> whoami
junior_backend_engineer # as of this morning
Real bugs.
Real logs.
Delivered monthly
Made for students, career changers and the self-taught: every month a struggling fictional tech company lands on your doormat - and in your terminal. A real Python codebase. A test suite with one red test. Customers complaining about something nobody can explain. You are the new backend engineer. Find it. Fix it. Ship it.
./why_not_another_course.sh
The course ends.
The job begins.
You watched. You typed what they typed. You built their to-do app. Then the video ended, the editor was blank, and nothing happened. That gap has a name: tutorial hell.
Courses teach syntax. The job is something else: code you didn't write, a bug nobody understands, and a ticket with your name on it. No course puts you there. This does.
Courses teach you to follow. Casework teaches you to investigate. →
./is_this_for_me.sh
This is
for you.
Students. Career changers. The self-taught. Anyone at the very start of the road.
Can write a for loop? Start today. Never coded at all? The free Day Zero course gets you there first.
No CS degree. No bootcamp debt. A doormat. →
The student // theory-rich, codebase-poor
Your course covers the what. Nobody shows you what the job is actually like. Walk into your first interview having read real logs, closed real tickets and raised a proper pull request.
"Tell us about a bug you fixed." You'll have an answer.
The career changer // like the founder
You already have a career - you're building the next one in the evenings. So did we: 14 years a teacher, now a backend engineer. One case a month. No bootcamp debt, no all-or-nothing leap.
You're reading the proof of concept.
The self-taught // three courses deep
You can follow anything and start nothing - the blank editor freezes you. Casework is the bridge: real code, no hand-holding, and hints that stay sealed until you choose.
Escape tutorial hell. Bring a torch.
sprint board ★ case 001: a coffee startup
Three tickets.
One month. Your board.
No tutorials, no fill-in-the-blanks. You get a real backlog, printed and posted. The paper ticket in your hands matches the repo in your terminal.
And this is only Case 001. A new company, a new envelope, and new bugs land every month - skills building case on case. Browse the casebook →
Customers overcharged - cause unknown
Some orders are charged more than the price list. Rosa suspects the Cappuccinos. Rosa is wrong. Find the pattern in the logs.
[REDACTED UNTIL DISPATCH]
The second bug ships sealed. No spoilers - not even here.
End-of-day report
The founder sketched what he wants on a napkin. The napkin is in the envelope. Takings, costs, profit - build the page that shows it.
Get the till running
Terminal, venv, git clone, pytest. Follow-along video included. Your finish line: 4 green, 1 red.
cat whats_in_the_box
What you get,
every month.
Because you can't grep an envelope. ↓
In the envelope
printed, stamped, and posted - case 001 shown
- Your onboarding letter from a brand-new fictional company, signed by your manager
- 3 printed ticket cards - 2 bugs to hunt, 1 feature to build from a napkin spec
- The evidence pack - real thermal till receipts, some of them wrong. Spread them on the table
- The price list - your ground truth. Memorise it
- Employee ID card + lanyard - the QR code clones your repo
- The debugging duck - the best listener in software engineering. Zero words spoken, every bug heard. It knows more than it lets on
- Case-closed sticker - one per case, collect the set on your laptop lid
- A sealed post-mortem - open when every test is green
- A proper envelope - new colour every case, real stamp, tracked to your door
In your terminal
the half you cannot fold
- Your own private GitHub repo per case - clone it, branch it, push to it. Real commits, real green squares on your profile
- A real test suite as your scoreboard - 4 green, 1 red. You'll know the moment you win
- The free Day Zero course - blank laptop to first red test, follow-along videos
- Overtime challenges - optional extensions on every ticket. No tests, no hints, no stabilisers
- The casebook - every case's skills mapped, so you always know what's next
- Three-stage hints, online - every ticket has escalating hints you reveal one click at a time. Nobody has to know
- Subscriber Discord - stuck at 11pm? The founder and your fellow detectives are in there
- An answer to the interview question - "tell me about a bug you fixed" stops being hypothetical
- Progress portal - track your tickets, reveal hints online IN THE LAB
exhibit b ★ the doormat moment
It doesn't stay
on the screen.
Every case ships with evidence you can spread across the kitchen table - printed, stamped, signed, and posted first class across the UK.
Assembled by hand. Posted with a real stamp.
choose your plan ★ cancel any time
Pick your desk.
The Casework
one case a month, everything included
# founding rate - first 20 members - locked forever
- the full envelope, posted + tracked: tickets, evidence, ID + lanyard, duck, sticker
- your own private GitHub repo per case - real commits, real green squares
- 2 bugs to hunt, 1 feature to build, Overtime if you're brave
- three-stage online hints + a sealed post-mortem for when you win
- free Day Zero setup course + subscriber Discord
Mentor Sign-Off
the casework, plus real code review of YOUR code
# capped at 20 seats. that's all there is.
- everything in The Casework
- open a real pull request every case
- line-by-line human review within 48h
- from a backend engineer who taught for 14 years
- your first code review, before your first job
The first-case guarantee. If your first pack isn't for you, say so within 14 days of delivery and get a full refund. Keep the pack. The duck stays with you.
# first pack only, one per household. we are betting you'll want case 002.
Tutorials teach you to type. The Dev Dispatch teaches you to investigate.
The companies are fictional. The codebases, the logs, the tests, the git history, the sinking feeling that the logs are lying to you - all real. Skills sequenced across 12 months, from your first clone to your first code review.