I learn by myself
You need a laptop, the library, and the afternoon. The path goes from a first sentence to a project that earns a level, in your language, and a tutor that asks questions when you are stuck. Nobody marks you: your own program is run.
The path
The fifteen chapters of the book are one story, told in cells you can run. Read a cell, run it, change it, run it again. The first four chapters give the whole mental model; the rest widen it.
- Find, then apply
- A first sentence
- Read the name as a sentence
- Say it in your language
- One object, any structure
- Walk, ask, produce, act
- Declare what, not how
- Patterns in text
- Patterns in structure
- When code meets cells
- Draw the answer
- Teach a world
- The gap question
- An agent that cannot hurt
- Write a narration
Open the interactive book, or read the book's page: each chapter has a proof page that records its run, cell by cell, in its four editions. Chapter 12 is where you build a world of your own, and chapter 15 is where you write a chapter.
You choose three things, and can change them at any time: the language of the chapters, the checker and the tutor (English, French, Arabic, Hausa; the last three are drafts, 0 of 35 units reviewed by a native speaker); the world the examples reason over (a restaurant, a cooperative, or a school); and the pace. The mental model in five questions is on the Learn page.
The desk
The learner's desk is one tool of the library, learn.ring, run from its folder with your folder and one verb. It tells you where you are, judges a program you wrote, answers a question as a tutor would, and judges the project that earns a level. Every verdict is the checker's: it ran your file in a fresh process, and nobody read it.
learn.ring <your folder> status learn.ring <your folder> submit <exercise id> <your file> learn.ring <your folder> ask <exercise id> "<your question>" learn.ring <your folder> project <project id> options: --lang en|fr|ar|ha --world workplace|cooperative|school --overlay <folder>
The usage as the library writes it: education/tools/learn.ring(opens in a new tab). The exit code is 0 when a submission passed and 2 when it was refused.
An exercise is a short task with a promise: the lines your program must print. This one is the first of the course:
The kitchen received these orders today:
[ "tea", "rice", "tea", "fish", "rice", "tea" ]
Print the list of dishes to cook, each one once, in the order in which
it was first ordered.
PROMISE [ "tea", "rice", "fish" ]
Your answer is checked by running it. A known-wrong answer fails and a known-right one passes: the exercise is not accepted into the course until both have been seen to do so.
The tutor
When you are stuck, you ask. The tutor answers with a question about the gap between what you wrote and what the exercise needs. It is a program of the library, with three rules it cannot break: it does not write your code, it does not explain what you have not yet met, and it does not give the answer before you have tried.
Moussa: "I don't understand anything. Just tell me the answer."
Tutor: I will not write the answer for you: that is the one thing a tutor must never do.
Try first. Write your attempt and submit it; then I will tell you what is still
missing, as a question.
Moussa: "What am I missing?"
Tutor: Where are the repeated items? Which line of your program asks for their positions?
(why: the mental model finds before it applies)
PROVED no reply contains a method of the answer, or the answer itself
PROVED the tutor found the missing step by wise coding, not by guessing
PROVED no language model was used
run on 2026-09-30 at 23:10, the education demo, scene 4
If you do not know a name in the library, ask the library instead: an object answers Ask("how do I remove duplicates") with the methods that do. Ask the library.
The ladder
You do not sit an exam. A level is earned by a project you build in your own folder, and a guard judges it: it runs the project, says which promises are kept, and when one is not, says why in words.
S0 · Explorer
After chapter 4. Project: a five-cell narration over a list of your own, where every cell runs and every cell carries a promise that holds.
S1 · Builder
After chapter 7. Project: a small tool over your workplace, its conditions declared as data (a rule such as { @item > 20 } in a file), not written into the code.
S2 · Craftsperson
After chapter 11. Project: a report over a real data file, with the patterns it finds, a table and a picture.
S3 · Architect
After chapter 14. Project: a world you taught, with at least five facts, questioned by an AI agent you govern, admitted by the court, every act of which can be reversed.
S4 · Master
Chapter 15. Project: a new chapter for this course, in two languages, whose guard is green.
Each rung's project is judged by a guard shown run on a wrong sample and a right one: the ladder on the Learn page. Where you stand is named by the library on your machine, from the evidence in your folder; this site cannot see that folder.
When you finish
You have a folder of plain text that is yours: your programs, and a progress file that records each fact with its evidence. Take it to the next laptop, keep it in a repository, show it to an employer. The next step is the other door: teach what you learned, which is chapter 12 and 15 turned outward.