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Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#131

Post by friedman23 »

guessmyname wrote: post #29
marcus_holmes wrote: post #13

I write the server-side in Go, cross-compile to a Linux binary, and set that up as a service on a vanilla Ubuntu box (usually Digital Ocean). Deploying a new version is a matter of sftp'ing the new binary (and any templates, images, etc) over the top of the old one and restarting the service. If I need a database then I use Postgres, and the setup for that can be a pain, so I get it documented/scripted using Ansible.…

I second this; Go + React.js (Vue.js in my case) I talked about it just a couple of hours ago [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17215658

How do you handle server side rendering? This is one of the reasons I chose to go full Node+React.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#132

Post by hellofunk »

jypepin wrote: post #126

The fastest way to get a web app running, for free is Rails + github + Heroku, imo. It's very fast to scaffold a new app, with diverse options you'd want (react/vue/other stuff). Host it on github, create a heroku app and push it.

What do you mean host it on github in the context of using Heroku, which would be your host? How is github involved?

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#133

Post by friedman23 »

dyeje wrote: post #114
chuckdries wrote: post #104

I'm surprised nobody is talking about Express for the back end. Maybe it's because I hail from the front end world, but I'm already so comfortable in javascript I'm faster in it than if I had to learn anything else. For the front end, I like Vue because it's just react with less boilerplate.

It blows my mind that there still isn't a polished ORM for the node.js / Express ecosystem.

> ORM for the node.js / Express ecosystem

Coming from Python world, it's probably for the best that nobody is using ORMs.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#134

Post by hellofunk »

ceejayoz wrote: post #37
jpochtar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky but... how is it cheaper to hire a freelance IT person to set up something for you, and help you when it breaks/changes, than $7/mo for Heroku?

The issue with Heroku is it rapidly gets more than $7/month if you hit any sort of scale.

Absolutely. We went from free tier to about 100/month in nearly no time with Heroku. It’s worth it though. Heroku takes care of all sorts of stuff, and that fee is still cheaper than hiring a sys admin for a small business.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#135

Post by madhadron »

> A big aspect of what I'm wondering is about automatically setting something up for keeping local/production environments in sync, quickly deploying to production, and not having to mess with a bunch of server configuration things, user accounts, security, etc.

Here's the simplest operational approach that I have yet found. Use Amazon RDS to run PostgreSQL as your production database. Architect your system to be one, static binary that is its own web server, contains all web assets compiled in, everything. It takes its configuration from a very small number of environment variables.

Start a CentOS VM. Copy the binary to it. Write a systemd service definition that sets the appropriate environment variables and runs the service as a dynamic user (so you don't have to worry about setting up accounts on the VM). Copy that definition to the VM and run `systemd daemon-reload` to make that service available. To deploy a new version, copy static binary of the new version to the VM and restart the service.

That glosses over lots of details, but it's your starting point for thinking about this. Every deviation adds operational complexity and has to pay for itself in reduced effort elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#136

Post by nicostouch »

nooyurrsdey wrote: post #63

For some reason people seem to constant doubt Ruby-ists and Rails Devs. I completely get that other languages have huge benefits over Ruby. Golang being compiled or Java running anywhere, etc... And ruby is slow, totally understood. But if youre talking about getting a functioning webapp up and running quickly ... no way anyone is beating a Rails dev in setting one up. The piping and scaffolding are all built in and…

I started building a SaaS in Java/Spring and months in realised Ruby/Rails would have been stunningly faster to get the same result. The full write-up is here for reference http://tayler.io/5-lessons-learned-as-an-indie-hacker/

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#137

Post by EGreg »

dyeje wrote: post #114
chuckdries wrote: post #104

I'm surprised nobody is talking about Express for the back end. Maybe it's because I hail from the front end world, but I'm already so comfortable in javascript I'm faster in it than if I had to learn anything else. For the front end, I like Vue because it's just react with less boilerplate.

It blows my mind that there still isn't a polished ORM for the node.js / Express ecosystem.

Maybe check out the one we built in the Qbix Platform. It does tons of stuff including sharding and autogenerating model code for you:

https://github.com/Qbix/Platform/blob/master/platform/classe...

https://github.com/Qbix/Platform/blob/master/platform/classe...

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#138

Post by 49bc »

madhadron wrote: post #135

> A big aspect of what I'm wondering is about automatically setting something up for keeping local/production environments in sync, quickly deploying to production, and not having to mess with a bunch of server configuration things, user accounts, security, etc. Here's the simplest operational approach that I have yet found. Use Amazon RDS to run PostgreSQL as your production database. Architect your system to be one…

Most languages don’t support static binaries. Other than Go I can’t think of any that make it easy.

Re: Ask HN: What's your favorite way of getting a web app up quickly in 2018?

#139

Post by DanHulton »

If you have the luxury of picking your stack, and don't mind using modern, clean PHP, try Laravel and Forge.

Laravel is a solid framework, and Forge handles the deploys, even going so far as to be able to deploy automatically when you push to master. Plus, you can use Laravel Spark to build an application framework base, with user login, teams, payment, all that written for you.

If you're not able to pick your stack, well, Ansible is pretty easy to learn. You can use Vagrant for the local dev, and ansible-vault for production secrets management. Deploys become a single command line, and that includes when you want to push an environment update.

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