Alright, buckle up, because I’m about to spill the beans on my “b2 fighting series” journey. It’s been a wild ride, full of face-palms, victories (small ones, mostly), and a whole lotta learning. Let’s dive in!
So, it all started with me wanting to get better at backend stuff. I was tired of just fumbling around, copying and pasting code snippets from Stack Overflow. I wanted to actually understand what I was doing. That’s where the “b2 fighting series” idea came from – I decided to tackle a new backend concept every week, battle it out until I kinda got it, and then move on. Think of it like a weekly boss fight, but instead of a dragon, it’s, like, message queues or something equally terrifying.
First thing I did was pick my weapons. I figured I’d stick with what I knew-ish: Python and Django. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Turns out knowing how to write a basic Django app doesn’t mean you know jack about building a scalable, robust backend. Lesson one learned the hard way.
The first fight was setting up a proper development environment. I’m talking Docker, folks. I’d heard Docker was the bee’s knees for backend development, but I’d always put it off. So, I bit the bullet. I pulled up a bunch of tutorials and spent a solid day just trying to get a simple Django app to run in a Docker container. I messed up so many things, I lost count. Ports weren’t mapping, volumes weren’t mounting, the container just kept crashing. Eventually, after countless restarts and a mild existential crisis, I got it working. Victory! Small, pathetic victory, but a victory nonetheless. I actually screamed when the app finally loaded in my browser.
Next up was diving into APIs. I wanted to build a REST API that could handle different requests with Django Rest Framework. I started by designing the API endpoints. Seemed simple enough on paper. Then I started coding. Serializers, ViewSets, Permissions… It was a whirlwind. I spent hours debugging why my POST requests weren’t working (turned out I was missing a CSRF token – rookie mistake, I know). I almost rage quit several times, but I kept pushing. Finally, after a few days of grinding, I had a functional API that could create, read, update, and delete resources. Booyah!
I then tried tackling authentication and authorization. OAuth2 and JWTs scared me. So I started with basic user authentication in Django. I added registration and login endpoints to my API, and then secured the other endpoints with permission classes. It took a few tries, but I eventually got it working. Then, I decided to get fancy and add social login. This was where things got really hairy. OAuth2 is confusing, man. There’s so much jargon and so many different ways to do things. I spent an entire weekend just trying to get Google login to work. I configured the Google Developer Console, set up the redirect URIs, and wrote the code to handle the callback. It was a pain, but the satisfaction of finally seeing that “Login with Google” button work was immense.
After that, I got brave and started experimenting with message queues. I wanted to learn how to handle asynchronous tasks, so I set up Celery with Redis as the broker. I wrote a simple task that would send an email after a user registered. Getting Celery to work with Django was a bit tricky, but after a few hours of tinkering, I got it up and running. I was amazed at how easily I could offload tasks to a background worker. It felt like I had unlocked a superpower.
The series isn’t over, I still have many things I want to learn. I’m gonna keep battling, keep learning, and keep sharing. It’s a process, a messy, chaotic, and sometimes frustrating process. But that’s what makes it fun, right? Wish me luck, I will need it!
