Learn to Build, Deploy and Operate Software with Python

Full Stack Python was a website written by software developer Matt Makai from 2012 until 2022 that taught developers how to build, deploy, and operate applications with Python. The content was designed to be read after learning the initial Python syntax so that a developer would have a topics map where they could see dozens of concepts and code libraries implementations they could learn next to go from beginner to intermediate and advanced software developer.

However, with the launch of ChatGPT, it became apparent that LLMs can often provide a better learning path for developers because they can ask questions and get immediate, relevant answers as they learn. In addition, in 2022 I started working on my other side project Plushcap a lot more. I'm really only able to focus on a single side project at a time due to job and family commitments so much of the content here started falling out of date.

Still, I love teaching people software development, especially with Python. So I asked myself how I can still make it valuable to readers in the age of LLMs and keep the information updated, which is a non-trivial task considering the 150,000+ words across dozens of topics pages.

The three important decisions I landed on to solve this problem were:

1. Keep everything human-written with no LLM-generated output to ensure consistent writing style for reader engagement.
2. Update existing topics and write new topics that connect to Plushcap so it's all under one side project.
3. Add "what to prompt to learn more" so readers can also use LLMs during their learning journeys.

With those three decisions made, I also knew I had to fully update topics pages that were 4+ years old. So over 2026 I'm working to update as many pages as possible and port them into a "/learn" section on plushcap.com, with clear markings that the pages are human-written and when they were updated. As each page gets updated, I'll link the below topics links to the new pages. The links in the table of contents that go to the new pages will have a "off site arrow up to the right" icon next to them so it's clear those pages are updated on Plushcap's site. That's a long winded way of saying I hope to keep much of this content updated for years to come! Thanks for bearing with me. - Matt

What do you need to learn first?