W5D1: I know Javascript

I've entered the matrix. The more I learn, the more I see things in code. I can see why Richie (friend who directed me towards this path) told me programmers feel like god. It's just a whole new world, mapped out in binary.

As I queued up for a League of Legends game, I started asking myself, "Damn, how many get and post requests are we going through to connect to this game? Just how big does the Riot (the company that made LoL) servers have to be that it hosts millions of players,  all without any significant lag?"

The more I learn at Makersquare, the more I can visualize the big picture of how technology runs this world, but at the same time, more and more questions start popping up in my head about the inner workings of tech.

I must know more! I must learn more.



What we did today:
1. Self Assessment
I don't feel too good about this one, but seeing as how hectic last week was, I feel justified

2. Lecture on Intro. to Express.js

3. Pair programming on Express
Know about bitly? It's a website that allows you to type in a URL and shortens that URL for you. We were given a partially finished, full-stack repository to work with. Using Node.js' framework called Express, our goal was to implement an authentication system and other features that will enable users to have their own private set of shortened URLs.

This sprint is very important to web development. Most sites these days require you to sign up to make an account. Naturally, authentication becomes important in protecting our users and their information.

Important takeaways for this sprint:
 -- Bcrypt is a key derivation function that takes a password, does a whole bunch of stuff to it to make it into a long hash string, which is stored inside our databases. This is important because, in the case that a hacker gets a hold of our databases, the passwords will be safe because it's indistinguishable from the actual password.
When a user logs back in, the inputted password goes through the same key derivation function, is compared to the hash in our database, and logs the user in if the two match.

 -- Sessions are used to keep users logged-in for a period of time, and not require our users to tediously log-in over and over again. This is why even though you close your Facebook tab, you are still logged in when you open FB back up again.

4. Town hall

2.8.16