01
Understand
One idea at a time, in plain English. If a word is new, it gets defined before it gets used.
Learning Studio / free / reviewed 2026-09-25
Learn IT and code from zero. Prove it as you go.
Most tutorials teach you to click Next. Learning Studio is a free course that teaches you to actually do the thing: files and folders, then your first programs, then networks, databases, security and data, one ten-minute task at a time, with a check at the end you cannot talk your way past. No account. No AI tutor. No timer.
Available today
Right now that is orientation and one hundred and twenty-six lessons in forty-two assessed chapters: your files and workspace, JavaScript from the first console.log up to a small utility that reads a log, a validation function tested at its boundaries and duplicates reconciled by a documented rule, the command line, file permissions, processes, services, memory, boot problems, help-desk triage, verified backup restores and a three-fault practical checkpoint in a practice shell, addresses, gateways, ports, certificates, DNS records, the hosts file, DHCP leases, static routes, NAT, VLANs, a router on a stick and a router's link counters in a practice network, a first web page you can see rendered as you type and an accessible inquiry form laid out for a phone, SQL against a practice database, and security foundations that read a login log and catch a phishing link, a resilience review in SQL that tells RPO from RTO, and a first look at a cloud account's identity and bill on a simulated AWS command line. Everything after that is on the map but not built yet, and the app says so on every screen.
See the full routeFor study purposes only. Not affiliated with or endorsed by CompTIA, EC-Council or AWS; exam names are their owners' trademarks. Not a credential, not professional advice. Full notice
Every task runs the same six-step loop.
Each one takes three to ten minutes. Stop whenever you like; your place is kept. A lesson is a handful of these back to back.
02
Predict
Before you run anything, you write down what you think will happen. Then the app shows you how close you were.
03
Edit
Change one thing in a tiny program or a pretend file system. You always know what result you are going for.
04
Run
Run it right in the page. If it breaks, the error is a plain sentence that points at the exact character, not a wall of red.
05
Inspect
Compare what came out with what you predicted and what was expected. Fix whatever is different.
06
Explain
Answer the kind of question an interviewer would ask about it. You get a rubric, and a sample answer once you have had a go.
Progress with separate checks.
Completing teaching, passing an assessment and demonstrating retention are recorded separately. The app is upfront about what it cannot verify.
Four statuses, not one badge
The app tracks four statuses: teaching complete; automated assessment passed, including its practical; independent review; and delayed retention demonstrated. Independent review is unavailable in this guest release. Progress stays browser-local and unverified and never becomes human-reviewed proof.
Hints turn it into practice
Help is always there. Use it during an assessment and that attempt counts as practice, which is fine. An independent pass means a fresh scenario and no hints.
Fresh scenarios, and a day later
Chapter checks are generated new every time and you need 90%. Then, at least a day later, you get a changed version and need 80%. Clicking Next has never moved anyone forward.
No AI in the grading
Checks use authored, deterministic rules and run the same way for everyone. No lesson or grade calls a language model, so the course cannot improvise a pass or a fact.
The route, and what is honestly ready.
You start coding right after orientation. The IT and networking tracks run alongside, and later chapters only ask for the specific skills they actually use.
Orientation
Files and folders, RAM versus storage, browser, editor and terminal, evidence before diagnosis.
Available now
JavaScript foundations
Five chapters: first programs, values and functions, lists and loops, records and reduce, and text processing up to a first small utility.
Available now
JavaScript values, functions and control flow
A servings rule validated at both boundaries with NaN and the empty string caught first, a quote from a price list with a discount rounded at the rule and a delivery fee beyond a distance, a minimum charge added by changing one line, scope and shadowing, a loop and a while traced before running, and two magic numbers named. The last chapter the IT Fundamentals card requires.
Available now
JavaScript data structures and modules
push and sort change the caller's array while spread makes a new one, and two names for one object are not a copy; counting and grouping by key in an object, a lookup index that turns 250 million comparisons into one step each, and when the nested loop is fine; duplicates reconciled by a documented rule that keeps the latest record per id and counts what it superseded, with the rule kept in one module.
