Books and Videos for Self-taught Programmers
Don't have a degree and feel like you should? Hey me too! Then again I love teaching myself things and sharing with people and I wouldn't have it any other way. That's what I do here.
Don't Have a CS Degree?
Hey, neither do I! So I made a free 52-page PDF that describes the core CS concepts every developer should know.
Best Selling Books
I enjoy writing a lot, and I really enjoy pushing the boundaries of "the modern coding book". I hate dry walls of text with meaningless "foo bar" demos. I prefer having fun, focusing on real scenarios.
I spent years teaching myself the subjects that go into a Computer Science degree: Computation, Complexity Theory, Encryption, Blockchain, Algorithms and Data Structures, Lambda Calculus and more. I wrote down what I learned and decided to share.
Learn PostgreSQL the way the pros do: on the job and under pressure. You'll assume the role of interim DBA at aerospace startup Red:4, exploring real data from the Cassini mission to Saturn! We start slowly with the basics but soon enough you'll be awash in the most amazing data of our lifetime.
Hi, I'm Rob
I'm Rob Conery, author of The Imposter's Handbook, A Curious Moon and co-founder of Tekpub.com, one of the very first online video learning sites for developers. I am the creator and co-host of This Developer's Life with Scott Hanselman and I've spun up quite a few open source projects.
I'm an explorer - not an expert. I love digging into concepts and ideas and then sharing what I've learned - making videos and helping people. So I decided to create a book and some videos on what I like to call The Essentials, that's where you are right now.
I’ve been building software for over 25 years without a CS degree. I’ve created applications for huge corporations including Ameritech and Southwest Bell. I’ve contracted to Visa, Google, Starbucks and PayPal - creating their very first developer portal back in 2005. I wrote an open source e-commerce site for Microsoft that was demoed on stage by Steve Ballmer at Tech Ed, Microsoft’s biggest developer conference (now //Build).
I’m a relentless learner and sometimes annoyingly curious!
