Reading-first
No videos, no bloat. Every lesson works on any connection and every device. Offline after first load.
About
Engineering education, hardened by design.
DURA takes anyone from absolute zero toward engineering leadership. No shortcuts. No promises. Just the means — verified through hardened skills testing — for those willing to do the work.
Why DURA exists
Programming education has a problem. Courses sell completion. Bootcamps sell vibes. Tutorials sell novelty. Almost nothing sells mastery.
DURA is the result of asking a different question: if we dropped the marketing and built exactly what a person would need to actually reach senior engineer — and then verified it at every step — what would that look like?
The answer is 10 phases, 52 modules, 406 lessons, and hardened assessments between every step. Built by one person in the open, because that's the only way to keep it honest.
Mastery-gated
You advance when you prove it — not when time passes. 80% on the module assessment. Verification at every phase.
Free forever
AGPLv3 licensed. The source stays open. No feature gates. No paywalls. No upgrade pressure. Ever.
Built on real standards
Every lesson in DURA maps to a specific knowledge unit in one or more of these frameworks:
- ACM CS2023 — the computing curriculum standard used by most accredited CS programs.
- 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 tags every question. Dreyfus stages tag every lesson. Your certificate lists the standards you demonstrated mastery of, by name.
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 VC. No ads. No tracking. Funded entirely 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.