I just mass-uploaded every useful thing in my brain to jamesperalta.com/learn — and it's all free.
Blog
I've Uploaded Everything I Know
February 14, 2026•3 min read
What's on there?
Three pillars of content, covering everything I think matters for landing a software engineering job and getting better at the craft:
DSA (Data Structures & Algorithms) — my condensed notes on every data structure and pattern that actually shows up in interviews. Arrays, hash maps, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, sliding window, two pointers — all of it. Written the way I wish someone had explained it to me.
System Design — how to think about designing large-scale systems. Database choices, caching strategies, real-time messaging, URL shorteners, rate limiters — the full spread. Not textbook theory. Practical, interview-ready breakdowns.
Job Hunting — the stuff nobody teaches you in school. How to write a resume that actually gets callbacks. How to prepare for behavioral interviews so you're not fumbling through "tell me about a time" questions. The meta-game of getting hired.
Where this came from
None of this was written from scratch in a vacuum. I synthesized it from years of reading, practicing, and interviewing.
For DSA, the core sources were:
- Cracking the Coding Interview
- Elements of Programming Interviews
- Grokking the Coding Interview
- Hundreds of LeetCode problems solved over the years
I pulled the best ideas from each, threw out the filler, and wrote my own version — the version that actually made things click for me.
For System Design, the main sources were:
- Alex Xu's System Design Interview books (Volume 1 and Volume 2)
- Hello Interview
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
- My own experience doing system design interviews at top companies
Those four books shaped how I think about distributed systems. The articles on my site are my distillation of all of it.
Why I'm doing this
When I was preparing for interviews, I had notes scattered across Notion pages, Google Docs, random markdown files, and half-remembered highlights from books.
I always wished I had one place with everything organized.
So I built it.
And I figured — if it helped me, it'll probably help someone else too. So it's all public. No paywall. No sign-up required. Just go read it.
What's coming next
The content is live, but I'm not done.
I'm going to add more discussions and interactive ways for everyone to engage with the material. Think of it less like a static blog and more like a living resource that grows over time.
For now — go explore jamesperalta.com/learn, poke around, and let me know what you think.
If something is confusing, if something is wrong, if you want me to cover a topic I haven't yet — tell me. This is built for the community.
Go check it out
Everything is there. Everything is free. Let's get better together.
Follow along on YouTube where I'm documenting my journey in real time.