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Explaining SSH to my Uber Driver

Jessica Wang on November 27, 2023

In this blog, I'd like to explain SSH to you as if you were my Uber driver. The point of this exercise is to pretend like you have no prior experie...
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Paulo Camilo

Absolutely brilliant, thank you! I learned also about those mambo jambo issues from authentication.
Tank you again - and you gained a follower.

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Khalid ElGazzar

After such explaination, that Uber driver will love getting into Tech 😁

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Jessica Wang

LOL that's a compliment :)

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Travis Sauter-Hunsberger

The briefcase analogy really helped me with the concept of key encryption. I have struggled so much to understand why and how that works! I was missing the piece where the server passes the data back to me after it adds its lock. I have read so many training modules that talk about encryption, and none of them have been very clear about that step, leaving me so confused as to how the server unencrypts the data when it either doesn't have the key, or only has a portion of it. Thank you for clarifying that for me!

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Bobby Iliev

This is amazing!

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Thomas Bnt

Aw love your drawings!

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AsadSaleh

Waiting for the Uber driver to become a senior fullstack engineer at Uber

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Jessica Wang

LMAO. And then they end up being my manager and immediately give me a raise + promotion. That's the dream XD

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Zex

Thanks for writing. I just think you should change the title. You do not know your Uber driver. He or she might surprise you.

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Jessica Wang

Thank you for the feedback! I don't mean to imply anything about Uber drivers / their level of understanding of tech. If you look at the author's note, you can go to the blog and read the origin story of this title. It has some historical meaning for me and also what I feel to be a good hook.

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Zex

Thanks for your reply. I was a bit narrow minded :)

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therubberduckiee profile image
Jessica Wang

Not at all! I did worry when I created this title that I would be implying something about Uber drivers, which I did not intend to do. I myself sometimes do Doordash food delivery, I have a lot of respect for these Uber driver backgrounds - some of them have taught me about business, law, and more during our drives.

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Marcin Węglowski

Great explanation. It proofs people can explain difficult topics in simple words - and this is how it should be.
Your article reminded me of a book titled: "Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People" by Aditya Bhargava.

I'd love to see your book as well :D
BTW: I am going to follow you on TikTok as well.
Go ahead, you are doing an impressive job ;)

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Thiago Silva

Thank you, this was amazing, I feel so much confortable now talking about SSH

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Jun Nguyen • Edited

you see your ditigal avatar pop up

@therubberduckiee
It should be "digital"

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Caleb Abuul

Your story telling is top notch... It made everything come to life. Thank you.
Could you write about resolving merge conflicts on git/github?

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therubberduckiee profile image
Jessica Wang

That's an interesting topic. Let me do some research into it.

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Ganesh

Good attempt.
Keep going

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samyip9000

Very helpful! Thank you.

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Avinash Dalvi

Cool explanation

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Erwin Nurhaq

Best

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Gabriel Chamorro Moris

Wow! These pictures deserve a standing ovation! 11/10, would hang on my imaginary gallery wall!

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Jessica Wang

Thank you so much!!!!

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TRAN1995

Thank you very much for sharing detail information

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Govind.S.B

That public key authentication illustration is just chef kiss

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Jessica Wang

I'm glad you think so. Credit to the Youtube video I sourced at the bottom of the blog for coming up with the 2 locks analogy to explain it!