FastAPI project tutorial — build & deploy a real API, not a toy
Most FastAPI tutorials stop at /hello and a couple of @app.get decorators. Production FastAPI starts after that.
The FastAPI starter tutorials on YouTube get you to your first 200 response in ten minutes, then leave you stranded the moment the real questions show up: how do you structure routers, where does the Pydantic v2 schema live, how do you wire async SQLAlchemy without footguns, what does a clean lifespan dependency tree look like, what does the test pyramid look like with TestClient, how do you ship it on a Dockerfile that the CI actually trusts.
Our FastAPI track is 101 lessons that hit each of those questions in order. By the end you've shipped a multi-user service with JWT auth, async Postgres via SQLAlchemy 2.0, file uploads to S3-compatible storage, background tasks via APScheduler, Stripe-style webhooks, 65% test coverage, Docker + a `fly.toml`. Then the FAANG-tier system design track adds caches, queues, rate limits, and the operational vocabulary interviewers want to hear.