Lesson 01 The IT Map
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Homework — The IT Map

Estimated time: ~45 min · No code required

Three short tool-tour exercises. Goal: get your hands on the actual surfaces IT people use every day — not to learn them deeply yet, but to confirm they exist and to start recognising the vocabulary from this lesson in the wild. Take screenshots and jot a few notes as you go — future lessons will keep referring back to what you saw here.

How to do these

Open each linked site in a new tab. No installs, no accounts (except as explicitly called out), no money. If a step asks for something you can't find in 30 seconds, write down "couldn't find <thing>" and move on — that's a perfectly valid observation about modern UIs.

Task 1 — Map yourself onto the seven neighborhoods

From the theory page, list the seven neighborhoods of IT in your own notes: Frontend, Backend & APIs, Databases & Data, Networking & The Internet, DevOps & Cloud, Security, AI / ML.

Now, in one sentence each:

  1. Pick the neighborhood you already use most day-to-day and write one sentence (e.g., "I use Frontend every day as a Notion user." or "I use Databases every time I run a report in our CRM.").
  2. Pick the two neighborhoods you most want to understand by the end of this 12-lesson course, and write one sentence each on why — what conversation at work or what question in life you'd be able to engage with if you understood them.

✓ Self-check: you can name all 7 neighborhoods from memory (close this page and try); for at least 3 of them, you've named one specific tool, app, or person at work that lives in that neighborhood.

Task 2 — Tool tour: open GitHub

Open github.com. Don't sign up — you don't need an account for this.

  1. In the search box at the top, type react and press Enter. Open the top result (it should be facebook/react).
  2. On the repo page, find and write down:
    • how many stars the project has (top-right area);
    • roughly how many contributors (look in the right sidebar, "Contributors" section);
    • when the last commit was (just above the file list — "latest commit" with a relative timestamp).
  3. Scroll down to the README (the long block of text below the file list). Read the first 2 paragraphs.
  4. Click the Issues tab. Notice the count and skim the titles of the top 3 open issues. (You don't need to understand them — just notice they exist.)

✓ Self-check: you can name 3 things you saw on the repo page (e.g., "stars badge", "README", "Issues tab", "file tree", "branch selector"); you can write one sentence about what the project does in your own words; you have a rough sense of whether this project is actively maintained based on the last-commit date.

Task 3 — Tool tour: read a real job listing

Open linkedin.com/jobs or indeed.com. Search for "Software Engineer" (or, if you prefer, "Data Engineer", "DevOps Engineer", or "Security Engineer" — any of the role names from the theory page).

  1. Pick one listing from a company you've heard of.
  2. Scroll to the Requirements (or "Qualifications" / "What you'll need") section.
  3. Highlight (or copy into your notes) 5 technologies or tools mentioned — e.g., Python, AWS, React, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, Terraform.
  4. For each of the 5, write one sentence answering: which neighborhood from this lesson does it belong to? (frontend / backend / database / network / DevOps / security / AI). If you don't recognise a term, write "don't know — look up in lesson XX" — that's the vocabulary the rest of this course will give you.

✓ Self-check: you've identified 5 specific technologies from a real job posting; for at least 3 of them, you can confidently say which neighborhood they live in; you have a written list of the unfamiliar terms to revisit as the course progresses.

What "done" looks like

You finish this homework when you have, in your notes:

That's it — you've now seen the two surfaces (GitHub + a real job description) you'll keep bumping into for the rest of this course, and you've started building your own internal map of the IT city.