Available now
The command line
Six chapters in a practice shell inside the page: navigating, moving and searching files, permissions and ownership with chmod and chown, processes, services and disk space with ps, systemctl, journalctl, df, du and sudo, memory, storage and boot with free, lsblk, dmesg and the boot journal, help-desk method and backups with evidence-first triage and a restore proved by sha256sum, then the IT practical checkpoint: one server, three faults, one distraction, an escalation and a handover, graded on what you fixed and on what you left alone.
Available now
A first web page
HTML elements and nesting, links, alt text and landmarks, then CSS rules, selectors and the cascade, with a sandboxed live preview.
Available now
HTML, CSS and accessible interfaces
An inquiry form every control of which has an accessible name: labels that point at ids or wrap their fields, a fieldset and legend for the radios, input types and constraints the browser checks; a real submit button the keyboard can reach, a visible focus ring, hints tied to their field with aria-describedby and a tab order that is the source order; then the viewport meta, a readable maximum width, fields stacked with grid and one change at a phone width through a media query, with nothing lost.
Available now
Data
SQL against a practice database: SELECT, WHERE and ORDER BY, counting and grouping, joining two tables. Assessments run your query on rows you have not seen.
Available now
Cleaning data
Data as it arrives: mixed case and stray spaces, missing values and the difference between = NULL and IS NULL, a -1 that means unknown, duplicates, and cleaning inside the query with TRIM, LOWER, COALESCE, CASE and HAVING, graded on hidden dirty rows.
Available now
Describing data honestly
Mean versus median when one value is huge, spread, a share with the right denominator and the sample size beside it, comparing two periods whose mix changed, and saying what the data cannot support.
Available now
Validating a report
A dashboard total reconciled to its source query, the join to a duplicated key that doubles a number, the filter that loses a dirty spelling, a refresh that is days stale, and the labels, scales and checklist that keep a report honest.
Available now
Handling personal data
Which columns identify a person, a report answered with counts rather than people, a support list with the phone masked, a retention rule applied with a count before and proof after, consent that is exactly yes, a quality gate against a threshold, and the data register with its review questions.
Available now
Checking a model's work
A classifier measured against the truth with the right denominator, the four ways it can be right or wrong, a plain rule that beats it, training rows leaking into the evaluation, a changed mix, and a generated summary whose every claim is checked against the table.
Available now
Data practical checkpoint
A new dataset and a vague question: define the grain, read the field that lies, reconcile the summary to its source, remove a duplicated key, date the snapshot, and answer with the n and the limitations beside it. The chapter the Data+ card requires.
Available now
Relational design and basic SQL
A booking service modelled as tables with keys: entities and the side that holds the foreign key, CREATE TABLE with PRIMARY KEY, NOT NULL, UNIQUE and REFERENCES enforced by the practice database, orphans and duplicates refused at the boundary, what NULL means, and transactions that commit whole or roll back whole. One of the chapters the IT Fundamentals card requires.
Available now
IT support and operating systems
Hardware beyond the shell and Windows administration.
Planned
Addresses and reachability
IPv4 addresses and prefixes, subnet facts with ipcalc, the default gateway, why ping fails the way it does, and DNS, all in a practice network inside the shell.
Available now
DNS and DHCP
Reading a DNS answer with dig, aliases and stale records, the /etc/hosts override that fools ping but not nslookup, a 169.254 address and what dhclient does about it, and the static workaround when DHCP is down.
Available now
Routing and NAT
Reading a route table on a Linux router, longest prefix and the default route, traceroute across two routers, the static route that is missing, IP forwarding, a wrong default gateway, and why an office behind private addresses needs masquerade to reach the internet.
Available now
Switching, VLANs and segmentation
A Linux bridge switch with staff, server, guest and management VLANs: access ports and the tagged trunk, a desk move that puts a PC on the wrong VLAN, a VLAN missing from the trunk, the router on a stick that routes between them, and the FORWARD rules that keep guests off everything but DNS and the internet, graded by what each host can reach.
