About

Engineering education, hardened by design.

DURA helps you study computing and engineering through lessons, projects, and practice assessments. It offers a place to build skills; completing the curriculum does not by itself establish professional competence.

Why DURA exists

Programming education has a problem. Courses sell completion. Bootcamps sell vibes. Tutorials sell novelty. Almost nothing sells mastery.

DURA brings reading, practice, and reflection into one open platform. Our goal is to help learners connect technical ideas to decisions they can explain and test.

The answer is 15 phases, 120 modules, 749 lessons, and practice assessments to check understanding. The source and teaching materials are open for review and correction.

Reading-first

Download lessons while online to read them offline. Account sync, AI, web previews, and online assessments need a connection.

Optional mastery gates

Browse freely, or enable strict gating to require a passing module assessment before advancing. Practice scores are not professional qualifications.

Free forever

Core learning is free as a commitment from Durwood Studios. Tips unlock nothing. The source and its license are published for inspection.

Built on real standards

DURA authors use curriculum and skills frameworks to organize topics and publish alignment references where applicable:

  • CS2023 — computing curriculum guidance from ACM, IEEE-CS, and AAAI.
  • SWEBOK v4 — the IEEE's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge.
  • SFIA 9 — the Skills Framework for the Information Age, used by governments and enterprise HR.

Bloom's taxonomy and Dreyfus stages help describe learning goals. Alignment tags are authored references, not endorsement or accreditation. Learning records describe DURA assessment results; they do not certify mastery of an external standard. Inspect the mappings and their limits.

Durwood Studios LLC

DURA is built by Dustin Snellings at Durwood Studios, a small independent studio focused on software that respects the people who use it. No advertising trackers. Optional learning analytics are off by default; see the privacy policy. Supported by voluntary tips and (eventually) new products built on top of the open core — never by restricting what already exists.

If this platform helps your journey, a tip keeps the lights on. If it doesn't, it costs you nothing. That's the whole deal.

Start Phase 0

Start with digital literacy, then work through the curriculum at your own pace.

Open the first lesson