This may be a controversial approach, but I recently had to set up reverse proxy along with DNS configuration and certificate handling. I pair programmed with an LLM.

My experience was this… I described what I wanted to set up, my objectives (like containerisation, zero touch deployment, idempotence, etc) and it gave me a starting point. It threw a few bad ideas in but I also asked it to help me stress test against the objectives. I think it’s all just about working now. I learned a lot about shell, docker, nginx, terraform, VM metadata, data persistence, pulling it all in from a git repo, bootstrapping nginx with self-signed certificates, auto renewal, vscode devcontainers and more. Honestly I’m worried about what a pro would make of my code, but I made huge steps in a relatively short time. Disclaimer: I am a software engineer who was keen to learn this stuff and get moving quickly.

I would definitely consider this approach if you’re new to the area.

Some cultures have a way of counting to ten on one hand. This represents six in one version of that system.