Facebook is closing Parse • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#141

Post by Animats » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #100

jewel wrote: post #16

I am happy to see that they're not using any of the insulting language that would land them on http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ . FYI, here's the announcement of the acquisition from April 25, 2013: http://blog.parse.com/announcements/the-future-of-parse/ Relevant bits: Q: Will my Parse app be affected in any way? No. Q: Will Parse apps have to use Facebook functionality? No. Q: Will Parse honor my contract? Y…

This tumblr is so beautiful and so painful at the same time.

That's so great.

The lifespan of "cloud" services is not long. It seems to be less than five years.

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#142

Post by nodamage » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

This announcement just underscores the importance of having full control over your backend. Yes, it's more work, but if you're writing apps that seriously depend on backend services, it's simply too much risk to depend on anyone else.

Fortunately in this case Facebook offered generous lead time to migrate off Parse.com, but they were not obligated to do so, and other providers might not be so generous in the future.

Developers who depended on Parse now have an interesting decision to make: export their data into MongoDB and start running their own servers, or look for an alternative BaaS provider to do it for them (which carries the same risk of that provider shutting down in the future).

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#143

Post by dalacv » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

timdorr wrote: post #99

heraclez wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's not all. Parse just did a full rebranding, including a full frontend overhaul of its dashboard. What the hell is going on?

It's a BA came through and said "Oh, they're not making a billion dollars for us yet? Let's get rid of them!"

BA?

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#144

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

btown wrote: post #29

It will be funny to see all of the abandoned apps that start failing a year from now. Obscure games, utilities, etc. Most people won't be bothered to go through the stress of an App Store review process to update an old free-to-play app that's not even making them revenue. But how many people's morning commutes will be ruined when their old games or news apps fall apart? The price of progress (and of liquidity), I su…

>But how many people's morning commutes will be ruined when their old games or news apps fall apart? The price of progress

The "price of progress" is suddenly not being able to play WhackAMole 3000 on your mobile phone on your way to work?

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#145

Post by elcct » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

I always thought of Parse as a service for someone too lazy to setup mongodb. But to be serious, I think that was a nice tool to get ideas up and running for testing purposes. Running in production? Hell no.

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#146

Post by WoodenChair » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:03 PM UTC

Suddenly, Apple's CloudKit doesn't seem so unattractive - but at the same time I fear it will face a similar fate. Anyone have any insight about whether it's "safe" to build upon? Is there yet an Android solution for connecting to their REST API?

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#147

Post by nawazdhandala » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

fierycatnet wrote: post #83

Hm. I personally haven't used Parse and I didn't even know they were with Facebook but I've seen it mentioned as a pretty popular back-end platform for Android apps (for example). What's the alternative then? AWS probably then?

I would not tie myself to a Cloud Platform but use open source stuff like docker which can be moved between Clouds. Btw, There's CloudBoost.io which is an alternative to Parse and is both on Docker (self-hosted) or as a managed solution at CloudBoost.io

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#148

Post by rizjoj » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #133

I don't understand why Facebook never integrated Parse into its own datacenter infrastructure. As far as I can tell, Parse still hosts all of its infrastructure on EC2 (DNS lookups for every Parse service point to an EC2 IP address). Hosting on EC2 made sense when Parse was an independent company, but didn't they sell to Facebook so they could benefit from Facebook infrastructure? This seems like Facebook throwing in…

I always suspected that Facebook's purchasing of Parse was an aquihire. (I've used Parse from 2012-2013)

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#149

Post by intellegacy » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

gfosco wrote: post #2

Separately, we developed an open-source Parse-compatible API server for Node/Express. https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server This, along with the database migration tools released earlier, allow developers a full migration path to move from Parse hosted data + API to their own infrastructure. Over the weekend, I set up a website & app on a $5 DigitalOcean box running Parse and Mongo locally.

how long does the full migration and setting the digitical ocean box take to do? debating whether i should do that, or just start over with firebase

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#150

Post by nawazdhandala » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

nodamage wrote: post #142

This announcement just underscores the importance of having full control over your backend. Yes, it's more work, but if you're writing apps that seriously depend on backend services, it's simply too much risk to depend on anyone else. Fortunately in this case Facebook offered generous lead time to migrate off Parse.com, but they were not obligated to do so, and other providers might not be so generous in the future.…

... or use an open source BaaS which can be self hosted or managed like CloudBoost.io