Over the last ~year building TWSE, it was pretty tricky setting up the correct feedback systems & translating material from the 1-on-1 mentorship to a self-paced, online platform.

Many of the key learnings from the initial launch can be found in the 20+ Q&As we've done (you have access to all of these). 

We've really got the ball rolling now. 

The latest version features entire modules containing everything up to & including The Best Practice-First phase of craftship.

This is perhaps the most substantial shift for most developers to make.

In involves the shift from Code-First (working inside-out, from the code towards the solution) to learning how to use Abstraction, Contracts & Testing Strategies to solve problems from the outside-in.

As you'll soon learn — just like we have yin & yang, eastern & western, object-oriented & functional — great design will involve a careful mixture of the two: upfront & emergent approaches.

You must know how to write the test first, and know how to deal with no existing tests.

Powerful stuff. I'm excited for you to join the other students & hear your feedback.

This is a self-guided online interactive video & text course. We're still converging on the final material, but it's estimated to take you ~ 8-12 weeks to complete.

This is not like any other programming course.

It's a first-principle-focused design course.

It is about skills > tools, technologies, or popular topics.

Instead of teaching you about a particular type of messaging technology in depth, you'll build a strong foundation upon which you'll be able to think critically and solve challenges yourself.

That’s what you’ll be expected to do in the real world anyway.

Tools & libraries come and go.

Therefore, it’s a first principles & best practices-based course.

Yes, we will cover parts of DDD, TDD, BDD, and so on — but it’s about the fundamental first principles, and the 80-20 of those topics.

What makes this course unique is the set of experienced I present to you at the correct time to bridge the gap on what matters faster.

You can (and should) continue to study these topics deeper on your own afterwards.

But we’re focused on getting a solid foundation down — to connect it all together and make it make sense while building the right mental models at the same time.

• This is what I’ve spent the last 4 years doing myself, and then teaching to my Software Essentialist Mentorship students.
• If you follow this path, you’ll learn the most important parts of each of these topics at a way faster rate, and you’ll be in an incredible position to go deeper into the esoterics of them later on.
• I may offer more focused chunks of this course later on down the road, where we focus on more specific chunks or use cases, and that’ll be the time for us to go exceptionally deep on some specific topic.
• This is about 20% across each that will yield the greatest results for you.

Yes, you'll be writing a lot of code.

You'll be given plenty of assignments at each distinct milestone to build out your core design, testing & architecture skills.

Each module has a number of exercises & assignments.

But perhaps most interestingly, you'll use these to practice building features towards the end in Value-First when we do:

• the Backend API project
• the Frontend project
• the Desktop application project
• the Chrome Extension project
• the Custom Integration project

These will be pre-written applications written at varying levels of cleanliness.

It’ll be up to you to take everything we’ve learned, refactor & implement new features.

Lots of code. Lots of design.

How does lifetime access sound?

No. Though, to make the content more accessible, in the future, we will split the phases out into their own products.

It’s getting split into a bunch of other projects, cleaned up & refined into the final version by the end of this year.

solidbook’s renewed scope is that it helps you gain clarity on how the big picture of software development all fits together. It gives you the starting point, making sense of what you probably should have been exposed to in school (ie: the unknown unknowns). It is what will introduce you to the world of software design, architecture & testing.

If solidbook is primarily about the what’s and why’s, this course is the step-by-step how. 

This is my 1-on-1 & group training program I offer to small groups of less than 10 students at a time (see the form here). I teach them exactly what I’m about to teach you in this online course. The only difference is the format.

Where the mentorship training was offered as live video calls w/ unlimited touch points and weekly classes & Q&As, this online course takes the self-guided + community approach.

You may still apply, but to focus on this course, the community, the final version of solidbook, I'm doing minimal 1-on-1 coaching for now.

As an Early Adopter of this program, you may end up spending some time w/ me 1-on-1 and in ad-hoc Q&As as I refine the program. Ask a ton of questions in the Discord. We'll make sure to answer 'em and fill in any important gaps with updated modules.

• solidbook is the sophia (knowledge) book which acts as a textbook, showing you the past and present of what you should know about as a software developer. Topic-focused book.
• This course is designed to help you develop phronesis (practical wisdom). We walk step-by-step through assignments, exercises, and experiences designed to help you master the 80-20 (the most important parts) of the key topics that yield the greatest results. You'll become a systems thinking software developer with consistent processes you can use to solve most any problem you encounter in a systematic way.

While TSWE is an advanced course, there is a light ramp up for those new to advanced topics like testing, design, architecture & strategy.

However, the bare minimum requirements are as follows:

• You know the basics of a language like JavaScript, TypeScript or Python (we use TypeScript in the course)
• You know how to use a frontend UI layer library like React or Vue

Lastly, ideally

• you've built a frontend application before so you have the experience.

But if not, that's OK.

In The Code-First Phase, we practice getting you up to speed by building out basic features in a frontend + backend application.

This basic practice plus the foundational Software Essentialism theory creates a really solid foundation for us to build upon.

Yes, you'll be learning how to practice systems thinking to solve virtually any problem you encounter in a systematic way.

Here's a review from a previous Software Essentialist Mentorship student.

"I would say because of a lot of the things we've run through with domain driven design/object oriented design my system design skills have improved. This was mainly apparent to me when I was practicing high level design for system design interviews and I found it easier to flesh out the general requirements, api calls, and design itself because of things we learned at the start of the program with design stories and object design."

We won't be doing any of the brutal algorithm questions that they ask in interviews or that I hated doing in university. Yes, you'll still want to practice those on your own time, but the course is more focused on the 4 pillars: architecture, design, testing, and strategy.

You will learn how to design effective abstractions, yes, but that happens naturally as we progress through the phases.

For example, in the Best Practice-First phase, you learn how to implement the simplest possible solutions guiding your code with tests.

Not fancy or exciting, I know - but it's consistent and it's reliable.

We are currently in the Early Adopter Phase. This phase involves teaching the core content of the course and using a few tools to refine it before releasing it to the rest of the world.

As of October '24, you'll join 550+ students in getting your direct questions and concerns integrated into the final version of the course through our live Q&As, the official forum (The Feedback Loop), and tons of code challenges.

As we publish the final phases of craftship, the price will change to reflect the value it offers.

Yes, 100% Satisfaction Guarantee!

If you are not completely SATISFIED and ENLIGHTENED by The Software Essentialist Program after completing the first 2 weeks of the program, then contact us within 60 Days for a full refund, no questions asked!