📖 Dzidza

Dzidza ("learn" in Shona) is a field guide to this site's own source code. It teaches web development — the whole stack, not just the browser half — using Ndiro itself as the textbook. Every example is real code from the public repository, and every chapter tells you which file to open next.

It is written for an engineer who already builds serious systems — distributed storage, query engines, RPC services — but has never had a reason to care what a <div> is or why cookies exist. You will find your own world referenced constantly: a web app is a client-server system with an unusually hostile client, and most of what looks foreign here is a renamed version of something you already know.

How to read it

• Read with the repo open. Chapters quote short excerpts, but the point is always the real file. When a chapter says "open templates/base.html", do it.
• Use the browser's developer tools. Press F12 on any page of this site. The Elements, Network, and Console tabs are your jstack, tcpdump, and REPL for the frontend. Several chapters have exercises in them.
• The book runs in four movements: the mental model (anatomy, HTTP, the backend), the browser languages (HTML, CSS, Jinja, JavaScript), the two halves joined (the API, identity, storage, the capstone pipeline), and finally security and practice, which make you a reviewer.

Contents

1. 1 One page load, end to end
2. 2 HTTP: the protocol under everything
3. 3 The backend: Flask on one worker
4. 4 HTML: the document
5. 5 CSS: style, layout, theming
6. 6 Server-side rendering with Jinja
7. 7 JavaScript and the DOM
8. 8 The JSON API: both sides of fetch
9. 9 Identity: OAuth, sessions, guards
10. 10 Storage: DynamoDB, S3, and caches
11. 11 Capstone: the auto-log pipeline
12. 12 Security: thinking like an attacker
13. 13 Changing the site: a working method