Great (free!) computer science and programming explainers

resources.markdown

Algorithms

• Visualize sorting algorithms
• How hash tables/dictionaries work

APIs

• REST vs GraphQL

Authentication and Single Sign On

• OAuth
• JSON Web Tokens
• OAuth vs JWT
• SAML (similar to JWT, but XML based instead of JSON based). Also, the SAML specification describes both the token (the XML document) format, and the protocol for issuing tokens. JWT only describes the token format and leaves the mechanism for using those tokens up to the developer. Eg, you can use JWTs with the OAuth2 protocol.

Blockchain and Bitcoin

• Why Blockhain isn't better than existing solutions to most problems
• How Bitcoin works under the hood
• Blockchain 101

Build Your Own [Insert Name of Technology Here]

• Awesome GitHub repo

Cryptography

• Brit Cruise's amazing video series on RSA and public key cryptography

Design Patterns

• Are small methods good?

Distributed Systems & Peer-To-Peer

• Some pros and cons of a P2P web

Favicons

• Real Favicon Generator makes you favicons that work across all platforms. It's amazing.

Fun

• Parsing HTML with RegExps... classic

Git

• Useful examples of how to use git grep. Eg, grepping by commit, branch, or within your uncommited changes.
• Shell command to find the 10 biggest files in a git repo: git ls-tree -r -l --abbrev --full-name HEAD | sort -n -r -k 4 | head -n 10

Hardware

• Code by Charles Petzold fanatastic intro to computer hardware
• Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi

JavaScript

• Tom Dale on how JS frameworks are evolving to cater to mobile

Linux

• YouTube series on Linux and sysadmin fundamentals

Machine Learning

• The greatest explanation of backpropagation ever

Network Protocols

• Gary Bernhardt does it again

Strings

• Understanding and working with UTF8 and Unicode, part 1 and part 2. The code is in Elixir, but the principles are generally applicable.

• Greedy and non-greedy regexs

Time Zones

• Working with time zones in Rails

Type Systems

• Gary Bernhardt's breakdown reigns supreme

Versioning

• Speculation by Rich Hickey. Is semantic versioning stupid?