Available now
Network practical checkpoint
The switched office with a fresh address plan and two hidden faults on one device, drawn from everything the networking chapters taught: hypothesis before test, both faults fixed, the ticket that is not a fault left alone, the allowed and denied paths proved from every host, the packet path documented, and a handover. The chapter the Network+ and A+ Core 1 cards require.
Available now
Network operations and monitoring
Capacity against achieved throughput, a duplex mismatch, a link below its recorded speed, a flapping cable and a full link told apart from ip -s link, ethtool, the journal and dmesg on the office router; a poller's samples turned into utilisation against capacity, a baseline over ordinary days, a reasoned alert threshold and errors correlated with the syslog lines of the same hour; and drift shown with diff, reversed from the recorded baseline, proved with the checksum list and written up with its rollback.
Available now
Ports and services
What a server listens on, testing a remote port with nc, refused versus timed out, and naming the one cause an outage's evidence supports.
Available now
HTTP and TLS
Status lines and headers with curl, redirects, what a certificate check proves, why -k hides a fault, and naming a web outage from a port test, a HEAD request and the handshake.
Available now
Networking, deeper
Layers, switching, VLANs, wireless, monitoring, troubleshooting clinics.
Planned
Web development
Git, DOM and events, async, TypeScript, React, Next.js.
Planned
Databases and backends
Relational design, SQL, APIs, authentication, row-level permissions, testing, deployment.
Planned
Data analysis
Python, reproducible acquisition, cleaning, statistics, dashboards, governance.
Planned
Security foundations
Read an authentication log, find the risky accounts with SQL, preserve evidence, recognise a phishing message. Detection habits, not Security+ coverage.
Available now
Security principles, controls and threat modelling
A threat model of the practice office in three tables: which of confidentiality, integrity and availability each failure or abuse case breaks, the cases ranked by likelihood times impact and tied to an asset and a path, the ones that cross a trust boundary, the ones with no preventive or detective control, authentication kept apart from authorization with least privilege and zero trust, the residual risk left after each control's cut, layered controls of different types, and a risk accepted by a named owner.
Available now
Hardening a server
Closing what should not be open: a legacy service stopped and disabled, a database port fenced off with one firewall rule, root logins and passwords turned off in sshd_config, key permissions, a NOPASSWD sudoers line removed, and the audit that proves it from the client side.
Available now
Hashing, signatures and certificates
A downloaded release checked against the vendor's checksum list and signature before it is installed, what a hash proves and what only a signature can, the private key that never leaves the signer, and a certificate read with openssl and judged against the authority you trust: valid, expired, untrusted or the wrong name.
Available now
Vulnerabilities: validate and prioritise
A scanner's findings as claims: severity, exploitability and impact separated and combined by a written rule, each claim validated on the practice server with evidence before anything is fixed, the fix retested, the false positive documented, and the exception time-boxed.
Available now
Hardening, identity and asset lifecycle
An access review by query (leavers still enabled, admins without MFA, grants beyond the role), a leaver offboarded completely on the practice server with proof for each revocation, the break-glass account kept sealed, and assets retired with a record. The chapter the A+ Core 2 card requires beside the IT practical checkpoint.
Available now
Resilience, architecture and risk
A recovery point objective told from a recovery time objective and each measured from data: downtime and its cost per incident against the RTO, the recovery point achieved from the last good backup before each outage, an expected annual loss built from stated assumptions, the supplier two systems share, the RPO target the backup interval cannot meet, restore tests compared with targets with untested systems kept visible, an improvement plan ordered by measured gaps, and what stays yours under a hosted service.
Available now
Governance, compliance and awareness
A governance register in SQL: policies told from standards and procedures, every claimed control mapped to dated evidence and judged current, stale or missing against its window, policies overdue for review and the obligations resting on them, the engineer's evidence kept apart from the assessor's verdict, when the legal or privacy specialist decides, supplier due diligence as claims to evidence, and a week of phishing reports triaged, grouped into campaigns and measured as report rate and time to report.
