The CS theory behind the production code you write.
A Material for MkDocs site that bridges the gap between practical engineering experience and formal Computer Science theory. This site serves as a teaching tool, portfolio, and personal reference for engineers filling CS knowledge gaps.
🌐 Live Site: cs.bradpenney.io
The Working Engineer
This site is designed for back-end engineers, platform engineers, and software developers who:
- Write production code daily (Python, Go, Java, etc.)
- Have real-world experience shipping features and debugging issues
- Lack formal CS training or want to refresh their theoretical foundations
- Want to understand the why behind the tools they use
What This Is NOT:
- A traditional CS textbook
- "Hello World" programming tutorials
- Academic theory disconnected from practice
Ground Theory in Practice
Every article starts with real-world engineering experience—debugging a stack trace, optimizing a database query, or designing an API—before introducing the underlying CS theory.
- Start with Experience: We open with scenarios you've encountered in production.
- Bridge the Gap: You know how it works practically; we teach why it works theoretically.
- Make it Relevant: We explain why understanding the theory makes you a better engineer.
The content is organized into three progressive tiers:
- 📦 Essentials: Core concepts that underpin every line of code (Big-O, Data Structures, Recursion).
- ⚡ Efficiency: Algorithms, complexity analysis, and system performance.
- 🎯 Mastery: Advanced topics, formal languages, compilation, and modern computing frontiers.
This site is currently under active development. Articles are being written, reviewed, and published incrementally.
Process:
- Content is drafted in private branches.
- Articles undergo a rigorous quality review against the standards in
CLAUDE.md. - Only vetted, high-quality content appears in the navigation.
- Material for MkDocs: Documentation framework
- Python 3.11+: Runtime environment
- Poetry: Dependency management
- Mermaid: Diagrams and visualizations
- Python 3.11+
- Poetry
# Install dependencies
poetry install
# Serve locally (http://localhost:8000)
poetry run mkdocs serve
# Build static site
poetry run mkdocs build --strictSee CLAUDE.md for comprehensive writing guidelines, including:
- Persona details and tone
- Multi-language code example requirements
- SEO and publication checklist
- Quality standards
Brad Penney - bradpenney.io