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Stage One

Tip

Don't think you can skip this stage - you can't. Understanding these fundamentals will help differentiate you between someone who is a technician (maintainer) and an engineer (maintainer, builder, architect, ...)

This stage is about fundamentals, and by the time you're done learning them you'll be in a position to build simple, non-redundant architectures in AWS. The solution we will build is based on WordPress, but before you can build a WordPress solution you have to understand the basics of how a computer works, what a CPU (core) is, what RAM is doing, how data is transmitted over a network, and more, before it'll make sense.

These are critical topics. You must learn them because they are, to be brutally honest, what makes the difference between a "code monkey" and an engineer. That seems harsh, and perhaps it is - everyone chips into society in their own way and everyone deserves respect for their contibutions - but we're here to make you into an engineer. Engineers build things; engineers can debug things because they can decompose problems down to their base elements and then build it again until they find the problem; engineers... engineer. They're not (just) technicians.

So take your time with this stage and its topics. Go easy on yourself if you don't understand something and remember: ask questions as and when you need to. If it helps, remember this one simple tip...

Tip

If you encounter something you don't understand, try your best to get your mind around it for one hour by setting a timer. If you're still stuck when the timer expires, then ask your mentor directly or the UA community for a hint, then try again for another hour. Finally, if after two hours you've not resolved your problem, reach out for the answer. This no shame it not understanding something. No one person has ever been born who just understood everything - everyone has to learn from first principles; on the shoulders of others.

Architect

This is the target architecture we will implement by the time we reach the end of this stage:

Stage One

Stage One ArchitectureStage One Architecture
Stage One Architecture

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Topics

  1. Hardware Basics
  2. Operating Systems
  3. Networking (Basics)
  4. Systems Administration (Linux)
  5. Databases (MySQL)
  6. Cloud Computing

Next

Let's learn about the hardware inside of your system, remote servers, and more.