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Each chapter of the book in a few slides: real conversations between Peter and the Senior developer, the figures they talk about, and a demo to try it yourself.
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Meet Peter. Pull up a chair.
Start with the Introduction: Peter’s first months as a developer, and the evening the Ultra Senior Developer pulls up a chair. Free to read in full, no account needed.
Read the introduction & meet Peter, freeChapter 1Sections 1.2 and 1.3 free in full
The Foundation Layer
Senior developer: “No, no. Open your terminal. Type git clone and paste the URL.”
3 slides3 conversationsDemo: Try Git: commits, branches and a real merge conflict
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Understanding Code
Peter: “When I create const user = new User(...), where does it live?”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Objects in RAM, rows on disk
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Networking - The Invisible Highway
Peter: “So we switched to IPv6 in 2011?”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Send an HTTP request
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Frontend: The User's Window
Peter: “I get that TCP delivers packets. HTTP structures the message. But then what? How do bits become a webpage?”
3 slides3 conversationsDemo: The rendering pipeline: what runs again?
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APIs: The Contract
Senior developer: “Think of it like a library card system.”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Sessions, JWT and refresh tokens as an app grows
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Backend Architecture
Senior developer: “Your code does five things: HTTP handling, validation, business logic, database access, email sending. When email provider changes, you touch the same function that handles HTTP. One change, five potential breaking points.”
3 slides3 conversationsDemo: One request through three layers
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Databases: The Persistent Memory
Peter: “User 999 doesn’t exist. Database caught that!”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: The same query with and without an index
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Beyond Request-Response
Senior developer: “The email takes 2 seconds because it calls an external SMTP server. Does the user really need to wait for it?”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Placing an order: synchronous or asynchronous
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From Code to Production
Senior developer: “Let me show you the real problem. On your laptop:”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Ship the environment: from “works on my laptop” to containers
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CI/CD: The Assembly Line
Senior developer: “Let me tell you about Integration Hell.”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: CI/CD pipeline and deployment strategies
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Observability: The Watchtower
Senior developer: “Think of your distributed system as a medieval kingdom with multiple castles (services). You need three types of watchtowers to understand what’s happening.”
4 slides3 conversationsDemo: Follow one request through its logs, metrics and trace
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You Are Now a Mid-Level+ Engineer
Senior developer: “Do you see the difference?”
3 slides2 conversationsDemo: The whole system, request by request
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