PyCon India 2025

Embrace the Grind: Why your next project should be deployed like you are in 1999

Remember how it was like before one-click deploys and all the PaaS? I do. And its worth taking a time machine and going back there.

This talk is focused on beginners programmers of today that I've noticed, are swimming in a sea of abstractions. We will ditch the "0 to 1" easy buttons and take a hilarious, yet crucial, detour on the time machine back to the fundamentals of software deployment. Why? Because wrestling with DNS, battling package managers, and manually installing / deploying / maintaining your app on a bare server isn't just a rite of passage - it's the fire in where true understanding is forged.

Join me as I guide you through the embers of the "older" days. Through trials by fire, you'll discover why these foundational skills are more critical than ever in an AI-driven world, and why you'll never truly appreciate the elegant solutions until you've felt the pain they solve. Prepare to be challenged, amused, and ultimately, a more resilient and knowledgeable engineer.


  • Introduction
  • Acknowledge how easy it is to get something from 0 to 1 in today's age.
  • Talk about my origin story
  • And then, throw away the easy
  • How does building the same thing, look like, when doing it the hard way?
  • Domains
  • Servers
  • DNS
  • SSH
  • Deploy!
  • But why?
  • Point out everything that can go wrong
  • The gains
  • Point out why despite everything that can go wrong, it is still worth it.
  • Call to action

Prerequisites

Target audience: Developers who are beginners. It would also help those devs who feel like they're stuck on a plateau.

Target Audience

Beginner