13 different things that you can learn today if you want to be a tech
entrepreneur or a better engineer to make an application and ship it to your
customers!
Target audience
Read this if you are:
- A tech entrepreneur or want to become one
- An Engineer who wants to learn more about packaging and shipping an application end to end
- Someone having some tech background and little bit of exposure about how tech works
If you are a beginner, this blog is the right thing to follow to get a direction
to go into.
Its 2020! 🤯
You should be knowing these 13 things, no matter what position you are working
on. Even if you are a fresher or a VP of Engineering in some company or looking
forward to start your own company, these 13 things should form a part of your
skill-set, especially, if you are looking to launch something on the web and
expecting some income out of it.
This post will give you a direction to move into when making a product and
delivering it.I will upload detailed blogs individually for all 13 topics where you can
learn more in-depth. Till then, keep hustling and follow me for more insights!
Some background:
I learnt all these things from my personal experience while developing
intervue.io 😎
intervue.io is an easier way to take tech interviews
remotely with collaborative code editor and audio/video calling integrated in
the browser itself. It supports 25+ programming languages and gives a curated
question bank/home assignments that can be given to the candidate to test his
knowledge in a practical way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6BPRhYroo8
Ok! Enough of my marketing 😛
Let’s see “The Thirteen”!
1. Developing Frontend using React, Redux, Typescript & Node
What you will learn:
- React, redux, node and typescript for writing frontend code
- Making a responsive UI
Tech Stack Used
- Use React for rendering
- Redux for storing the Todos and managing a store to store data on the UI
- Typescript for strict typing (optional)
- Node for server side rendering (will help in SEO as well)
What you should do:
- Make the classic Todo application in Frontend using React, Redux, Node & Typescript.
- Follow this starter kit https://github.com/kriasoft/react-starter-kit or find a starter kit that supports typescript as well
- Make a User Interface that looks something like this:
React Todo App
The app should be able to
- Add todos
- List added todos
- Use a background image and a small logo in the app
- Search from the added todos using the search bar
- Fit in all sizes (make it responsive)
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used React, Redux, Typescript and Node to make intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
2. Front-end performance
What you will learn
- LCP, TBT, TTI, SI and other Lighthouse v6 scoring parameters and how a browser renders a webpage
- Content delivery network and Static storage for Frontend applications
- Browser caching
- Optimizing images (using webp for chrome)
- Minimizing your javascript using code splitting and chunking via Webpack
Tech Stack Used
- AWS Cloudfront (CDN) for serving assets (JS, CSS, Images)
- Browser caching with Cache-control headers (to cache assets on the browser only)
- AWS simple storage service (S3) for storing assets (JS, CSS, Images)
- Webpack, it’s various plugins and loaders
What you should do
Google page speed
insights now runs on
Lighthouse V6:
Lighthousev6 scoring calculator
According to the updated calculator, you should:
- First host your Todo application developed above on some environment
- Then calculate your website score and see the recommendations given by page speed insights
- Work on above scoring matrix and recommendations given by page speed insights to improve your score.
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used AWS Cloudfront and S3 for optimizing Frontend performance for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
3. Develop backend using Node, Sequelize and Postgresdb (Use Redis as cache)
What you will learn
- Node and Express to make APIs
- Middlewares
- Models (to make database table schema)
- Controllers
- Postman tool
- Curl request
Tech Stack Used
- Node
- Express
- Sequelize
- Postgres
- Postman
- Curl
- CORs
What you should do
- Clone the following repo https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter
- Install sequelize and connect to Postgres instance
- Make GET API to get todos
- Make POST API to add new todos
- Make GET API for todos search basis query parameters
- Store Todos in Redis Cache and add Cache eviction policy
- Use Postman to hit the APIs and request data from them
- Use Curl to do the above thing again
- Integrate the APIs with React frontend that you did in the first step (you might get CORs issues), we will solve it via our next step.
