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⬢ FIELD

Systems

The floor AI runs on: operating systems, networks, databases, language runtimes, security and cloud — understood from their mechanisms.

0chapters 22Foundations 2Paper walkthroughs 0Interactive

Work through a volume in order: textbook → foundations → papers → lab.

② Foundations

Articles that assume nothing and build the ideas of the field, in order.

OS & Runtime

Processes, memory, containers — the ground programs stand on

  1. Processes and Memory from Scratch — What Is the OS Actually Protecting? FREE
  2. Containers from Scratch — What namespaces and cgroups Actually Are ★ MEMBER
  3. File Systems from Scratch — What Does "Saved" Actually Guarantee? ★ MEMBER

Networking

TCP/QUIC, DNS, CDN — how data actually arrives

  1. From TCP to QUIC — Reinventing Reliable Communication FREE
  2. DNS and CDNs — What Happens Between Enter and Pixels ★ MEMBER
  3. HTTP/1.1 → 2 → 3 — The Road to Multiplexing ★ MEMBER

Databases

Internals, transactions, distribution — why data survives

  1. Database Internals — What Happens Behind a Single Line of SQL FREE
  2. Transactions and ACID — Concurrency Hell and the Isolation Levels ★ MEMBER

Compilers & Runtimes

Compilers, JITs, GC — why code runs fast

  1. Compilers From Scratch — How Source Becomes Machine Code FREE
  2. JIT and GC — Getting Faster While Running, Cleaning Up While Running ★ MEMBER
  3. Why Python Is Slow — Said Precisely ★ MEMBER

Security

Crypto, auth, LLM attacks — designing for defence

  1. Cryptography from Scratch — Symmetric Keys, Public Keys, and Hashes FREE
  2. TLS from Scratch — Key Exchange and Certificates ★ MEMBER
  3. Authentication and Authorization — From Passwords to OAuth and Passkeys ★ MEMBER

Cloud & Ops

Serverless, cost, observability — shipping without breaking

  1. Serverless and Cost Design — Cloud That Won't Bankrupt You FREE
  2. Observability — Logs, Metrics, and Traces in Practice ★ MEMBER
  3. The Economics of GPU Cloud — Rent, Buy, or Commit ★ MEMBER

Engineering Process

Requirements, design, estimation — the upstream where projects are won or lost

  1. Upstream Engineering from Scratch — Why Projects Are Won or Lost at Requirements FREE
  2. The Craft of Requirements — Why "We Built Exactly What They Asked For" Fails ★ MEMBER
  3. Architecture Decisions — Telling Apart What You Can Undo From What You Cannot ★ MEMBER
  4. Estimation and Scope — The Cone of Uncertainty and How to Negotiate ★ MEMBER
  5. Upstream Work in the AI Era — When Code Gets Cheap, What Gets Valuable? ★ MEMBER

③ Paper walkthroughs

Written from the papers themselves. Every piece links the paper page and its PDF.

  1. Distributed Databases — CAP, Replication and Consensus ★ MEMBER "USENIX ATC 2014
  2. LLM Security — Prompt Injection and How to Actually Defend Against It ★ MEMBER arXiv:2302.12173