learning.lab
learning.lab

A visual guide to backend infrastructure, built while learning it for real.

Every technology here runs locally in Docker first, then gets explained from the ground up — not just commands, but why it exists and how it works internally. Learn → build → teach.

Modules

1 of 9 live
ClickHousePhase 1

Columnar OLAP internals, MergeTree, replication & scale

available
PostgreSQLPhase 2

MVCC, WAL, indexing, query planning, replication

planned
RedisPhase 3

Data structures, caching, pub/sub, distributed locks

planned
RabbitMQPhase 4

Exchanges, queues, routing, dead letters, retries

planned
KafkaPhase 5

Topics, partitions, consumer groups, exactly-once

planned
MinIOPhase 6

S3-compatible object storage, buckets, presigned URLs

planned
ObservabilityPhase 7

Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, distributed tracing

planned
NginxPhase 8

Reverse proxy, load balancing, TLS, caching

planned
KubernetesPhase 9

Pods, deployments, services, StatefulSets, Helm

planned

The rule

For every technology: what problem does it solve, why wasn't something else enough, how does it work internally, how is it deployed, monitored, scaled, and backed up — and what actually breaks in production. If you can answer those, you've learned it, not memorized it.