Pieter's businesses are impressive, but IMO not using React nowadays is actually harder than using it. Building stuff vanilla takes more time, effort and knowledge.
Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
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Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
hey, I posted the article. Good to know! I'm sure I had read it somewhere on their site. Maybe it was just from other developers that I got the impression it wasn't meant from production. Thanks
SQLite runs in airplanes [1]. I would say that is all that needs to be said on whether or not SQLite is production-ready :) In fact, I would argue SQLite is the most well-tested and production ready database system out there. [1] https://www.sqlite.org/famous.html
> Flame is a malware spy program that is reported to make heavy use of SQLite.
Maybe we need an /infamous.html page
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
For many websites it's perfectly acceptable to go down for a few hours (or however long it takes you to notice, spin up a new vm/server and restore a backup) should stuff go wrong, which is fairly unlikely if you're just running a few servers. It's likely the additional overhead worrying about HA is not worth it, not to mention the real possibility of HA just not working properly in actual failure scenarios
I agree not every website needs high availability... but I wouldn't bet my $600k/yr business on a single VM's availability and reliability. One day, his server is going to die and be replaced by his host, or his disks will need replacing or a RAID array will fry... It seems like his business could at least afford an HA setup on a cloud provider. Moving to any hosted db with backups, updates and redundancy could be wo…
Running on a single server does not mean no backups and uptime monitoring is in place. If the hardware fails, you get a ping on the channel of your choice, manually provision a new VM then download the latest sqlite backup from your backup provider. Easy to make a checklist or a script for this, too.
Also there is a third option between HA (with its increased cost and complexity) and "we don't upgrade if it's working, because it could break", which is "take the site down for a few minutes, do the upgrade, bring it back up". It's not for every site, but there's a range of sites for which that is fine.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#104This is exactly how I learned to code. Started with simple coding projects online then built a personal website now building web apps.
Although, I do think it is important to learn React now a days. I started teaching myself React a few weeks ago via this same process. Incredibly powerful for web dev
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#105Pieter's businesses are impressive, but IMO not using React nowadays is actually harder than using it. Building stuff vanilla takes more time, effort and knowledge.
> effort and knowledge
Probably the sort of thing you want over time from your devs. I'm no front-end guru but vanilla.js seems like all that most companies really need to do their job.
Having done more than enough time at $BIGCORP you'd be amazed at how much work is self-created, self-perpetuating and the lengths people will go to protecting that.
I'd even argue a crap employee who documents everything and eats vanilla icecream is probably worth far more than a superstar that builds impenetrable silos to artificially make themselves invaluable while instagramming themselves with boutique gelato.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#106I haven't visited either site, but I sure hope he doesn't have logins or gather any sensitive user information if he has no CS background, no prior dev experience, and is running entirely on vanilla JS/PHP using no frameworks.
That combo sounds like an ideal recipe for a security nightmare.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a site like this as well and it makes about a paltry $40k on a good year. I mostly got lucky because I had some niche domain knowledge for a specific industry that was lacking a web product. I wasted money trying to grow it for some time but I've come to accept even at it's full potential it would probably only make maybe double of what it does now at max. I hope someday though i'll stumble across a $600k a ye…
$40k/year is admirable. Mine was at that level for many years than all of a sudden shot up in google rankings a few years ago.
I doubt there will be an "all of a sudden" event for my industry, if anything it's probably on a decline.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#108I don't think this has anything to do with tech stack. React is generally easier to use correctly than plain JavaScript, PostgreSQL is as easy to use as SQLite (and more powerful), Node is as easy to use as PHP (but has more libraries, and you can use TypeScript which makes it easier to write correct code), etc. The only actually simplifying choice seems to be using a single VPS instead of a Kubernetes-based cluster.…
> PostgreSQL is as easy to use as SQLite
Absolutely disagree. One is incredibly secure out of the box, the other is certainly not, they probably shouldn't even be compared. We can check Shodan if you want some empirical evidence for this.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#109I don’t usually like to toot my own horn, but I make $600k/year off a plain HTML static site that isn’t even coded well, in-line CSS, many pages not responsive, broken links, etc.
What site is that? :)
Why on Earth would you tell anyone here that?
I'm actually quite amazed at most of the Show HN posts with commercial products. Unless you are actually aiming towards developer or software shop dollars the risk/reward seems incredibly off kilter.
Re: Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK
#110If you don't know who Pieter Levels is, the title makes it sound like this person makes $600k doing remote coding work on jobs found on Nomad List and Remote OK. In actuality, he is an MBA who runs these two businesses.
> In actuality, he is an MBA who runs these two businesses. No snark, what does having an MBA have to do with running those businesses? Curious why you chose to include that?
I took it as attributing education, expertise, or knowledge to him which seemingly would be helpful in running a business. Would it not?