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Day One - Start Here If You're New

You've never opened a terminal. You've never used git. You don't know what an API is. Everyone around you talks about "the cloud" and "AI" and you nod along.

This is for you.

What this section is

Eleven pages, in order. Each is a 5-15 minute read. By the end, you'll know enough to follow conversations and tutorials that currently feel like another language.

This isn't cloud or AI yet. This is the bedrock under both. Skip this and the rest of the repo will feel harder than it should.

Suggested order

Foundations (read first)

  1. Terminal basics - opening a terminal, running commands, navigating files. (15 min)
  2. Git basics - what version control is, what GitHub is, the 5 commands you actually use. (15 min)
  3. HTTP and APIs - how computers talk to each other, what an API actually is. (10 min)
  4. What is a server? - what's "running" when something is "running on a server." (10 min)

Daily-use additions (read in any order)

  1. SSH basics - logging into remote servers; key-based auth; the host-key prompt. (5 min)
  2. Package managers - apt / brew / npm / pip - what they share. (5 min)
  3. Networking troubleshooting - dig, ping, traceroute, curl - the diagnostic ladder. (5 min)
  4. What is an API call? - method + URL + headers + body, status codes. (5 min)
  5. File permissions - what rw-r--r-- means, and why not to run chmod 777. (8 min)
  6. JSON and YAML - the two formats every config file uses, and their gotchas. (7 min)
  7. Reading error messages - extracting the answer that is usually already in the error. (7 min)

After these you have enough vocabulary to start Cloud from Scratch or AI from Scratch without getting blocked every other paragraph.

What you do NOT need to know yet

  • Any specific cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
  • Any programming language
  • Any specific AI tool
  • What "DevOps" or "Kubernetes" mean

We'll get to those. Don't skip ahead.

What you DO need

  • A computer (Mac, Linux, or Windows - Windows users: install WSL first, it makes everything easier).
  • A text editor. VS Code is free and fine.
  • Patience. The terminal is going to feel weird for a few hours. That's normal.

A note on how to read these pages

Don't memorize. Don't take notes the first time through. Just read. The point is to make these things feel familiar, not to master them.

You'll come back when you actually need each piece. By then you'll have context that makes it stick.

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