There is a popular way to teach computer science today. Skip the “boring” parts: Theory of Computation, Compilers, Computer Architecture. Teach React in week three. Print a big number. Move on.
We think that’s exactly backwards. Especially now.
The half-life of a framework
Every framework you learn has an expiry date. The tool that was everywhere five years ago is a migration guide today. If your education is a list of frameworks, it starts losing value the day you graduate.
Fundamentals work the other way. Once you understand how a scheduler decides what runs next, how a compiler turns text into instructions, or how a network recovers from a lost packet, every new tool becomes something you can reason about instead of something you have to memorise.
Why this matters more with AI
AI can now write the React component in four seconds. What it cannot do is decide what the system should be: where the boundaries go, what happens under load, how it fails, what it costs.
The engineer who gets paid is the one who understands the layers underneath well enough to specify the system precisely, and to notice when the generated code is subtly wrong.
How we teach it
Trevor’s curriculum is organised in five bands: Foundation, Core CS, Systems, AI/ML and Advanced. Each band is taught by building:
- You learn operating systems by building myOS, your own kernel and scheduler.
- You learn networks by writing a TCP stack, not by drawing boxes.
- You learn compilers by building a compiler for a subset of C, end to end.
The frameworks still show up. They just show up after you understand what they are abstracting, which is when they are easiest to learn and quickest to replace.
Frameworks are what you use. Fundamentals are what you are.
Want to see the full four years? Explore the curriculum.
