this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Bro I don't even understand what a server is. My spouse explains it to me like every second week and I get it for like 30 seconds but I just don't understand to remember. I'm also not sure what a router is. Apparently Wifi is like radio, just waves? Wtf
I've got a MSc degree in Biomedicine and before going on parental leave (still am) I've worked in pharmaceutical research and with DNA/RNA analytical services in the lab. My biggest tech experience was trying to code with R and I hated it and it was a mess.
To be fair, R is a pretty awful experience to use, even as a seasoned programmer.
It really is. Even for data analysis there are (apparently and hopefully) much better programs/languages (not sure what term would be correct here). I was actually assigned to an institude for computational biology to help me with the coding for my Master's thesis but the people DID NOT USE R so they didn't provide any help anyway. And I had to use R. They mostly used mathlab. Later, when I started working, Graphpad Prism absolutely did the job necessary. Most of the "coding" I used R for could have honestly just be done in Excel.
But the worst part of it is making it through and it completely doesn't matter. Like, people who actually code for a living don't care in the slightest about R. Just because I now have fought my way through it doesn't mean it is anywhere useful to learn C or PHP or whatever, mostly because the field of use is so narrow and specific and not one of those "universal" languages (for lack of a better term) that you actually can build software and websites and apps with. I cannot code anything "for fun" even if I wanted to. I remember there was something HTML something in R, but come on. (Also I forgot what HTML is.) This is not what it is used for and it gives me nothing. While my spouse, who is a software developer with the patience of a saint when it comes to my stupid questions, used his knowledge of python to learn Rust and then play around with C and now Go and even go to a conference about Go and actually understand whats going on there. There seem to be much more crosslinks and transferring going on and also a similar usefulness.
Please excuse the R-rant/R-rage, I am really frustrated about it because I went in with the best intentions and I wasted a year on this bullshit and it doesn't even make my CV look good.
A server is nothing more than a computer that is always running 24/7.
The server (or actually, computer) can do a lot of different things, such as simply storing a lot of files, streaming these files, download other files, etc.
Besides that, the server can run programs like Lemmy and because the server is generally 24/7, the Lemmy program will also be accessible 24/7.
Edit with an analogy: A server is similar to a literal restaurant-server. People can request data (such as a file) from a server and the server will serve that file to the people who requested it. Just like how people order food from the server in a restaurant, people 'order' data (such as a file or image) from the server.
WiFi is the medium of connecting devices wirelessly, so yeah, pretty much radio. Like walkie talkie style between devices, or most of the time, one of your devices and your router which actually carries the internet connection from the wall and passes it to such devices in a basic sense.
When you're outside of your house the internet you get on your phone is not (usually) carried by WiFi but is instead through a cellular network using the same (or similar) tech that is used when you have a phone call or send text messages. But once again instead of sending phone call data or text messages, it streams an internet connection to your phone.
I know you didn't actually ask for an explanation but I thought it would be fun to try and write it out anyway.
A server is just some computer somewhere that other machines can connect to. You can get specialised hardware and network setups and other technical stuff, but you can also just use your personal laptop as a server by allowing people to connect to it. A server essentially boils down to someone leaving their computer on.
Wifi is just radio waves. You can think of it like people talking on a two-way radio, except instead of humans speaking it's computers.