Cloud Computing
"The cloud" is someone else's computer — but which one, and what are you paying for?
Hour 1 — Layers of someone else's computer
- IaaS, PaaS, SaaS explained with one running example (raw servers → Vercel → Figma)
- Where everything you've built this semester actually runs
- Hosting, domains, and DNS revisited — connecting a real domain to your project
- Scale: what happens when 10 users become 10,000 (and why startups love the cloud)
- Cost as a design constraint: free tiers, usage pricing, why AI features are expensive
- A word on outages: when the cloud goes down, who goes down with it
Hour 2 — Studio
- Deploy clinic: get every project properly deployed, custom domain optional
- Map the stack of a well-known product: which clouds and services is it built on?
Homework
- Come with 1–2 final project ideas and preferred teammates