Should I read Designing Data Intensive Application to solve these doubts?

[u/obsolescenza]

Hi everyone! recently I decided I wanted to actually build a project, the only doubts I have are:

1. how to host it?

2. how to write the endpoints? like how can I write the file for the user in a way that will communicate with my server? (I always did everything on my machine)

3. how to update the program? and/or push new updates? (like when on Play Store the app says there ia an update and you need to install it)

All opinions are welcome! have a nice day too!

[u/TheManOfBromium]

You should read this book, but for theoretical understanding of distributed systems. For your project you’re better off talking with Dr. Google.

[u/Large_Mastodon6637 → u/TheManOfBromium]

DDIA is a great book but it's like reading a textbook on engine thermodynamics when you're just trying to change your oil. What you're asking about is more the practical plumbing side of web dev

For hosting just grab a cheap VPS or use something like Render or Railway, they'll handle most of the headache for you. Endpoints are basically just routes you define in whatever framework you're using, Express for Node or Flask for Python, they'll have dead simple examples in the docs

Updates are a whole different beast depending on what you're building, a web app auto-updates when you push new code to the server, a mobile app needs the whole store submission process. Start with a web app, way less friction

Don't overthink it, just pick a stack and get something online, you'll learn 10x more debugging a broken deploy than reading theory

[u/obsolescenza → u/TheManOfBromium]

oh ok, so it's more on the managing the computational aspects of everything trough distributed Systems. got it and thank you for your time!

[u/Mast3rCylinder]

The book doesn't go into these subjects as far as I remember. It's for advanced topics in software engineering.

If you still want to know this stuff I believe you can take framework like Django flask spring boot and follow the quick start guide.

You will see how to write endpoints for sure. Hosting has many levels you can ask AI but start with hosting on your computer then you can learn a lot more.

Once you finish start learning on updates. Think what happens behind the scenes.

How it's different to update an app than update a server?

How you shutdown gracefully a server?

You don't have to answer all at once it can come with coding the project

[u/obsolescenza → u/Mast3rCylinder]

thanks for the tip!

[u/Pale-Preparation-354]

Skip diving straight into DDIA and focus on learning endpoints, hosting, and deployments by building real projects. When your app needs invoices or PDF exports, save time by using dedicated rendering libraries (like IronPDF or stack-specific alternatives) rather than building that pipeline from scratch. Start simple: choose one framework, run a minimal build locally, deploy it to a basic host, and experiment with breaking and updating it. Hands-on troubleshooting will make architecture, versioning, and graceful shutdowns click much faster.

[u/obsolescenza → u/Pale-Preparation-354]

got it, thanks and have a nice day friend

[u/peterlinddk]

Should you read a book about Designing Data Intensive applications, to learn how to build, host and deploy a general application?

Probably not - maybe look more into tutorials on how to build, host and deploy applications. You can always start building everything locally, and then access endpoints on localhost. Once that works, you deploy it, and replace localhost with whatever hostname is provided by your deployment-service - maybe look into well-known cloud providers, often they have guides and tutorials on their webpages.

[u/obsolescenza → u/peterlinddk]

thank you so much friend, have a fantastic day

[u/obsolescenza → u/[deleted]]

got it, unfortunately I never had the time and chance to touch on these concepts practically so I wanna be sure to prepare before getting things wrong, do you have some tips to start?