I'm also self taught (to an extent). When I was making the transition to tech, I dived into the fundamentals very deeply with a collection of MOOCs (CS50 by Ha

I'm also self taught (to an extent). When I was making the transition to tech, I dived into the fundamentals very deeply with a collection of MOOCs (CS50 by Harvard is a great place to start regardless of your current skill level). I also explored several MIT open courseware materials. There's a great experiment by this guy that's basically answering your questions directly: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ If you're not familiar with object-oriented (OO) fundamentals, I'd probably start there since you're on the backend and will probably be exposed to OO eventually (perhaps already).