Yeah I mean we specifically state at the start of the tutorial that you should be familiar with React and GraphQL (maybe we could add Prisma to that list?) because it’s not reasonable to explain all of these concepts in depth, for time’s sake, to someone before even starting the tutorial. I also think you can make it through the tutorial without knowing GraphQL and Prisma, but you may be hard pressed to branch off on your own afterwords and start writing your own app.
I’d be careful adding too much theory directly into the tutorial as we have a mission to introduce all the core features of the framework, not turn it into a lecture. We (Tom and I) felt that the Side Quest: How Redwood Works with Data section was a good spot for an interlude and is hopefully just enough theory to help those that are curious about where this data is coming from and where it’s going. Although looking through it now I see it only mentions Prisma once, in the little sidebar about the db variable. I’m all for clarifying that data flow in this section.
In regards to the diagram, I’d probably make a new one that’s more technology/concept focused (React -> Apollo Client -> Apollo Server -> Prisma -> Database) this one is more literally-focused (is that a think?) that shows how the data moves between the physical files you see in your editor to get your data to you. I think just adding more labels to this one will clutter it too much.
We could also link to specific pages in the Wrapping Up section of the tutorial for users who are ready to take the next step and include links to Apollo and Prisma docs, and link to specific docs depending on your familiarity with various concepts (never used GraphQL before, just need an overview of writing mutations, etc.)
If someone wanted to take on the task of adding our own custom docs that explain Apollo/GraphQL and Prisma from scratch, but in a Redwood-focused way, that’d be awesome! But that’s a loooottttt of work and those projects are going to be better at maintaining their own docs than we will ever be. The Apollo docs in particular are excellent at explaining GraphQL already. Although they don’t know about some of the tricks we’re using, like auto-mapping of the resolvers.