You know your domain. You can run simulations, write scripts, crunch data. But the moment someone says “just SSH into the cluster and run it there” or “push it to the repo,” things get uncomfortable. This course fixes that.
This is not a course for people who want to become sysadmins. It’s for scientists, engineers, and technical people who need to stop being afraid of the terminal and start working the way modern tech actually works — reproducibly, collaboratively, and without emailing ZIP files.
AI writes a lot of code now. That’s fine. But AI output still has to run somewhere, be debugged somewhere, and live in an environment that works. These skills are what let you control that environment.
What you’ll learn
- Navigate and operate Linux/macOS terminals with confidence
- Understand the filesystem, permissions, and how processes work
- Process text files, logs, and configs from the command line
- Manage dependencies without breaking your system
- Use Git — including worktrees — for solo and team workflows
- Connect to remote machines, clusters, and cloud via SSH
- Package your environment in Docker so it works everywhere
- Build and automate a full engineering dev environment from scratch
Prerequisites
- A computer you can install software on (Windows, Mac, or Linux)
- Windows users: you will install WSL2 in Lesson 1 — no prep needed
- No prior Linux or terminal experience required
Who is this for?
Mechanical, civil, electrical, and chemical engineers. Physicists, biologists, data scientists. Anyone who does serious technical work on a computer but learned in a GUI-first world (MATLAB, Excel, Jupyter, Windows). If you’ve ever copy-pasted a terminal command without knowing what it did — this course is for you.