Why I'm learning the backend properly

It would be easy to keep building everything in Next.js. I know it, it works, and it ships fast. But there's a difference between being good with one tool and being a real engineer.

So this platform runs on a deliberately different stack. Next.js for the front, FastAPI on Cloud Run for the backend, Cloudflare D1 for the database, Firebase for auth.

The point isn't to be contrarian. It's to understand the seams. CORS, JWT verification, SQL migrations, deploy pipelines. These are the things you never learn when a framework hides them from you.

I'm documenting the whole climb in this journal, because the person who learns in public becomes the person others learn from.