real-systems

13 articles · newest first

Flat illustration of a person carrying a copy of a database from an empty safe to a second safe

Backups, and losing everything: the copy you'll need once

Lesson 6 of where your data lives: what a backup actually is, what your plan does and doesn't do for you, and the Replit story that made it real.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of an open box containing a database cylinder, a key, a folder and a small server, with a person looking in

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What is Supabase? The backend-in-a-box, explained

Lesson 5 of where your data lives: the service behind a huge share of AI-built apps. What's inside the box, what's free, and what it asks of you.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person holding a magnifying glass over a table where only some rows light up

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What is a query? Asking the database a question

Lesson 3 of where your data lives: how your app asks for exactly the rows it wants, and what happens when the question has no "only".

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person arranging coloured blocks into neat rows and columns on a big board

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Tables, rows and columns: the shape of your data

Lesson 2 of where your data lives: how a database lays things out, why every column has a type, and the one column that connects everything.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a tidy set of labelled filing drawers with a person filing a card into one

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What is a database? Where your app keeps things

Lesson 1 of where your data lives: the organised place your app puts every sign-up, order and message, and why it isn't just a spreadsheet.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a restaurant cutaway: a dining room with a customer on one side, a kitchen with a cook on the other

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Frontend vs backend: the dining room and the kitchen

Lesson 6 of the journey of a tap: every part of your app lives on one side of a wall. Which side decides who can see it.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person pointing at an item on a large menu while a kitchen hatch passes out a plate

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What is an API? The menu your server serves

Lesson 5 of the journey of a tap: the list of requests a server will accept, why your app uses other people's too, and what an API key really is.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a friendly server cabinet with blinking lights connected by dotted lines to several phones

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What is a server? The computer that answers

Lesson 4 of the journey of a tap: where the request lands, what that computer can see, and why "serverless" still means servers.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a customer handing an order slip across a café counter and getting a tray back

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What is a request? The message behind every tap

Lesson 3 of the journey of a tap: what's actually inside the little message your phone sends, and the answer that comes back.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person looking up a name in a giant phone book, with a dotted line to a house on a hill

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What is DNS? How your phone finds a website

Lesson 2 of the journey of a tap: your phone knows a name, not a location. How it turns aliteq.com into a number it can actually reach.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

Flat illustration of a person holding an addressed envelope and pointing at one highlighted house on a map

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What is a URL? The address every tap starts with

Lesson 1 of the journey of a tap: the address your phone reads before anything else happens, and the four parts it's made of.

Sam Ortega · 40m ago · 4 min

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What is a backend? Explained for vibe coders, with a drawing

Frontend, server, database, API, secrets: the parts of your app you can't see, drawn as the journey of one tap, and why every security rule has to live on the far side of it.

Sam Ortega · 43m ago · 6 min

Flat illustration of a person dropping a key into a locked drawer under a desk, with a dotted line to a small server

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Environment variables and secrets, explained: the .env file

Why your app's keys live in labelled envelopes outside the code, which envelopes the browser gets a copy of (VITE_, NEXT_PUBLIC_), and where secret keys actually belong, from the tools' own docs.

Sam Ortega · 43m ago · 6 min