Reading Program
Foundations
Weeks 1 to 6. How the web works, how to debug, and the Go style every later level assumes.
This page covers Level 0 and the start of Level 1, weeks 1 to 6. Read it before any deep systems material. Every later essay assumes this vocabulary.
The twelve canonical posts
Read these specific posts, in this order.
| # | When | Post | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | W1 | What happens when you type a URL into your browser? | The 90-second interview answer in full detail: DNS, TCP, TLS, HTTP, render. Drill it against the week 3 networks questions. |
| 2 | W1 | Julia Evans: a debugging manifesto | Debugging is a skill, not luck. This is the mindset for every future incident. |
| 3 | W2 | Julia Evans: Linux debugging tools I love | A preview of strace and tcpdump. You need them on the VPS from week 14. |
| 4 | W2 | Effective Go | The style and idiom doc for everything you ship in Go. |
| 5 | W2 | Go Proverbs (Rob Pike) | 19 lines of design philosophy. Each one pays rent inside Ledgerline and Logsmith. |
| 6 | W3 | Google engineering practices: code review standard | Trains the reviewer eye you use on your own PRs and on open source repos. |
| 7 | W3 | Tech Interview Handbook: coding interview study plan | An orienting map. Pairs with the A2Z sheet order. |
| 8 | W4 | 16 DSA patterns every beginner should know | The phase A boundary read. Gives you the pattern words before the binary search and linked list weeks. |
| 9 | W4 | Interview Cake: full table of contents | A topic-based quick reference. Skim it, do not binge it. |
| 10 | W5 | NeetCode roadmap | Shows how NeetCode and Blind 75 relate to your sheet, which stops a second curriculum from creeping in. |
| 11 | W5 | Dave Cheney: Practical Go | The style bar for every line of project Go from here on. |
| 12 | W6 | Sameer Ajmani: Advanced Go Concurrency Patterns | Watch before the week 6 concurrency drills. The worker pool is modeled on this talk. |
Rotating blogs
These become your 3 to 4 days a week sources.
- Julia Evans, jvns.ca: debugging, Linux internals, and things nobody explains properly. Twice a week in weeks 1 to 6, then weekly forever.
- Dan Luu, danluu.com: contrarian essays backed by numbers. Start with Some programming blogs to consider reading on a collection day. It is a list of more blogs like his.
- The Go Blog: release philosophy and language design in the core team's own words. Weekly in weeks 2 to 13.
- Brendan Gregg, brendangregg.com: performance engineering, FlameGraphs, the USE method. Rotating from week 5, then core during Shiplane.
Placement rule
Level 0 items are front-loaded into weeks 1 to 6, then done. If foundations spill into week 7 or later, cut them. Do not delay them. The payments and systems levels are tied to ships in the plan overview, and those cannot slip.
Common mistakes
- Reading the twelve posts out of order, then forgetting the vocabulary by week 3.
- Treating rotating blogs as a daily quota. Choose a useful post when it answers a current question.
- Adding more foundation reading when the core topics are clear. Return to the project work and interview practice.