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---
type: story
title: "Welcome"
xp: 25
duration: 20
difficulty: 1
---
# Welcome
> **[INCOMING — Mission Control, Earth]**
>
> Cadet.
>
> Welcome to the program.
>
> You have just enrolled in twelve months of training. By the end, if
> you finish, you will be a working developer — not a graduate of
> something, but a person who can sit in front of a blank file and
> produce software that does what it's supposed to do.
>
> We will not teach you the way you've been taught before. There will
> be no lectures. No instructor at a board. No videos to play at 2x.
> You will read, you will type, and you will build. Most of the
> learning happens between your ears while your fingers move.
>
> Before you touch the terminal — and you will, in the very next block
> — we want you to know where you are and what's about to happen.
> Read this to the end.
>
> [TRANSMISSION CONTINUES]
## Where You Are
You have entered Stage I: **Solar System**. Your launchpad. Over the
next four weeks, you will move from "I have never written code" to
"I can write small programs that solve real problems."
Past Solar System, four more stages await:
- **Milky Way** — deeper Python, data structures, your first real projects.
- **Andromeda** — web, databases, applications other people can use.
- **Deep Space** — specialize. Backend, frontend, data, or DevOps.
- **New Horizon** — your capstone, and the bridge to a job.
Don't worry about anything past Solar System right now. The path
exists. Trust it. Walk one stage at a time.
## How Content Works
Every module in every stage is built from three kinds of blocks:
- **Stories** like this one. They give you context — the *why* before
the *do*. They are short. Skim them and you'll pay for it later.
- **Challenges** are where you build. Each one drops you a starter pack
and a mission. You write code, submit, and an automated grader tells
you pass or iterate.
- **Battles** put you in a pair. One of you executes, the other
reviews. You learn twice — once doing, once watching.
Every block earns XP when you complete it. XP is not a leaderboard.
It's a measure of how much you have actually done. Skipping ahead does
not work — checkpoints catch it, and they catch it in front of your
peers.
## What This Module Holds
The next block is `hello-world` — your first line of code. After that,
twelve more challenges teach you the shell and Git, the tools every
cadet on Earth uses every day. One paired battle closes the module.
One to two days of work, depending on your pace. Then Python begins.
> **[CLOSING — Mission Control]**
>
> One more thing before we let you go.
>
> Everyone who finishes the program got stuck where you are now. Every
> single one. The terminal you're about to open scared them too. They
> kept going. So will you.
>
> Your training begins on the next block.
>
> [END TRANSMISSION]