Learning Resources

Courses, tutorials, and communities I return to regularly — organized by domain. I'm a perpetual student; these are the places that keep me learning.

Tom Harada February 2026 ~5 min read
Contents
  1. General
  2. Design & Motion
  3. Web Development
  4. Architecture
  5. ML & AI
  6. 3D
  7. Management

General

The two sources I check daily. YouTube for depth, Hacker News for breadth.

YouTube
The world's largest classroom — conference talks, tutorials, deep dives
Hacker News (cleaned up)
Curated HN front page, less noise

Design & Motion

Design is a skill that compounds. These resources cover everything from UI fundamentals to motion design and web design business.

Flux Academy
Web design & freelancing
School of Motion
Motion design courses — After Effects, Cinema 4D, animation principles
Learn UI Design
UI/UX fundamentals by Erik Kennedy — practical, opinionated
Josh W. Comeau
Tutorials & inspiration — CSS, React, interactive articles

My approach: start with the simplest tools (Inkscape, Krita, Figma) and only reach for heavier software (Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects) when you genuinely need the extra features. Learn the principles first, tools second.

Web Development

Modern web development moves fast. These two are consistently excellent and keep up with the ecosystem.

Joy of React
Josh Comeau's deep dive into React — mental models, not just syntax
Frontend Masters
Expert-taught courses — JS, React, TypeScript, Node, CSS, and more

Architecture

Distributed systems, system design, and the hard-won lessons of running services at scale.

Amazon Builders' Library
Battle-tested distributed systems patterns from Amazon engineers
YouTube
System design channels, re:Invent talks, architecture deep dives

ML & AI

The field moves weekly. These help me keep up without drowning in noise.

swyx/ai-notes
Community-maintained AI knowledge base — papers, trends, tools
DeepLearning.AI
Andrew Ng's AI & machine learning courses
YouTube
Andrej Karpathy, 3Blue1Brown, Yannic Kilcher

3D

I use Blender for 3D work. These two take you from zero to competent.

Polygon Runway
Beginner-friendly Blender tutorials — stylized, project-based
CG Cookie
Comprehensive Blender training — modeling, texturing, animation

Management

Engineering leadership is its own discipline. These are the resources I've found most honest and useful.

Rands in Repose
Engineering leadership writing by Michael Lopp — funny, real, practical
HN: Best management books
Community-curated reading list — managers of all levels