Learning in Public: Building a Pizza Delivery App with MERN and Microservices

Raju — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:31:31 +0000

For a long time, I was searching for more than just tutorials — I wanted to learn how to think like a software engineer.

Despite completing my Master’s in Software Engineering, I recognized a gap in consistently applying concepts to build scalable, real-world systems.

Like many developers, I found myself jumping between resources, without building anything substantial end-to-end.

So, a week ago, I made a deliberate decision to change that.

I committed to a structured learning path through Coder’s Gyan by Rakesh Kohali and started building a Pizza Delivery Application from scratch using the MERN stack — with a focus on real-world implementation and engineering best practices.

🔧 What I’ve worked on this week:

Instead of just following tutorials, I focused on building with intent and making engineering decisions:

• 🏗️ Designed a microservices-based architecture for scalability
• ⚙️ Set up a Node.js backend with TypeScript for maintainability
• ✨ Enforced code quality using ESLint and Prettier
• 🔄 Automated workflows with Git hooks (Husky)
• 🧩 Structured an Express.js application with proper configuration
• 📊 Implemented centralized logging (Winston) and robust error handling
• 🧪 Applied Test-Driven Development (TDD) to guide feature development
• ✅ Wrote automated tests using Jest and Supertest
• 🐳 Containerized services using Docker (Node.js + PostgreSQL)
• 🔐 Designed and built an Authentication Service using TDD
• 🔑 Implemented secure JWT-based authentication for user management
• 📡 Tested APIs using Insomnia

💡 Key takeaway:

Understanding concepts is not enough —
real growth happens when you design, build, and justify your decisions.

🎯 I’m currently focused on becoming a Backend Engineer, specializing in Node.js and microservices architecture.

Going forward, I’ll be sharing:

🧠 How I’m building each component
🚧 The challenges I face
⚖️ The decisions I make and why

Building in public, one step at a time 🚀

📊 Tracking my coding progress:
For those interested in my daily commitment, here’s my WakaTime dashboard showing hours coded and projects worked on — WakaTime Profile

Learning Laravel 12 by Building a Medium Clone

Raju — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 07:26:09 +0000

Sharing my journey with Artisan, Tinker, Blade, Flowbite, and Vite

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been diving
into Laravel 12 as part of my journey to become a better full-stack developer. Instead of following tutorials step-by-step, I wanted to build something real — a Meidum Clone to put my learning into practice.

In this post, I’ll share how I've used Artisan, Tinker, and tools like Blade, Flowbite, Tailwind CSS, and Vite to build this project and grow as a developer.

🛠 Why Laravel 12?

I chose Laravel 12 for this project because of its powerful ecosystem, simplicity, and flexibility. Laravel offers a range of tools out of the box that make web development faster and more efficient. I’m particularly enjoying the developer experience with tools like Artisan and Tinker, which have become essential parts of my workflow.

⚡ Laravel Artisan — A Developer’s Best Friend

Artisan is Laravel’s command-line interface, and it’s one of the features that has significantly improved my development speed. Whether I’m creating models, migrations, controllers, or performing database operations, Artisan makes everything feel seamless.

For example, creating a model, migration, and controller for my project is as simple as:

php artisan make:model Article -mcr

This command automatically generates:

A model for interacting with the database
A migration for setting up the database structure
A controller to handle the business logic

Another useful command that speeds up my workflow is:

php artisan migrate

This quickly runs database migrations and updates my SQLite database. Simple, yet so powerful!

💬 Laravel Tinker — Play with Code

Tinker is another great tool in the Laravel ecosystem. It’s essentially a REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) for Laravel, allowing me to interact with the application directly from the terminal.

I use Tinker to test queries and data operations, without needing to go through the entire process of creating views or controllers. For example, to add a new article:

php artisan tinker

And then inside Tinker, I can run:

Article::create([
  'title' => 'My first article',
  'content' => 'Learning Laravel is fun!',
  'user_id' => 1
]);

Tinker allows me to quickly verify that my database operations are correct without needing to set up the full frontend.

🎯 Learning and Building Along the Way

As I continue to work on this Medium clone, I'm focusing on building and learning at the same time. Laravel's tools, like Artisan and Tinker, have been integral in this process. They not only improve my productivity but also help me better understand how Laravel works under the hood.

By building a real project, I get to apply my learning in a meaningful way, which is much more effective than just following tutorials. I’m learning how to:

Work with Blade templating
Build beautiful, responsive UIs with Flowbite and Tailwind CSS
Manage assets efficiently with Vite
Leverage Laravel’s powerful features like Artisan and Tinker to streamline development

🔗 Connect and Share

If you’re also learning Laravel or building a full-stack app, feel free to reach out or share your progress. I’m always open to connecting with others and sharing what I’m learning. You can follow along with my journey as I continue to build and improve this project.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

Forem: Raju