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Node Express to make backend microservice for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
4. Setting up nginx & integrate with other services
What you will learn
- Setting up Nginx and its configuration (nginx.conf)
- Setup domain routing in /etc/hosts
- Integrate Frontend to Backend and the database
- Routing via Nginx
Tech Stack Used
- Nginx
- Resolving the CORs issue
Sample nginx routing via nginx.conf
What you should do
- Get rid of the CORs error from the last step while integrating frontend with backend
- Setup nginx and make nginx.conf file in your machine
- Setup routing for frontend and backend services
- Frontend and backend should now be on the same domain but different locations
- First slash (/) call should go to nginx and it should decide where to route (Frontend or backend)
- Once nginx is integrated, complete your API setup
- Your Todos should now be directly coming from the postgresdb via APIs to the Frontend and rendered via React
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Nginx to do routing of Frontend, Backend and other micro-services for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
5. Dockerize your application: frontend, nginx, backend, postgres and redis
Now your application is running on local. Time to bundle it so it can be shipped
What you will learn
- Docker and Yaml syntax
- Making an image for all 4 services for your Todo application
- Running all four images as containers on your local to run the application
Tech Stack Used
- Docker
- Images & Containers
- Networking, container port and host port
Sample docker compose file
What you should do
- Use Docker to containerise your Frontend application for consistent behaviour across environments
- Use Docker to containerise Nginx
- Use Docker to containerise Redis
- Use Docker to containerise your backend application
- Use Docker to containerise Postgres
- For the above three make docker-compose.yml and make images for nginx, frontend, backend and postgresdb
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Docker to package intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
6. Jenkins CI/CD in groovy
Now we are done with packaging our Todo application as well, let us now make a
CI/CD pipeline to deploy our project to AWS.
What you will learn
- Jenkins CI/CD
- Setting up AWS EC2 instances and Security Groups
- Deploying docker containers on AWS
Tech Stack Used
- Jenkins
- AWS EC2
- Security Groups in AWS
- Groovy to make a pipeline in Jenkins
- Deploying Docker containers on AWS EC2 instances to run your application
Jenkins pipelines
What you should do
This one is a little tricky but do not give up and get it done!
- Signup to AWS (Amazon web services)
- Make an EC2 instance (take a micro instance which comes as free on AWS sign-up).You will have to increase the instance size going ahead, as images and parallel CI/CD pipelines will not fit in micro sized instance
- Install Jenkins on it
- After Jenkins is setup, expose it to an IP via Security groups
- Login to Jenkins and make 4 pipelines (Frontend, backend, nginx, postgres)
- Pipelines should clone the project, build it, dockerize it and deploy it on AWS instances (For this setup, you will have to deploy more machines to deploy your docker containers)
We will later comeback and integrate Kubernetes with it to make our deployment
more seamless
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
7. Kubernetes on AWS
Let us bring in Kubernetes and understand pods, services and deployments and how
docker images can be used for deployments here.
What you will learn
- Kubernetes on AWS to make a cluster (master is managed by AWS K8s services only. Hence it comes at a cost)
- Pods
- Services
- Deployments
- Cluster
Tech Stack Used
- Kubernetes
- eksctl to deploy a cluster
- kubectl to make a service and do deployments
What you should do
- Make a cluster on Kubernetes & use eksctl to bring that up
- Your cluster will add some AWS instances on the go (and it comes at a cost). Please verify the same before proceeding with it
- Make kubernetes_frontend, kubernetes_backend, kubernetes_redis, kubernetes_postgres yml files
- Update nginx and other environment variables to point to Kubernetes deployment names which are much more reliable and you will not have to point to IPs or do a Route53 entry for each service.
