FDE training program / crash course library

The crash course: the best free material, in the order to take it.

431 articles, videos, courses, books and papers across seven areas, every link checked. In each area, do the Must do items first; they are short and cover each topic once. Come back to Recommended and Go deeper when a lesson or project needs more.

  1. 01Systems and networking13 must do / 54 total
  2. 02Programming17 must do / 59 total
  3. 03Databases and data17 must do / 52 total
  4. 04Cloud, DevOps and integration8 must do / 60 total
  5. 05Security and privacy14 must do / 59 total
  6. 06AI, ML and LLMs14 must do / 87 total
  7. 07FDE role and business skills13 must do / 60 total
Show:
Type:

Part of the program: Program overview / The basics / Learning path. Lengths: video lengths are exact; reading times are estimates.

Area 01 / 54 resources / must do about 1 h 58 min

Systems and networking

How computers, operating systems and the internet work: the ground every system stands on.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 13 items, about 1 h 58 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 33 items, about 35 h 31 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 8 items, about 1 h 58 min of timed material.

Area 02 / 59 resources / must do about 5 h 38 min

Programming

Python, clean object-oriented code, tests and Git: enough to build and read real tools.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 17 items, about 5 h 38 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 33 items, about 15 h 15 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 9 items.

Area 03 / 52 resources / must do about 4 h 35 min

Databases and data

SQL, data modelling, pipelines and vector search: where client data lives and how to use it.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 17 items, about 4 h 35 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 25 items, about 13 h 12 min of timed material.

  • Watch
    SQL Tutorial - Full Database Course for Beginners

    freeCodeCamp.org (YouTube) / 4 h

    One long hands-on run through creating tables, inserting data, joins and subqueries that you can follow along with.

  • Watch
    SQL Explained in 100 Seconds

    Fireship (YouTube) / 2 min

    A fast first look at what SQL is and why relational databases still run most business systems.

  • Watch
    Database Design Course - Learn how to design and plan a database for beginners

    freeCodeCamp.org (YouTube) / 8 h

    Covers entities, relationships, keys and normal forms end to end, useful when turning a client's process into tables.

  • Course
    CS50's Introduction to Databases with SQL

    Harvard CS50 / 7 lectures (weeks 0 to 6) plus problem sets

    A complete, well-paced university course from querying through design, optimizing and scaling, with graded exercises.

  • Course
    Databases: Relational Databases and SQL

    StanfordOnline (edX) / 2 weeks (per edX)

    Jennifer Widom's classic Stanford course covering the relational model and SQL in depth.

  • Course
    Intro to SQL

    Kaggle Learn

    Short hands-on lessons that run real SQL against BigQuery public datasets in the browser.

  • Course
    Pandas

    Kaggle Learn

    Bite-sized exercises on selecting, grouping and reshaping dataframes, done in browser notebooks.

  • Course
    Data Engineering Zoomcamp

    DataTalksClub (GitHub) / 9 weeks (per course page)

    A free project-based course covering ingestion, orchestration, warehousing, dbt and batch and stream processing.

  • Practice
    SQLBolt - Learn SQL

    SQLBolt

    Short interactive lessons with exercises right in the page, ideal for a first pass at SELECT through joins.

  • Practice
    SQL Tutorial (formerly Mode SQL Tutorial)

    ThoughtSpot

    An analyst-focused SQL tutorial from basic to advanced, including window functions and performance tuning.

  • Practice
    PostgreSQL Exercises

    pgexercises.com

    Graded Postgres exercises on one small schema, great for drilling joins, aggregates and recursive queries.

  • Practice
    SQLZoo

    SQLZoo

    Classic in-browser SQL drills with instant feedback, from simple selects to self joins.

  • Practice
    Select Star SQL

    Select Star SQL

    An interactive book that teaches SQL by working through one real dataset as a story.

  • Practice
    Postgres Tutorials

    Crunchy Data

    Short Postgres tutorials that run in a browser playground, no install needed.

  • Docs
    PostgreSQL Tutorial (Part I)

    PostgreSQL docs

    The official getting-started tutorial: create a database, tables, queries, joins, views and transactions.

  • Docs
    3.5. Window Functions

    PostgreSQL docs / 7 min

    A short official explanation of window functions with clear worked examples.

  • Docs
    Getting started

    pandas docs

    The official pandas intro with short tutorials on reading, filtering, plotting and combining data.

  • Docs
    Comparison with SQL

    pandas docs / 19 min

    Maps SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY and JOIN to pandas side by side, bridging the two tools.

  • Docs
    pgvector: Open-source vector similarity search for Postgres

    pgvector (GitHub)

    The reference for adding embeddings and nearest-neighbour search to a Postgres database clients already run.

  • Docs
    What is a graph database

    Neo4j docs / 5 min

    A short introduction to nodes and relationships and when a graph model fits better than tables.

  • Docs
    Dimensional Modeling Techniques

    Kimball Group

    The canonical reference for facts, dimensions and star schemas used in nearly every reporting warehouse.

  • Docs
    Great Expectations documentation

    Great Expectations

    Shows how to write automated checks on data so pipelines catch bad inputs before they reach a model or report.

  • Read
    Data Lake

    Martin Fowler / 9 min

    A short, sober explanation of what a data lake is and how it is often misused.

  • Read
    What is Medallion Architecture?

    Databricks / 7 min

    Explains the bronze, silver, gold layering used in many lakehouse pipelines you will find at clients.

  • Read
    What is a Vector Database & How Does it Work?

    Pinecone / 23 min

    Covers how vector indexes, similarity metrics and filtering work under the hood.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 10 items, about 1 h 19 min of timed material.

Area 04 / 60 resources / must do about 1 h 9 min

Cloud, DevOps and integration

Cloud, containers, CI/CD, APIs, events and system design: how solutions connect and run.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 8 items, about 1 h 9 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 43 items, about 29 h 5 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 9 items, about 2 h 9 min of timed material.

Area 05 / 59 resources / must do about 3 h 12 min

Security and privacy

Access, encryption, OWASP, prompt injection and privacy law: how to keep client data and systems safe.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 14 items, about 3 h 12 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 35 items, about 17 h 3 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 10 items, about 2 h 57 min of timed material.

Area 06 / 87 resources / must do about 5 h 25 min

AI, ML and LLMs

From neural networks to agents, RAG and evals, including the papers that started it.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 14 items, about 5 h 25 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 43 items, about 41 h 53 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 30 items, about 12 h 42 min of timed material.

Area 07 / 60 resources / must do about 3 h 56 min

FDE role and business skills

Discovery, requirements, consulting, product, writing and change: how to turn work into adopted solutions.

Must do

Start here. The shortest clear explanation of each topic. 13 items, about 3 h 56 min of timed material.

Recommended

Once the must-dos are done: more depth and practice. 38 items, about 26 h 57 min of timed material.

Go deeper

Papers, books, advanced material and long courses, when a project needs it. 9 items.