This video is inspired by my friend Heather Downing, who asked me how I would go about learning "something like... distributed PostgreSQL for instance". That's a great question!
I've set up distributed SQL Server before, but never had the need to do that with Postgres. The reason why is simple: I let DigitalOcean do it for me. Before that, it was Heroku or AWS.
That said, this really is something I should know how to do, so challenge accepted Heather!
In this premium video I walk through how to set up an interactive tutorial for yourself using both Claude Code and Copilot. As always, you start off with a solid set of instructions that you can build on top of. Here's mine:
# Learning Distributed Postgres
A client wants me to set up a distributed PostgreSQL system for their application. I know Postgres very well, but I need to learn more about horizontal scaling. They are aware that I'm spending the weekend getting up to speed. They trust me.
Create an interactive tutorial in steps. Only create one tutorial at a time. Each tutorial should be, at most, 30 minutes of hands-on work. I don't want to read a wall of text, I want quick explanations with repeatable steps to carry out. I want to understand WHY I am doing something too.
Recommend next steps at the end of each tutorial.
Each tutorial should be a markdown document that I can refer back to. There should be questions to prod my thinking and a place at the end where I can take notes.
When I am ready, I will ask for a quiz that should cover the markdown documents that I have completed.
Start at the highest level possibleFrom there, it's a simple process:
- Start off small!
- Ask a lot of questions.
- If your questions lead to something interesting, have Claude create a review document for reference.
- Move on to the next tutorial, based on what you learned in the first.
That's it! Here's the video, and hope you enjoy!