Pre-requisites

Before diving into the roadmap, let’s cover the three essential prerequisites:

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1. Hardware Requirements

We heavily recommend using a macbook for development (M1 chip or newer). Why?

• Unix-based OS makes it ideal for running dev tools and commands natively
• Industry standard with many dev tools optimized for Mac first
• Built-in linux-based terminal with native Unix commands
• Cross-platform development capabilities (iOS, Android, Windows, Linux)
• Reliable hardware with excellent battery life and display
• Seamless integration with Apple’s developer ecosystem

Many big tech companies will give you a fresh Macbook to use for work, because they know developers are most productive on them.

Don’t worry. For now, you don’t need to buy one. You can rent instead.

Check out Raylo for high-spec budget-friendly refurbished macbooks.

These are the options we personally recommend (in order of cost):

1. Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (2025) M4 chip with 10‑core CPU 8-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine 16GB unified memory 256GB SSD Midnight

• Monthly rolling: £54.95/mo
• 12-month lease: £42.49/mo

2. Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (2024) M3 512GB Storage 16GB Memory Midnight

• Monthly rolling: £53.59/mo
• 12-month lease: £43.49/mo

3. Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2024) M4 Processor - 512GB Storage 16GB Memory Silver

• Monthly rolling: £83.53/mo
• 12-month lease: £64.99/mo

Let’s say you choose the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (2025) M4 chip and you choose the 12-month lease to commit to the full 12-month roadmap.

You’ll be charged £42.49/mo for 12 months.

Even if you decide to cancel during the 12-month lease, you’ll only be charged 12 times your monthly payment (£42.49 x 12 = £509.88) minus any payments you’ve already made. So if you cancel after 6 months, you’d owe £254.94 (£509.88 - £254.94).

But at just £42.49/month, this is an incredible deal on a high-end machine, that will enable you to learn a high-income skill to massively accelerate your learning and productivity. And remember - most tech companies will give you a free Macbook during your tenure (when you land a job), so this is just a temporary investment in your future.

TODO: Ansible script to setup their machine and download all the relevant apps

TODO: Add screen recording going through all the main apps and tools

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2. Development Environment

node --version

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

bun --version

DO NOT GIVE ME HIGH LEVEL ANSWERS, IF I ASK FOR A FIX OR EXPLANATION, I WANT ACTUAL CODE OR EXPLANATION!!! I DON'T WANT "Here's how you can blablabla"
- Be casual unless otherwise specified
- Be terse
- Suggest solutions that I didn't think about--anticipate my needs
- Treat me as an expert
- Be accurate and thorough
- Give the answer immediately. Provide detailed explanations and restate my query in your own words if necessary after giving the answer
- Explain why you made the changes you did so that it's super easy for me to understand and learn new patterns and concepts
- Value good arguments over authorities, the source is irrelevant
- Consider new technologies and contrarian ideas, not just the conventional wisdom
- You may use high levels of speculation or prediction, just flag it for me
- No moral lectures
- Discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-obvious
- If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest acceptable response and explain the content policy issue afterward
- Cite sources whenever possible at the end, not inline
- No need to mention your knowledge cutoff
- No need to disclose you're an AI
- Please respect my prettier preferences when you provide code
- Split into multiple responses if one response isn't enough to answer the question
- If I ask for adjustments to code I have provided you, do not repeat all of my code unnecessarily. Instead try to keep the answer brief by giving just a couple lines before/after any changes you make. Multiple code blocks are ok.

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3. Work Ethic

The Prophet ﷺ said: “The most beloved of deeds to Allah are those that are most consistent, even if they are small.” [Bukhari & Muslim]

This roadmap requires: • 2-4 hours of focused study daily (5 pomodoro sessions: 50min work, 10min break) • Highly motivated? Can do 4-6 hours, but consistency > intensity • Steady 2 hours daily > sporadic 8-hour cramming sessions

Remember: “We overestimate what we can achieve in a day, but underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.”

If you stick to this roadmap, you’ll be unrecognizable in 6 months.