From Self-Taught to Google: How John Washam’s GitHub Repo Became a Global CS Study Resource

1 minute read

John Washam is a popular name on GitHub. He studied Economics and started his career in the Army, but left after two years.

Then, he turned to web programming, working in this field for about 15 years. He tried to launch several startups, but they all failed.

In 2013, he applied for jobs at many companies but realized his lack of a Computer Science degree was holding him back.

Determined to succeed, John decided to try for a job at Google. For a year, he studied for 8-12 hours a day. His hard work paid off when he got a job at Google. Later, he moved to Amazon.

This shows that with enough practice, you can master any skill. But here’s the interesting part. While preparing for Google, John created a GitHub repository with links to all the basic Computer Science concepts he learned.

This repo became incredibly popular and is now one of the top ten on GitHub, with 298,000 stars. John’s journey shows that with dedication and practice, you can achieve amazing things and help others along the way. Repo link in the comment.

About Me

Hi, I’m Shuvangkar Das, a power systems researcher with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University. I work at the intersection of power electronics, DER, IBR, and AI — building greener, smarter, and more stable grids. Currently, I’m a Research Scientist at EPRI (though everything I share here reflects my personal experience, not my employer’s views).

Over the years, I’ve worked on real-world projects involving large scale EMT simulation and firmware development for grid-forming and grid following inverter and reinforcement learning (RL). I also publish technical content and share hands-on insights with the goal of making complex ideas accessible to engineers and researchers.

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