Available now
Security practical checkpoint
srv-1 before the audit with two of the hardening, identity and release chapters' fixes undone and one ticket that is not a fault: evidence before every change, root logins over SSH closed, the database port fenced, telnet stopped, a leaver locked out, passwordless sudo removed, a private key made owner-only, a false scanner claim left alone, an expired certificate and a release that fails its signature escalated with the evidence, and a sorted handover. The chapter the Security+ card requires.
Available now
My cloud workspace and spending
The AWS command line against a simulated practice account: the account, the identity and the region as three boundaries, who the CLI acts as saved as evidence, an inline policy's Deny proved by trying the forbidden delete, the chargeable parts of object storage, a budget and the month's cost by service, and a leftover bucket cleaned up in order. Nothing reaches AWS, and every screen says so.
Available now
Security operations and ethical hacking
Cryptography, network defenses, incident response, then authorized lab assessment, findings and remediation.
Planned
AWS data engineering
A recoverable pipeline mapped to every DEA-C01 task; simulated and real AWS runs recorded separately.
Planned
Certification checkpoints
Readiness, stated carefully.
Each exam is mapped to specific chapters. When you have shown you still know every one of them, the app says “you should now be able to pass,” and right next to it, “course readiness, not a guarantee.” It will not say it a day early, and it takes the line back if the exam version retires.
Exam codes and dates were checked against the vendors’ own pages on 2026-09-25. This is not official CompTIA, EC-Council or AWS training, and finishing it does not award a certification. The real exam is between you and the vendor.
CompTIA Tech+
FC0-U71
CompTIA A+
220-1201 and 220-1202
CompTIA Network+
N10-009
CompTIA Security+
SY0-701
CompTIA Data+
DA0-002
EC-Council CEH v13
312-50
AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate
DEA-C01
There is a daily streak, levels and achievements too, all worked out from the same evidence. They are there to keep you coming back, not to lock doors. Miss a day and the app tells you how long your run was and that one task starts a new one.
Questions
Straight answers.
Same rule the course lives by: say what is true, say what is not built yet, and never hint at a credential that does not exist.
Ask something elseWhat is Learning Studio?
A free, self-taught course from Str8shift Softwares that takes you from "I have never opened a code editor" to real IT, networking, coding, security and data skills. It is built from short tasks with honest checks, and it lives in your browser at las.str8shift.com.
Is it really free, and do I need an account?
Free, and no sign-in yet. Your progress lives in your browser on that device, and if the browser will not save, the app keeps working and tells you so. Accounts that keep your progress on every device are coming. There is no progress file to download or load, because a file could be edited to claim progress nobody made.
Does it use AI to teach or grade?
No. Checks use authored, deterministic rules and behave the same for everyone. No lesson or grade calls a language model, so the course cannot improvise a pass or a fact.
Will it get me a CompTIA, EC-Council or AWS certification?
No course can hand you one. Learning Studio maps its chapters to the published objectives for Tech+, A+, Network+, Security+, Data+, CEH and AWS DEA-C01, and tells you when your work lines up with an exam. That is readiness, not a pass, not eligibility, and not official training. Booking, fees and vendor rules stay with the vendor.
What is a hard gate?
A check you can only pass with evidence: every teaching step done, a freshly generated assessment at 90% with all the practical criteria met, then a changed version at least 24 hours later at 80%. Use a hint and the attempt becomes practice. Because progress lives on your device and you could edit it, the app labels it unverified. Honest about what it is.
Is it designed for ADHD?
It is built around the W3C cognitive accessibility patterns: one thing to do per screen, save-and-stop everywhere, a recap when you come back, no timers, no penalty streaks, no leaderboards, no surprise sounds. The daily streak is optional and never punishes a missed day. It does not claim to treat ADHD. It just tries not to fight it.
How much is available today?
