the contract — inputs, outputs, edge cases, constraints — so the model has a target precise enough to hit. Vague in, vague out.
Task decomposition
1intermediate · ai/task-decomposition
Cutting a feature into agent-sized units small enough to review and verify in a single pass. The unit of work in AI-augmented development.
Reviewing AI code
2intermediate · ai/code-review
Reading generated code adversarially for the failures models reliably make — wrong assumptions, missing edge cases, plausible-but-wrong APIs.
Agent orchestration
1advanced · ai/orchestration
Running one or more coding agents across a codebase while keeping it coherent — context, guardrails, and a verification loop that catches drift.