Learning journey
Most of what's here was self-taught, starting years before any of it was formally required. This page is the honest, chronological version — including the free courses, the books, the dead ends, and the two real production systems that everything since has been building toward.
Started with the fundamentals of computer science independently, working through a book on computer fundamentals by an Indian author covering core hardware and computing concepts — well before any formal coursework touched the subject.
Learned C++ properly from C++ How to Program by Deitel — the book that built the underlying programming discipline everything after this leaned on, including how quickly PHP was picked up later.
Picked up HTML, CSS, and general web fundamentals as a natural next step after C++, before any structured course covered the same ground.
Studied the basics of programming in assembly language independently — closer-to-the-metal exposure that most self-taught web developers skip entirely.
Took CS50 online in full, twice, entirely for free via YouTube — no certificate, no institutional credit, just doing the actual work both times to make sure the fundamentals actually stuck.
Took CS75 (Malan's web course) online, which is where PHP clicked. The C++ background made PHP feel immediately familiar, and this course is the direct root of the eventual move into Laravel.
Learned SQL through CS50's coverage, then went deeper with a book borrowed from a local library, independent of any course.
Went straight to the PHP documentation as the primary source — the C++ background made the language easy to pick up quickly and correctly from primary docs rather than tutorials.
Learned Laravel fundamentals through intermediate-level concepts via Laracasts — the foundation that both Huzaifa Portal and the pSEO Engine were later built on.
Learned Python and worked through the basics of a few ML algorithms plus supporting theory — not a specialization, but enough to understand the landscape and reason about it.
Spent focused time — a few days each in some cases — understanding the core mechanics of frameworks outside the PHP ecosystem: what ASP.NET actually is and how it's structured, how React's core rendering model works, and others, to be genuinely framework-literate rather than single-stack.
Learned JavaScript to a working level alongside everything else — honestly not at mastery yet, which is part of why the current full-stack track exists.
Covered databases comprehensively in the formal curriculum — this overlapped with and reinforced the self-taught SQL work from Phase 2.
Formal coverage of SDLC models and process — the theoretical scaffolding around the practical project work already underway independently.
Formal hardware coverage — largely reinforcing ground already covered independently back in Grade 9 through the computer fundamentals book.
Designed and built a full student management system in Laravel, deployed to a self-managed Hetzner VPS, for a real English-learning business. This is a live, private client system — not a tutorial project.
Built an automated system generating local-service pages per city at scale. Never published due to feasibility constraints on generated-page quality — will ship once thoroughly tested rather than rushed out.
Started a self-directed, multi-course DevOps curriculum immediately after graduating, working with an AI instructor to structure and drill it. Course 1 covered real incident response, history rewriting, and recovery drills on a dedicated project.
Built a full CI/CD mental model — test matrices, secrets management, Docker build pipelines, and release engineering with SemVer and changelog automation — against a real Flask project built specifically to exercise it.
Went from kernel-level isolation primitives (namespaces, cgroups, built a bridge network by hand) up through a full five-service production-grade Docker Compose system, complete with hardening, healthchecks, and CI integration.
Course 4 (Kubernetes) is deliberately paused to complete a full separate full-stack track first: JS/TS fundamentals, raw SQL before Prisma, Node/Express/Redis/queues, React, Next.js, and NestJS — for breadth across both full-stack and DevOps before returning to orchestration.