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Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#41
Warning: this is deliberately not following mainstream convention/fashion. It's hopefully useful, but feel free to ignore if you'd prefer not to explore beyond more conventional options.

First off, a few requirements I inferred from your Q:

1. Performance (response time + concurrency)

2. Simplicity (you're a noob, but it's always a good thing anyway)

3. Stability + ease of maintenance/evolution (you don't state this explicitly - but if you're building on your own, I'd guess you'll have limited time to do this).

Based on those, here's a suggestion.

1. Write you back end in Erlang, using Cowboy or WebMachine to expose RESTful services. Simple, performant, robust, scalable, proven, stable.

2. Start with the premise that simple term/text storage (i.e. no DB) will suffice. Only move from that if you disprove that premise

3. Ask yourself how much of your front end can be handled with straight CSS + HTML. Probably not all, but you'd be surprised how much

4. Instead of a javascript framework, have a look at Elm where you do need client-side behaviour.

I fully accept that neither Erlang nor Elm are mainstream choices. Certainly not for everyone. But they're both well-designed, robust and pretty stable (Erlang more so than Elm on the stability front admittedly - the Elm language is still evolving).

I'll also freely admit that I really dislike the javascript ecosystem. I say "ecosystem" deliberately; I'm not crazy for the language itself, but it's the infuriating instability of packages, frameworks, build tools etc that means I avoid it as far as possible. It seems to take more time just keeping up with with the ecosystem than actually delivering meaningful functionality. I don't find that with Erlang or Elm. Yes, Elm 19 introduced quite a few breaking changes. Though I didn't find porting too painful given the tooling is so good.

YMMV of course.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#42
I wonder if a server side rendered app with Rails or Java/Spring Boot would do. If you want mobile first then Flutter may help. But in any case exlpore Firebase for persistence. It's cheap and very scalable, provides Sync and push notifications as well

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#43
post #35

What would I use? Standard tech stack: React+Apollo+Redux+GraphQL (with Typescript). React Native for mobile. On the backend, Postgres DB at first, upgrade to CockroachDB or something when needing scale. Choice of language for application server to translate GraphQL queries to and from SQL queries is the only thing I would be unsure about - either Python or Typescript probably. But this is because I'm very familiar w…

> Standard tech stack: React+Apollo+Redux+GraphQL (with Typescript).

The standard or A standard?

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#44

Warning: this is deliberately not following mainstream convention/fashion. It's hopefully useful, but feel free to ignore if you'd prefer not to explore beyond more conventional options. First off, a few requirements I inferred from your Q: 1. Performance (response time + concurrency) 2. Simplicity (you're a noob, but it's always a good thing anyway) 3. Stability + ease of maintenance/evolution (you don't state this…

Interesting. I just spent a couple of weeks learning Elixir & really liked it. Any disadvantage to doing the backend work in Elixir instead?

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#45
post #19

Google Keep is an interesting because it's hard to exactly categorize exactly what it is, or exactly what use case it attempts support. It's kind of like a crossover between a private Pinterest, a bookmarking app, and a note taking app. So it's multi-paradigm. But of you know your use case better, you can tailor your soltution to fit. You can then make better decisions on online/offline, where to store state, web vs…

Your app reminds me me of Pinboard.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#46
post #39

You could take a look at what I'm building with Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ It's basically note taking but integrated with the reading flow. You basically keep all your books and notes in one place and you can annotate and highlight directly within Polar. It's basically a "personal knowledge repository" with all your books and web content integrated along with highlighting.

Google Keep serves a different purpose. Although I guess you could use them for the same thing (kind of), the card-based functionality is Google Keep’s main selling point, which your application does not seem to include. Although I like what you’re doing, I think it’s too different and too specific to reading and note-taking to be a Google Keep replacement.

oh yes.. they're different. I agree.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Rails. Which I love - but I have my doubts.

If you're goal is to get the app done and published rather than learning a new tech then go with your default stack. I've never worked with Rails but it seems like a totally valid choice for the product. You can always bolt on a more modern frontend later if you need it.

Thanks. It's Rails' frontend performance stigma that made me hesitate. I suppose bolting a better FE is an option, but I won't know it until I benchmark it.

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#48
On frontend:

Google Todo app tutorials and pick the one you like the syntax the most and you can complete in a couple of hours. There are gazillion of tutorials out there how to build one. I would follow a React based for learning purposes.

For backend:

Try a simple Express backend with Node.js and Firebase as a database. With a todo app, you will never run out of the free tier and migrating between server provider will be very simple.

Level it up with a nice UI library:

https://ant.design/

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#49

You could take a look at what I'm building with Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ It's basically note taking but integrated with the reading flow. You basically keep all your books and notes in one place and you can annotate and highlight directly within Polar. It's basically a "personal knowledge repository" with all your books and web content integrated along with highlighting.

Ok, enough. I'll try your app now :)

Re: Ask HN: What tech stack would you use to build an open-source Google Keep clone?

#50
I would actually start with a closed source backend-as-a-service: Firebase.

Then you can concentrate on getting your front end. Once you have a great UI add multiple backend support, maybe on ipfs or something super open.

Tiddlywiki might be interesting to you as well

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