IT Knowledge
Why You Stay Logged In — Cookies, Sessions, and Tokens
This post explains, without any code, why you stay logged in even as you move from page to page. Starting from the fact that the web doesn't remember you by default, it unpacks what cookies, sessions, and tokens each are.
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #5: Git and Version Control — How Many People Edit One Codebase
This post explains, without any code, what developers mean by commit, push, merge, and PR. It closes the series by unpacking Git and version control - the way many people edit the same code without losing track of versions - at a non-developer's level.
Why Simple-Looking Features Take So Long — Development Estimates and Technical Debt
This post answers the question, "It's just adding one button, so why does it take two weeks?" Without any code, it unpacks the work hidden behind a small visible change, and what technical debt is and how it eats into development speed.
What Do Developers Actually Do — A Map of Development Roles
We call them all "developers," but front-end, back-end, DevOps, data, and AI engineers do completely different work. This post maps out what each role actually does, for people weighing a career and for people who work alongside developers.
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #4: Bugs, Hotfixes, and Rollbacks — How Developers Respond to Incidents
This post explains what developers mean by bug, hotfix, and rollback when something breaks - without any code. It walks through how a dev team responds when a problem hits, and what changes once a non-developer understands that flow.
A History of Computer Viruses and Ransomware
Traces how malware evolved from pranks into organized crime, following a chronological path from the first self-replicating program in 1971 to the WannaCry ransomware outbreak in 2017.
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #3: Servers, the Cloud, and Deployment
This post explains what developers mean when they say "the server is down," "we're deploying right now," or "it's live in production" - without any code. It walks non-developers through where the backend actually runs, and what servers, the cloud, and deployment really are.
The Cloud Is Just Renting Someone Else's Computer
This post defines the cloud in plain terms anyone can follow, explains why you rent servers instead of buying them, and shows how that connects to services like AWS.
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #2: What Is an API? — The Promise That Lets Services Talk to Each Other
This post explains APIs, a term developers use constantly, without any code. It walks through how requests and responses follow a fixed format, and how external APIs like maps and payments work.
How Open Source Changed the World
Open source is software that publishes its source code so anyone can read it, modify it, and redistribute it. This article explains in plain terms how a movement that began with GNU and Linux grew into the foundation of all modern IT.
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #1: What Is a Website Made Of? — Frontend, Backend, and Database
The three things planners, designers, and marketers should learn first when working with developers. This post explains, without any code, how the websites and apps we use every day are split into three layers: frontend, backend, and database.
How Computers Represent Everything in 0s and 1s
An intuitive explanation of how computers ultimately handle text, numbers, images, and sound as nothing but 0s and 1s, written so that non-programmers can follow along.