Loop Commons
Curriculum
Understanding computation—not just as a skill, but as something fundamental to how intelligence works. Built on The Loop: Conceptualize → Specify → Generate → Critique → Refine.
Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models. If you can't, anything can be painfully difficult.
Why computation?
This isn't a vocational program. Computation matters because it's fundamental to intelligence itself—not metaphorically, but literally.
Research in AI and biology is converging on a striking idea: “Everything alive is a computer.” Brains predict. LLMs predict. Cells predict. The mechanism is the same. Intelligence—whether in carbon or silicon—is prediction, and prediction is computation.
Learning to think computationally isn't about getting a job. It's about understanding something deep about how minds work—including the AI minds you'll collaborate with.
Based on work by Blaise Agüera y Arcas and others on the computational basis of life and intelligence.
The path
Six months. Each module builds on the last.
Becoming a Code Reader
Read, trace, verify, understand. You cannot collaborate on what you cannot read. This month builds the foundation: mental models for computation, the ability to trace state through programs, and the stance of verification before generation.
- What is a computer?
- How programs execute
- Reading code
- Mind + mind collaboration
The Art of Specification
Externalizing thought with precision. Before you can build, you must specify. This month teaches you to articulate what you want clearly enough that another mind—human or AI—can implement it correctly.
- What makes a specification complete?
- How decomposition reveals structure
- Why edge cases reveal assumptions
- The Specification Cycle
The Collaborative Build
From specification to artifact, mind + mind. Building isn't typing code—it's dialogue. Specify, generate, verify, diagnose, refine. This month teaches the full cycle of collaborative construction.
- Functions as packaged thought
- Data structures as organized state
- Building through dialogue
- The Collaborative Artifact
Real Programs
Files, APIs, persistence. Your programs now touch the world: reading and writing files, calling external services, storing state that survives restarts. The dialogue continues, but the stakes are real.
- Coming soon
Capstone
Ship something real. Everything you've learned—reading, specifying, building through dialogue—comes together in a project that matters to you.
- Coming soon
What I cannot create I do not understand.