- Update your CI/CD to run kubectl and deploy images for the above pods
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
8. Setting up cloudfront with S3
What you will learn
- AWS Cloudfront to be used as CDN
- AWS S3 to be used as storage for assets
- aws-cli or Webpack plugin to upload assets to S3
Tech Stack Used
- AWS Cloudfront
- AWS S3
- AWS CLI
- Webpack Plugin to upload assets to S3
- Browser Caching headers
What you should do
- Setup S3 and integrate aws-cli in your Jenkins CI/CD to upload the build folder to S3. Alternatively use Webpack plugin to upload assets to S3
- Setup CDN (AWS Cloudfront) to pick data from S3
- Pass cache-control headers for efficient browser caching of assets
Your final pipeline will then look like this.
The “install dependencies and make build” step will make build and also upload
it to S3 when the above instructions are followed
CI/CD pipeline for Jenkins
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I used Jenkins CI/CD and Kubernetes to automate deployments for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
9. Route53 on AWS
What you will learn
- Your Todo Application will now open on a domain, fetch assets from CDN and hit backend via nginx to get data from postgres
Tech Stack Used
- Route53
- Domain and Hosting
What you should do
- Buy a domain from AWS or any other domain provider
- Install SSL for that domain using certbot (in your nginx service in kubernetes)
- Setup nameservers for that domain in your Route53
- Configure Route53 on AWS to add CNAME (this will be nginx service)
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I setup Route53 for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
10. Integrating Sentry for end-to-end frontend monitoring
Sentry is used to track run-time performance and
tracking if your users encounter Javascript errors. He can open your application
in different browsers/devices and may encounter errors that you might not have
encountered.
What you will learn
- Logging of runtime javascript error and debugging it
Tech Stack Used
- Sentry SDK integration
- End to End runtime performance monitoring
What you should do
- Integrate Sentry SDK in your React frontend
- Throw an exception and see if it gets recorded in the sentry dashboard
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I sentry for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
11. Integrating centralized logging with Kibana, fluentd & Kubernetes on AWS
What you will learn
- Bunyan and morgan logging in node
- Fluentd with Kubernetes to setup centralized logging
- Kibana to view logs and trends
Tech Stack Used
- Bunyan
- Morgan
- Fluentd
- Kibana
Kibana logging dashboard
What you should do
- Use bunyan and morgan to do logging in Node Server, Node Express Backend
- Use fluentd to setup centralized logging
- Use Kibana to view the logs
- Setup alerts in Kibana for any errors in backend services
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I setup logging with Kibana for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
12. GTM/GA integration to closely monitor how customers are using your
application
What you will learn
- GTM to manage events and see how your customers are using your application and where they are clicking
- GA dashboard to view trends
Tech Stack Used
- Google tag manager
- Google analytics
What you should do
- Integrate google tag manager and make a container inside it
- Use the GTM script with that container id in your frontend code
- Integrate basic Page view events recommended by GTM
- Integrate GA with GTM
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- How I setup GA/GTM with Kibana for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
13. Focused emailing with mixmax and mass emailing with sendy
What you will learn
- Sendy for sending out newsletters
- Newsletter management
- AWS Simple Email Service
Tech Stack Used
- Sendy
- Newsletter management
- AWS Simple email service
What you should do
- Make an EC2 instance and setup sendy on it (This will come at a one-time payment)
- Active AWS Simple Email Service
- Setup Sendy with AWS SES to send newletters to your subscribers
- Setup mixmax with your gmail account (A particular plan of mixmax allows you to schedule follow-ups)
Upcoming post (coming soon) ⌛:
- Setting up newsletter service and automated follow-ups for intervue.io
Till then learn the basics & follow me for more updates!
Conclusion 🤓
In this article I have discussed 13 things that you should know, each focusing
on a different aspect of product development. Now the choice is all yours:
Do you want to focus on something you already know and go a little bit here and
there to get your product out in the market?
Or, do you want to strengthen your skills by doing a project for a technology
you already have some knowledge in?
Or, will you rely on your favourite framework/library and do all the projects in
2020 with it?
Feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget to follow me for more upcoming
posts!
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