Pinterest is an excellent example of how the 3 things (display, storage, and math) come together to create a web app.

I love Pinterest. Scrolling through photo after photo. It’s a great way to relax. So that’s the easy part. You can see the display right there.

But how are you able to see the photos? Because someone uploaded a photo to Pinterest and it was stored on a web server. Just logging onto Pinterest, a request is made to the database and I get to see all those lovely photos displayed.

So where does the math come in? One simple example. When I signed up for Pinterest, I entered my name into two fields: “first name” and “last name”. Now when I log in to my Pinterest page it’s titled “Lisa Savoie”. Full name = first name + last name. The two strings of letters were added together, like beads on a bracelet, to create my full name.

So…
I log onto my Pinterest home page. Pinterest uses math to add my first name to my last name so my full name appears at the top of the page. A request is made to the database where the pretty pictures are stored. And those photos are displayed on my screen so I can spend the next hour procrastinating gathering ideas. Easy-peasy.

Does this sound interesting to you? Like to learn more? I’ll be writing more blog posts that attempt to explain development in simple, real-world terms. So stay tuned!