Introduction

[00:00:00]
>> Erik Reinert: The objective of this course is really to gain real world full stack deployment experience. I wanna take this from a different perspective, which is not just like, hey, let's just build something and take away what you can from that one thing that you built. This course is more focused on going through the evolution of infrastructure and going through the evolution of an application.

[00:00:28]
So we're actually going to be seeing infrastructure grow and change from the startup phase, the growth phase, the scale stages and all of that. So that's really what I want you to gain or take away from this course is not just to be able to build an application, but actually understand why we built or deployed the application the way that we did.

[00:00:48]
My name is Erik Reinert, also known as Blackglasses on the Internet. I'm a senior software engineer. I'm a content creator. I enjoy making diagrams and flowcharts and I'm a habitual problem solver. It's one of my favorite things to do, which is a big reason why I am in the career I am today.

[00:01:06]
I started out as a Frontend engineer. I did that for about two and a half years. I worked with Frontend before React was even a thing. PHP days, good old PHP days. And then I kinda realized that I hated that. And so I ended up moving from front end and learning kind of that experience and what I gained from it to backend engineering where I then started working on backends and learning things like Typescript and Go, learning how to build more communication between systems and stuff like that.

[00:01:37]
And then I kind of follow that into full stack and I did that for a while as well. I worked at a startup where I was kind of lead POC on a lot of the things that we were trying to do to get them out. And then again I kind of had, if you notice a little bit of a pattern here of almost every two and a half years I get bored and then I go do something else.

[00:01:58]
And so that's what I was doing. And this is kind of why I like talking about this really quickly is I don't think any of us have deterministic paths in this career. Someday you might wanna be a Frontend engineer, someday you might wanna do Backend, you might wanna do other things.

[00:02:12]
And so that was a big reason are a big part of why I kept jumping so much was because I kept following that curiosity which led me to really what I do now, which is DevOps and Platform Engineering. I focus very heavily on solving business problems, solving them at scale and solving developer problems as well, which is something I again, throughout the years of working in multiple areas, I kinda learned and got to grow and understand what people hate because I hated a lot of that stuff too.

[00:02:44]
So yeah, just a note about if you're ever wondering about should I get into DevOps or anything like that, this is kind of how I got into it. I do have three of my own courses that are on the platform. I try and stay in my own world a little bit, but I do like to branch out as much as I can.

[00:03:04]
I have introduction to DevOps for developers, enterprise Cloud Infrastructure and Introduction to Backend Architectures if you're curious about the courses. Basically, introduction to DevOps for developers is really focused on devs who wanna get into DevOps. You've never built pipelines before, you've never learned how to automate things or anything like that.

[00:03:25]
It's a great course to get started with again, can help with some of this stuff we do today. Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure. This one's really focused on, okay, I'm at a company now, I'm managing tons of teams. How do I go to scale? This is, I would say, a little bit beyond the course that we're doing today, but you can kinda see how we get to there after this course and then Introduction to Backend Architectures.

[00:03:52]
So if you've ever been curious about how do I build backends, how do I make sure that they're communicating properly, how do I scale them properly, all of that kind of stuff. Introduction to Backend Architectures is a pretty good one to check out too. And again, these all really kind of relate to each other, so if you're interested, be sure to check them out.

[00:04:11]
So yeah, let's get into the course introduction. I wanted to use this GIF because I felt like it was pretty appropriate. We're gonna be doing a lot today, [LAUGH] so strap in. I hope you guys are excited. This course is a heavy, heavy workshop course. It really is focused on being hands-on.

[00:04:28]
So yeah, there are a few prerequisites for this course, but they're also really basic. I wouldn't be too stressed about any of these prereqs. They're just really checklists really. If you have a little bit of a fundamental knowledge of Docker, that's fine. I really only expect you to have ran the CLI and maybe built one container image.

[00:04:50]
I don't expect you to know what linking is and volumes and none of that, but just a good understanding why you're using it and having maybe ran a Docker file or two. Experience using Git and GitHub, we're gonna be working with source control. We're gonna be using GitHub as where all that source control goes, as well as all of our automation.

[00:05:11]
So GitHub and Git are tied together on this one. A basic understanding of Amazon. And when I say basic, I mean very basic. I do not expect you to be some cloud architect. I do not expect you to know all of the resources in Amazon and if you do, that's amazing.

[00:05:28]
I don't, but yeah, just a basic understanding of maybe used it once or twice, set up the CLI, stuff like that. Command-line and scripting experience. Again, very simple, use the command-line, know that you've used it, having messed around with it a little bit. And same thing with scripting.

[00:05:47]
There's only one real script in the entire course, but it's a little bit of a doozy. So I'd like to make sure that you at least understand it. AWS account, this is really just for the actual course itself, something that you can provision resources in. I do wanna be clear.

[00:06:03]
We will be provisioning things that cost money. Sorry, them's the ways of cloud. The course is really focused on making sure that you can at least delete everything. Everything's on the free tier, so don't worry about breaking your wallet or anything like that. We're not provisioning 32 core instances or anything.

[00:06:26]
But yeah, just an AWS account. Make sure that you can create stuff and all of that. Also GCP account, we're only really using it just for the credential side, but being able to log in and access a project. And then again Supabase as well with a free plan, you might be like, why are we using Amazon and Supabase?

[00:06:46]
Don't worry, we'll get into it later. But yeah, those are really all the things that you need. The three phases that we're gonna be going into are the start-up phase, the growth phase and then the scale phase. So the start-up phase is really just the tried and true.

[00:07:01]
Just get it working, right? That's the whole point of the start-up phase. And what we're gonna do and what we're gonna focus on is just plain and simple, just get it working. I just wanna get my app online, I just wanna get it running in production. I just wanna make sure that it can easily be accessible.

[00:07:17]
I don't wanna worry about hosting things or resources or cloud or any of that. Just get it working. The growth phase, we got to go fast. Okay, now it's working great, fantastic. We got to keep pushing code, we got to keep making changes, we got to keep delivering features.

[00:07:34]
This is normally the next part of the evolution of an application. Hopefully, right, you make it, you get it online, and then after you get it online, you start dealing with growth and how to handle that. Then again, the last phase, scale phase is really plan for the future.

[00:07:51]
Normally when you start dealing with scale, you're starting to think about how much traffic will we have a year from now? How much traffic are we dealing with between now and a year from now? Where are we gonna be as a company? Right, all of these kind of things take into consideration.

[00:08:07]
So I do have links online for all of the materials, so if you need them, you can access them. The main link that you will need is just gitHub.com/ALT-F4-LLC/fem-fd-service. That's the main root repo. So if you guys wanna go ahead and pull that up now, feel free. Each phase in this course is set up into its own branch.

[00:08:31]
Now we're gonna start with the main branch, so we're just gonna start with the default main branch. But if you want to skip ahead and look really quickly at the other branches to see the final results of what we're gonna be doing, you're more than welcome to. Or if after the course later on you wanna go back and reference it, you're more than welcome to as well.

[00:08:50]
And again, like I said, each stage has its own branch that I've been maintaining for this.