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Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

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Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#71

Post by sho »

namaria wrote: post #69
sho wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. I am a huge phoenix/elixir fan - I am procrastinating from elixir dev writing this very comment - but this is not even close to true. It is a big learning curve. It's absolutely worth it, IMO, but there is no way it is as easy to get started with as rails. Not even close. It's my framework of choice and a secret weapon indeed but let's not pretend it's rails-easy. It's just not.

Difficulty with Elixir is logarithmic, with Python is exponential. As the product accretes features, Python/JS tends to require much more expertise to deal with all the corner cases. Elixir keeps it long term maintainable. If you wanna explode and sell out, go for the early ease. If you plan on owning it forever, I'd say the upfront investment is more than worth it.

I don't disagree. I agree it's worth the extra effort up front if you're expecting the code base to last. And the exponential complexity you mentioned, well, that's basically why I left Rails. It can be designed well.. but you're going against the grain, and unless the rest of your team is totally on board, it's a struggle.

That wasn't the question though. The question was, which is easier? And let me tell you, you can't beat User.first. Even typing this comment I'm proving my point as I can't remember how to do that in ecto. User |> first() |> Repo.one()? after importing and aliasing a bunch of mysterious (to the beginner) things?

Right tool for the job. If i was building a temporary app, i'd use rails and make very very sure everyone was on board with the idea that it was temporary. I might even sabotage it so it couldn't be used long term (us evil old rails devs have.. tricks). Proper long term infra? elixir.

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#72

Post by namaria »

sho wrote: post #71
namaria wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty with Elixir is logarithmic, with Python is exponential. As the product accretes features, Python/JS tends to require much more expertise to deal with all the corner cases. Elixir keeps it long term maintainable. If you wanna explode and sell out, go for the early ease. If you plan on owning it forever, I'd say the upfront investment is more than worth it.

I don't disagree. I agree it's worth the extra effort up front if you're expecting the code base to last. And the exponential complexity you mentioned, well, that's basically why I left Rails. It can be designed well.. but you're going against the grain, and unless the rest of your team is totally on board, it's a struggle. That wasn't the question though. The question was, which is easier? And let me tell you, you c…

I also don't disagree with anything you said, except the idea that difficulty is not time dependent. Easy short term and easy long term are different things and that's the point I'm trying to make. Elixir land documentation is top notch and having to look things up is not a bad thing. Why would memorizing how to get started on something be good unless you're greenfielding projects every other week?

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#74

Post by avtar »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #49
eszed wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against Django, just suggesting another option: Laravel offers the same "out of the box" tools that Django does. Django is built with Python, Laravel with PHP. Someone will be along in a moment to start the flame wars about why one or the other or both totally suck , but for your purposes it's most important to choose the language and approach that will be most comfortable to you.

Yeah, these days I'd put Laravel and Rails pretty toe-to-toe on features and productivity. Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo.

> Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo.

In what ways does Django lag behind Rails or Laravel?

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#75

Post by cpursley »

sho wrote: post #71
namaria wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty with Elixir is logarithmic, with Python is exponential. As the product accretes features, Python/JS tends to require much more expertise to deal with all the corner cases. Elixir keeps it long term maintainable. If you wanna explode and sell out, go for the early ease. If you plan on owning it forever, I'd say the upfront investment is more than worth it.

I don't disagree. I agree it's worth the extra effort up front if you're expecting the code base to last. And the exponential complexity you mentioned, well, that's basically why I left Rails. It can be designed well.. but you're going against the grain, and unless the rest of your team is totally on board, it's a struggle. That wasn't the question though. The question was, which is easier? And let me tell you, you c…

Why remember, between the Elixir language tooling and code copilot, that sort of thing writes itself. Or you can even add a helper “one” function to handle that for you.

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#77

Post by TheCapeGreek »

avtar wrote: post #74
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, these days I'd put Laravel and Rails pretty toe-to-toe on features and productivity. Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo.

> Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo. In what ways does Django lag behind Rails or Laravel?

The ecosystems.

Laravel's first-party ecosystem, both paid and free, on top of the framework is quite widespread. This also brings a lot of people to the party on the third party side with excellent tools like Filament and Ploi. I don't see this nearly as much for Django. Have a look under the Ecosystem tab on the Laravel homepage. Within a few `composer install`s, you can get:

- Local dev environment (i.e. actually running the app): Herd, Sail

- Stripe/Paddle support: Cashier, Spark

- Starter kit scaffolds including all the usual auth goodies (e.g. 2FA): Breeze, Jetstream

- View layer alternatives to plain old HTML views: Livewire, Inertia

- API and Social logins: Passport, Sanctum (for SPAs), Socialite

- Fulltext search: Scout

- Robust APM: Pulse, and Telescope on dev

- Admin panels: Nova, and 3rd party Filament

- Websockets: Echo, Reverb (coming soon)

- Infrastructure, both traditional and serverless: Forge, Envoyer, Vapor, Ploi

- Completely alternative PHP runners to replace php-fpm: Octane with Roadrunner, Swoole, or FrankenPHP

- Automated browser testing: Dusk

You can find Django packages for these things too, but I struggle to see many of them coming from the actual Django team. I also think the Django Admin solution is very neat for getting off the ground, but doesn't seem as robust as Nova or Filament.

Lastly, call it my bias, but Python's overall lacklustre developer experience with package and environment management (compared to Composer and Ruby gems) also affects Django as a result.

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#78

Post by greenie_beans »

tiffanyh wrote: post #41
Brycee wrote: post #39

I don't know if its been mentioned already, but I thought the minimalist entrepreneur by Sahil Lavinga (gumroad founder) was good.

Just know though that gumroad originally took a bunch of VC money.

pretty sure he talks about that in the book, using his experience as a cautionary tale. i think that's part of the book's central argument IIRC

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#79

Post by avtar »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #77
avtar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo. In what ways does Django lag behind Rails or Laravel?

The ecosystems. Laravel's first-party ecosystem, both paid and free, on top of the framework is quite widespread. This also brings a lot of people to the party on the third party side with excellent tools like Filament and Ploi. I don't see this nearly as much for Django. Have a look under the Ecosystem tab on the Laravel homepage. Within a few `composer install`s, you can get: - Local dev environment (i.e. actually…

Thanks so much for the thorough reply! Especially including ecosystem details.

Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?

#80

Post by cpursley »

stanislavb wrote: post #26
cpursley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phoenix is just as easy as Rails to get started and now with LiveView, easier than needing to know Ruby and JavaScript. It’s a secret weapon for indie hackers.

I've tried it. I've built a few products as well. Production level. Again, it's amazing; however, you simply can't beat the usefulness of ActiveRecord (and a number of other gems) with Phoenix. Again, I'm saying this within the context of data heavy web apps.

ActiveRecord is my least favorite part about Rails. And it’s such a foot(machine?)gun.
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