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

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

#531

Post by trcollinson » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #327

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…

> no way anyone is beating a Rails dev in setting one up I disagree. Elixir/Phoenix is as simple as Ruby/Rails and an order of magnitude more performant out of the box. Especially if you already know Ruby and the basics of functional programming. Plus, unlike Rails, you probably won't need separate servers for background jobs, websockets and caching.

Sorry to fact check here but on my Rails app I am getting 200ms return times. This is running a web application and a few hybrid mobile applications. Are you saying that basically out of the box with Elixir/Phoenix I would get 20ms return times? That would be amazing but I find that highly unlikely.

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

#532

Post by AngeloAnolin » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

This is what I use when I want to prototype something really quick.

VueJS

Surge.sh

Firebase (if there's a need to store data)

I think I already have a pretty established workflow when starting things up, due to numerous stuff I have built previously. Hence, the process of doing things multiple times (and making some tweaks to along the way) seems to make it really fast and straightforward.

My take is that just do repetitively what you feel comfortable at and at some point, you will reach a level where everything feels so easy and natural.

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

#533

Post by mcovey » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #406

enraged_camel wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>There are reasons people use frameworks. Security is one of them - I _love_ assessing apps which are written in plain PHP because they're almost always a trainwreck. It’s totally OK for a prototype to be a trainwreck because its purpose is to give you the ability to launch it in front of potential users, show them a few features and get their feedback.

If it is open to the public, your train wreck cannot be open to common vulnerabilities like sql injection. Full stop. You can avoid unit or integration tests, not complete features, or cut any corner you want aside from basic security.

Sure it can. Almost every website on the internet right now has undiscovered security holes. Obviously you won't be leaving them open on purpose, but not using a framework is a legit choice and "it provides security that you can't implement without one" is a bad argument.

Yes there's convenience in "somebody already thought about everything you need before you did" but there are also security libraries, checklists, tutorials, and other tools besides a full framework with all its baggage to help developers write secure code.

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

#534

Post by cpursley » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

trcollinson wrote: post #531

cpursley wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no way anyone is beating a Rails dev in setting one up I disagree. Elixir/Phoenix is as simple as Ruby/Rails and an order of magnitude more performant out of the box. Especially if you already know Ruby and the basics of functional programming. Plus, unlike Rails, you probably won't need separate servers for background jobs, websockets and caching.

Sorry to fact check here but on my Rails app I am getting 200ms return times. This is running a web application and a few hybrid mobile applications. Are you saying that basically out of the box with Elixir/Phoenix I would get 20ms return times? That would be amazing but I find that highly unlikely.

Yes, and likely faster.

http://www.akitaonrails.com/2015/10/27/how-fast-is-elixir-ph...

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

#535

Post by beeman » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

Xeoncross wrote: post #19

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.…

This is about as 2018 as it gets. Go and Rust are the only modern languages where you don't have to second-guess the stdlib for bad choices (looking at you php/ruby/javascript/etc..) yet provide amazing performance. Backend: Go (optional embed db: ledisdb / boltdb / leveldb / rocksdb / etc...) + Frontend: create-react-app / create-react-native-app

> as 2018 as it gets

sftp'ing a binary to your deploy target? That's more 2008 iyam...

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

#536

Post by mcovey » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #280

kristopolous wrote: post #168

Vanilla php + html5up + sqlite3. Everyone else here is trying to be stylish and fancy. Your customers don't care what language it's in or whether the code is beautiful. No cutting edge incomplete frameworks, convoluted tooling, piles of inaccurate documentation to read, inexplicable cryptic error messages with a bunch of incorrect solutions on stack overflow, or other incompetently over engineered bullshit. Just go a…

What exactly is the benefit of using sqlite over mysql in this case? Is the 10-15 minutes you might save looking up a quick setup tutorial for the system provided packages really worth the later problems? Postgres is slightly more complex (but pays for itself with additional capabilities), so I can see avoiding that unless your are already familiar with it. As for PHP, at this point it's not really any easier or hard…

I don't run a MySQL server on my personal computer. I don't want to run one. If I want to start writing code right away to flesh out an idea, SQLite is the tool I can use, it enables me to develop locally with no SSH/FTP overhead or setting up a VM. It lets me start writing code instantly. And it's performant enough for most any MVP, and the SQL dialect is pretty standard so you can upgrade to Postgres or SQLAnywhere or whatever you please when the time comes.

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

#537

Post by dorian-graph » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #514

dorian-graph wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an example I once ported an Elm project to Clojurescript and it was a 4x reduction in lines. I'm curious to hear more about this. I'm someone who's used Elm at work, and on the side is interested in Lisp.

I think it is much easier to get real-world nontrivial work done in Clojurescript compared to Elm.

Can you go into any more specifics? I'm genuinely interested! Do you think it'll stay true as Elm matures?

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

#538

Post by regulation_d » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

trcollinson wrote: post #531

cpursley wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no way anyone is beating a Rails dev in setting one up I disagree. Elixir/Phoenix is as simple as Ruby/Rails and an order of magnitude more performant out of the box. Especially if you already know Ruby and the basics of functional programming. Plus, unlike Rails, you probably won't need separate servers for background jobs, websockets and caching.

Sorry to fact check here but on my Rails app I am getting 200ms return times. This is running a web application and a few hybrid mobile applications. Are you saying that basically out of the box with Elixir/Phoenix I would get 20ms return times? That would be amazing but I find that highly unlikely.

For my load balancer heartbeat checks, I'm returning responses in 200µs.

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

#539

Post by KingMob » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

cutler wrote: post #387

kyriakos wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many successful companies and start ups that use PHP. The same way they exist for other languages and platforms. No start up became a unicorn because of the programming language they used.

With the possible exception of Clojure :). See Paul Graham on Lisp as the secret weapon.

What's the biggest Clojure start-up at the moment? Is it CircleCI?

Wal-Mart is pretty big into Clojure these days, but they were already huge.

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

#540

Post by kbenson » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

mcovey wrote: post #536

kbenson wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the benefit of using sqlite over mysql in this case? Is the 10-15 minutes you might save looking up a quick setup tutorial for the system provided packages really worth the later problems? Postgres is slightly more complex (but pays for itself with additional capabilities), so I can see avoiding that unless your are already familiar with it. As for PHP, at this point it's not really any easier or hard…

I don't run a MySQL server on my personal computer. I don't want to run one. If I want to start writing code right away to flesh out an idea, SQLite is the tool I can use, it enables me to develop locally with no SSH/FTP overhead or setting up a VM. It lets me start writing code instantly. And it's performant enough for most any MVP, and the SQL dialect is pretty standard so you can upgrade to Postgres or SQLAnywhere…

What I hear you saying is:

1. You don't necessarily want to develop in the same environment you deploy to.

2. You don't want to install some things on your development machine.

Together, those are dictating some development directions for you. That's fine. Those are perfectly valid choices. But I think it's easily summed up in your case as "You use sqlite because it fits well with your current development pipeline."

On the flip side, I do development on remote servers using vim. For me, sqlite provides little-to-no additional benefits, since MySQL or Postgres are a package install away (if not already installed), and that's a small price to pay for their additional benefits (for example, a much richer set of data types). At the same time, this type of development pipeline makes certain types of development harder (there's lots of tools for vim/emacs, but some things graphical IDEs provide are harder to achieve).

There is a middle ground, which is emulating the target environment through a VM on the development machine. It should provide the best of both worlds, for a cost of a little most complexity. I've never really gone for that, as I'm happy with the remote dev setup I have, and it's easier not to have to devote local resources to that for me. It's a popular choice as I understand it though.