Why CodeCrafters?
If it feels easy, you’re not learning.
The hard part is the whole point.
Tutorials and walkthroughs feel like progress. You follow along, nod, and come away thinking you learned something. But recognizing an idea when someone explains it isn’t the same as applying it on your own.
Being stuck isn’t a sign of failure. It’s your thinking muscle being forced to grow. Many learning methods go out of their way to simplify and remove that friction. That’s backwards.
We throw you inside real systems: rebuilding Git, Redis, SQLite from scratch. Minimal hand-holding. We give you a goal and just enough structure. You do the actual work of figuring it out.
"Learning is not supposed to be fun. The primary feeling should be that of effort. There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment."
Andrej Karpathy
Former Director of Tesla AI Founding scientist at OpenAI
Tutorials and walkthroughs feel like progress. You follow along, nod, and come away thinking you learned something. But recognizing an idea when someone explains it isn’t the same as applying it on your own.
Being stuck isn’t a sign of failure. It’s your thinking muscle being forced to grow. Many learning methods go out of their way to simplify and remove that friction. That’s backwards.
We throw you inside real systems: rebuilding Git, Redis, SQLite from scratch. Minimal hand-holding. We give you a goal and just enough structure. You do the actual work of figuring it out.
"Learning is not supposed to be fun. The primary feeling should be that of effort. There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment."
Andrej Karpathy
Former Director of Tesla AI Founding scientist at OpenAI
If the tools are fake, so are the reps.
Practice with the tools you actually ship with.
Your tools shape your instincts. Practice in a toy browser editor and that’s what you get comfortable with. Not your debugger, not your terminal, not your real workflow. The transfer to production is weak because the practice was never real.
We deliberately want you to use your own IDE and tools of choice. We work very hard to support your workflow, so the distance between your CodeCrafters practice and your daily workflow is zero.
The same goes for AI. We want you to use it, lean on it, and let it make you faster. But you must know the difference between directing a tool and being blindly carried by one.
"If you don't have your fingers in the sauce (the source) you are going to lose touch with it. There's just no other way. The joy of a programmer, of me as a programmer, is to type the code myself."
DHH
Creator of Ruby on Rails
Your tools shape your instincts. Practice in a toy browser editor and that’s what you get comfortable with. Not your debugger, not your terminal, not your real workflow. The transfer to production is weak because the practice was never real.
We deliberately want you to use your own IDE and tools of choice. We work very hard to support your workflow, so the distance between your CodeCrafters practice and your daily workflow is zero.
The same goes for AI. We want you to use it, lean on it, and let it make you faster. But you must know the difference between directing a tool and being blindly carried by one.
"If you don't have your fingers in the sauce (the source) you are going to lose touch with it. There's just no other way. The joy of a programmer, of me as a programmer, is to type the code myself."
DHH
Creator of Ruby on Rails
Study the best, not the loudest.
Pick your heroes by what they’ve built.
The best in class engineers don’t just use their tools. They take them apart to understand how they work. It’s how they develop the intuition that sets them apart.
Average developers absorb habits from whichever tutorial ranks first or whichever influencer is loudest. They feel the gap every time they can’t explain something at work. The insecurity is quiet but persistent. They know they should go deeper, but the real work is daunting and most wouldn’t know where to start. That’s what we solve.
We make the process approachable without making it easy. You rebuild real tools, face real design decisions, and form your own judgement. The work is still yours. The growth is too. And what grows isn’t just skill. It’s real, hard-earned confidence.
"When React came out and started getting some traction, I wrote my own React to learn the vdom and reconciliation. I also wanted to use functions instead of classes. The lesson was twofold: great way to learn, and I should just use React"
Guillermo Rauch
Creator of Next.js & socket.io. Founder and CEO of Vercel.
The best in class engineers don’t just use their tools. They take them apart to understand how they work. It’s how they develop the intuition that sets them apart.
Average developers absorb habits from whichever tutorial ranks first or whichever influencer is loudest. They feel the gap every time they can’t explain something at work. The insecurity is quiet but persistent. They know they should go deeper, but the real work is daunting and most wouldn’t know where to start. That’s what we solve.
We make the process approachable without making it easy. You rebuild real tools, face real design decisions, and form your own judgement. The work is still yours. The growth is too. And what grows isn’t just skill. It’s real, hard-earned confidence.
"When React came out and started getting some traction, I wrote my own React to learn the vdom and reconciliation. I also wanted to use functions instead of classes. The lesson was twofold: great way to learn, and I should just use React"
Guillermo Rauch
Creator of Next.js & socket.io. Founder and CEO of Vercel.
If AI can write it, it’s not your edge.
Understanding is the one thing you can’t generate.
When every engineer has access to the same AI, what sets you apart? It’s not the code you generate. But the ability to make trade-offs, hold complexity in your head, and navigate problems that don’t come with a prescribed template. Those instincts only get built when you’ve been exposed to them.
Without a doubt, right now is the most productive era for programmers in history. The latest AI has removed more friction than anything before it. When everyone can generate code, taste and judgement become the scarce resource. Without them, you’re not directing the tool. The tool is directing you.
Yes, AI can solve many of our stages. You don’t go to the gym to move metal from point A to point B. You go because the pain of the effort builds something inside you that nothing else can.
"The single greatest way to go from an junior dev to senior level engineer is to actually rebuild projects that already exist. ... It may not immediately get you a better job but it will open more doors the longer you stick with it."
The Primeagen
ex-Netflix engineer known for his blunt, experience-driven views on software.
When every engineer has access to the same AI, what sets you apart? It’s not the code you generate. But the ability to make trade-offs, hold complexity in your head, and navigate problems that don’t come with a prescribed template. Those instincts only get built when you’ve been exposed to them.
Without a doubt, right now is the most productive era for programmers in history. The latest AI has removed more friction than anything before it. When everyone can generate code, taste and judgement become the scarce resource. Without them, you’re not directing the tool. The tool is directing you.
Yes, AI can solve many of our stages. You don’t go to the gym to move metal from point A to point B. You go because the pain of the effort builds something inside you that nothing else can.
"The single greatest way to go from an junior dev to senior level engineer is to actually rebuild projects that already exist. ... It may not immediately get you a better job but it will open more doors the longer you stick with it."
The Primeagen
ex-Netflix engineer known for his blunt, experience-driven views on software.
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If you check every box, you'll feel right at home.