As of the date at the top of this page: orientation plus one hundred and twenty-six lessons in forty-two assessed chapters. That is files and your workspace, seven JavaScript chapters that end with a small text-processing utility, a checkpoint that validates at the boundary, and data structures that copy instead of mutating and reconcile duplicates by a written rule, six command-line chapters in a practice shell (moving files, permissions and ownership, processes, services and disk space with sudo, memory, storage and a boot that landed in emergency mode, help-desk method with a backup restored and verified by checksum, then the IT practical checkpoint, the first chapter the certification cards require), addresses, reachability, ports, HTTP and certificates, DNS and DHCP, routing and NAT on two Linux routers, switching and VLANs on a Linux bridge switch with a router on a stick, and the network practical checkpoint (two hidden faults, the allowed and denied paths proved from every host) in a practice network, network operations on the office router (a link diagnosed from its counters and ethtool, utilisation against capacity and a baseline in SQL, configuration drift restored with a change record), a first web page with live preview and an inquiry form every control of which has a name, works from the keyboard and fits a phone, SQL against a practice database, the cleaning of a messy spreadsheet export inside the query, and honest summaries of two periods (median over mean, denominators, a changed mix), a dashboard reconciled to its source (a duplicated join, a broken filter, a stale refresh), personal data handled properly (minimisation, masking, a retention run, consent, a quality gate, the register), a classifier and a generated summary checked against the truth (accuracy per period, leakage, drift, invented citations), the Data practical checkpoint (a new dataset, a misleading field, a duplicated key, a defensible answer with its limitations), relational design (keys and constraints enforced by the practice database, orphans refused, transactions), JavaScript values, functions and control flow (a rule validated at both boundaries, a quote rounded at the rule, a program predicted before it runs), security foundations built on the shell and the database, a threat model of the office in three tables (cases tied to assets and paths, authentication apart from authorization, the residual risk after each control), and hardening a server graded by what the office can still reach, and hashing, signatures and certificates (a release verified with sha256sum and openssl before it is installed, a certificate diagnosed as valid, expired, untrusted or the wrong name), and vulnerabilities validated and prioritised (a priority rule in SQL, each scanner claim checked on the server before it is fixed), and identity and asset lifecycle (an access review by query, a leaver offboarded door by door with proof), and resilience measured from records (RPO and RTO per incident, the recovery point from the last good backup, an annual loss built from stated assumptions, restore tests against targets with untested systems kept visible), and the Security practical checkpoint (two faults on the practice server with one ticket that is not a fault, evidence before every change, an expired certificate and an unverified release escalated), and governance in SQL (every claimed control mapped to dated evidence, policies overdue for review, phishing reports triaged and measured), and a first cloud chapter on a simulated AWS command line (who the CLI acts as, a Deny proved by trying, what costs money, a leftover bucket cleaned up in order; nothing reaches AWS). Each chapter has fresh generated assessments and delayed recall. Everything after that is on the map and clearly marked as not built yet. The certification cards now show the IT practical checkpoint, the network practical checkpoint, the Data practical checkpoint, relational design, the JavaScript checkpoint, the identity lifecycle chapter and the Security practical checkpoint as real chapters. The IT Fundamentals, Data+, Network+, Security+ and both A+ cards can be worked toward end to end; the ethical hacking and AWS cards still need a checkpoint chapter that is not built yet, and say so.
Is there any legal fine print?
Yes, and it is short. Learning Studio is for study purposes only: not professional advice, not a credential, and not official CompTIA, EC-Council or AWS training. Those names are their owners' trademarks and none of them endorse this course. Security lessons may only be practised in the app's simulations or on systems you are authorised to test. There is no account requirement, no ads and no sale of data. The full notice, including privacy and the Texas governing law, is at las.str8shift.com/legal.
What do I need to start?
A computer with a current browser. Nothing gets installed and nothing runs on your machine; your first programs run inside a small sandbox in the page. A desktop or laptop is easier for the coding tasks than a phone.
Start from zero
Ten minutes today counts.
Open it, pick your platform, finish the first task. Your place is kept on that device until you come back.