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Docker: Explained to a 5 year old. πŸ‘ΆπŸ»

Dhravya on March 16, 2022

When I was starting out with docker, everything was really difficult for me to figure out. But don't worry. I'm here πŸ˜‰ Docker is an AMAZING tool ...
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Amit Wani

Wish someone could have taught me like this when I was 5 😁 AwesomeπŸš€

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Dhravya

thanks a lot!

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Mohamed Tammam

Docker wasn't there when you were 5 πŸ˜‚

 
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Dhravya

You can map the container's port to your device's port (Which can be anything you want)
so instead of -p 5000:5000 which maps the container's 5000 to your computer's 5000, you can do something like -p 5001:5000 which will show the 5000 port in the container, on 5001

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Saikat Roy

Wow Really Great Explained. when I first started faced a lot of difficulties to just imagine those basic things.

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Dhravya

I know, right! Same with me. I used to try to watch these tutorials which would be lengthy and still ended up confused with the basics

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Dhruv Mehta

Damn bro! You are just 16 years old but you explained what Docker really is in a way like you have been learning docker since you were born XD
Very well done. I am really very impressed.

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Mohit Yadav

Haha, really!

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Gonzalo MuΓ±oz

Dude!! I got to confess: today I won a battle against prejudice.
When I saw "16yr old" on yet another dev blog, I was about to nope outta here (I've had bad experiences before)
But something made me stay. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but it turns out that you really have a knack for explaining things (not the same as writing about something). I loved the clean and concise style and even some figures like the one with the bee.
I'm almost twice your age, but today I learned from you.
Keep up the good work, and never stop growing!

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Marco Moscatelli

I am learning this concept right now and this explanation was very helpful

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Dhravya

thank you for the feedback!

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Rahul Kumar

Thank you so much for this tutorial.

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Richard Rhein

Awesome explanation, good idea to explain in simple words, so that everybody can understand this.

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devanica

Finally someone said it, and in a way that I understand it. There are tutorials for everything but publishing APIs and other "little things" gave me a lot of headaches!

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Dhravya

Thank you! Glad I could help

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Anneta Wamono

Your post makes me want to start messing around with Docker. Thank you for your very approachable introduction to Docker.

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paiman

Nice explanation 😍

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Dhravya

Thanks a lot!

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Jackson Kasi

wow! nice πŸ€—

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Dhravya

Thank you!

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Jason V. Castellano • Edited

This is the most precise basic explanation about docker.

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Dhravya

Thanks a lot! Glad you liked it

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tq-bit

But it works on my machine

Then we'll ship your machine

Got me good. Noted.

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Mohit Yadav

Awesome explanation, and congrats for this article's hotness 😁 Well deserved πŸ˜ƒ

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Dhravya

Thank you very much!

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Leticia Berry

Very clear explanation. Thank you!

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Diego (Relatable Code)

Really nice explanation!

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pawanprateek16

Very useful and Helpful informative.

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Vignesh

Hey this is an awesome article. Great way to put things in an easy-to-understand format.

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Michael

Love the "explain to a 5 year old" memes

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Dhravya

hahah yeah, it's not really for a 5 year old

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SVGator

Super helpful :D Awesome of you to share

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devibhattaraii

Oooh this explanation is amazing!

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usmangq12

Thank you. This article has cleared a lot of my confusions related to Docker. I really appreciate it.

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Andre AL

Nice explanation 😁

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Bobby Iliev

Great post! well done! πŸ™Œ

For anyone interested to learn more, I could suggest this free eBook here:

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The guide is suitable for anyone working as a developer, system administrator, or a DevOps engineer and wants to learn the basics of Docker.

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…
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Mirzafaisal

I have no words to describe. this is the best and simple explanation of docker!
i was so confused about containers. thanks alot!!

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Dhravya

it wont run both the container and your original app. but yes, if you manually do it, there will be a collision and only throne that ran first will work (the other will error out)

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Photostockeditor

Thanks!!!

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Oluka Isaac

This is awesome

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Chao

Awesome post. Do you think Docker is good for local development ? I'm definitely sold that for deployment it is awesome. For local dev, although it saves some environment settings hassles, everything we do now need to be through docker. so far I felt a bit overkill to use docker for local dev environment. appreciate your thoughts!

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Dhravya

For local development, yeah, it's not ideal. But for stuff like keeping multiple background processes online, (like running an API on computer when it's on), is an ideal use-case for docker desktop because then you can have multiple stuff running in the background with the minimum memory usage and no hassle of setting it up to run automatically and stuff

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bherbruck

If you use vscode, check out devcontainers. They changed my life. I never develop on my host OS and ALWAYS in a devcontainers now.

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Dhravya

Yes, I checked it out too. They are really good

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Richard Joseph

You've made me sad, and I haven't read this yet (I will). Why? Because, for some unknown reason, I was thinking of writing something like this, on Docker, only last week, I was going to call mine "Explain Docker to me like I'm 5 years old", this is not a joke, I will get over it 😭

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Krishna Kishore (KK)

Good introduction, but I dont agree with the title! A 5-year old wouldnt have learnt anything from this post - probably great for a developer with 1 year experience?
Wish you had written some lines explaining WHY a containerization is needed - what problems existed before!
Overall, this is a great short intro to getting started! Thanks!

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Dhravya

Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. The title is just a metaphorical way of saying "in easy terms", and not for a real 5 year old. It's common to see such posts in DEV community

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Gurkirat Singh • Edited

Nice post. I have increased its visibility already. Shameless promotion just in case anyone want to learn how to create base images using docker scratch or directly from Linux filesystem.

tbhaxor.com/create-docker-base-image/

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Liviu Lupei

Well done!
You explained it in such a simple way, while including code and technical details.

I remember some former colleagues talking in 2014 about Docker and saying how it would make life easier for DevOps and Devs.

And the next year I started endtest, to make life easier for testers as well.

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Dhravya

Thank you!

Wow, endtest is awesome! definitely will check it out

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Atharva Shirdhankar

Awesome Write up and explaination πŸ”₯πŸš€.
One thing I want to say it's not that important but the file name will be .Dockerfile right
It's written app.py for Dockerfile code snippet/image.

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Dhravya

oh yes, my bad. It's supposed to be called Dockerfile. I'll correct the mistake. Thanks for pointing it out!

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Adesoji1

Thanks, simple explanation

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PUNEET VAISHNAV

Good explanation

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Rabeeh Ebrahim

You explained nicely ☺️

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laidah

Thank you so much for the lovely and simple explanation! It helped me to conquer my fear of using docker.

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Manpreet Singh

Great beginner friendly tutorial man
Good work

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Thyez de Oliveira

Thank you.

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Shashank Pratapwar

My 6 year old son is now playing docker docker instead of doctor doctor. Thanks to you.

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Gerardo Mathus

Great post πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘! Cheers