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Four ways to build web apps

tomhummel.com

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Re: Four ways to build web apps

#61

Post by graycat »

My Web site is designed and programmed and runs as intended. I was delayed by independent events, beat those back, and now am collecting some initial data.

But from the original post (OP) about "Four Ways" here, apparently I made a really big mistake, nope several biggies: I wrote the software using Windows 7 Professional, Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and SQL Server. What a user receives is old HTML and some CSS with little, maybe no, JavaScript. I didn't write any JavaScript at all, but ASP.NET wrote a little for me.

At one point, I wanted a key-value store so used two instances of one of the .NET collection classes instead of Redis. That was a biggie mistake?

So, apparently my work is none of the "Four Ways" of the OP. Biggie mistakes, right???

I don't get it: Looks to me like for some decades now, all around the world, people have been able to build (program, develop, etc.) Web sites using Windows 7, .NET, SQL Server.

E.g., as I recall, Markus Frind developed a Web site using those tools, had the usage grow, ..., and sold the site for $500+ million. He did something wrong?

Now there are some rules I don't know about, rules that say I must just junk my code, 100,000 lines of typing, and start over?????

Those "Four Ways", they include something for my use of collection classes as simple versions of Redis? Or they include Redis?

Oh, at it's core, my Web site has some original applied math -- those "Four Ways" have that already?

I didn't get the memo that I can't use Windows 7, .NET, and SQL Server!!!

What am I supposed to do, use better than Windows 7 Professional, .NET, SQL Server, and my applied math code????

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#62

Post by tnzk »

monroewalker wrote: post #59

Surprised not to see Render.com listed under option 4 despite that being an option discussed often here with comparable simplicity of deployment to Heroku

I love Render, have been using it heavily personally as well as professionally. I like it for fulfilling my demands efficiently. But I sometimes find the name is a pain point, it is really hard to search especially combined with some generic words. It seems fixed now but I remember at some point of time even "render status" wouldn't lead me to the right place.

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#63

Post by fastball »

razor_router wrote: post #14
dgb23 wrote: post #2

This is a nice little overview that is not afraid of being opinionated. It leaves out some of the affordances that CF Pages, Vercel and Netlify provide. (Discussed as option 1 in the article). Those are of course moving targets that provide more stuff every few months.

[flagged]

You're not the author.

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#64

Post by hendry »

tony-allan wrote: post #48
hathawsh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it differently. It looks like a good outline of 4 basic approaches to building and hosting web sites. I would word them as: 1. Stateless static site. There is a variety of ways to build it (such as React or Svelte or purely by hand) and a variety of ways to host it (such as a directory of HTML files hosted by nginx). 2. Function services like Cloudflare workers, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functi…

It's not obvious but you can host an entire website or simple web app on AWS Lambda (as simple as a single function).

I host a full Web app on Lambda like so https://github.com/kaihendry/ltabus

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#65

Post by fijiaarone »

glutamate wrote: post #7
paulgb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option #4 will give you autoscaling without having to deal with k8s. IIRC all of the options listed still involve writing a Dockerfile, though. Render.com, Cyclic.sh, and Railway.app are also in that category(ish) but will automate the build more like Heroku. (this is off the top of my head, please correct if I misremembered anything)

I quite like Docker. It solves the "it works on my machine" problem by being reproducible-enough. And I can still run it locally. My argument is not against innovation but against mindshare capture by platform capitalism.

The problem with deploying using Docker is that you no longer have any of the advantages of Docker, unless you count a Dockerfile as an advantage. But it’s really just a non-standard way to write shell scripts to configure a system.

Deploying using Docker containers means hosting multiple nested operating systems on multiple separate hardware, and then trying to coordinate them, when you most likely actually want them living on the same machine sharing the same loop back interface (like you have during development) or on the same physical or at least logical network with a hardware firewall between them. Instead, when you deploy Docker containers to the cloud, they are on different machines (often in different data centers) connected only by a VPC with only primitive software firewalling and no way to monitor the traffic.

Docker is meant to run isolated systems together, to share resources. You get none of that benefit. But the hosting provider does, at your cost.

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#66

Post by fijiaarone »

flippinburgers wrote: post #30

His ordering is all wrong. Lambda-like websites are significantly more difficult to program and manage than a monolithic linux server. Graduating from the lambda to the linux server? No thanks.

He’s talking about serverless functions for a contact form.

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#67

Post by xupybd »

oldstrangers wrote: post #57

5th option: Webflow, airtable, whalesync. I could recreate one of his examples ( https://oldgames.win/ ) in 10-20 minutes off just a CSV file... And I could use something like https://simplescraper.io/ to scrape that data + find imagery.

That would make a great HN post!

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#68

Post by FinalBriefing »

dgb23 wrote: post #22
rexreed wrote: post #18

Why not PHP on a shared or dedicated hosted server?

I wouldn't recommend PHP to anyone who isn't already invested/emerged in the language. Wordpress for blogs or websites on a shared host with automatic updates and a few select plugins? Yes. Laravel or Symphony for applications? Ok. But just PHP has way too many footguns and doesn't provide nearly enough affordances to make them worth it IMO. Plus it's a language that breaks backwards compatibility way too often, stop…

Gotta disagree with you here. Modern PHP is quite great, especially when paired with Laravel or Symphony. They had to introduce breaking changes to move the language forward, but I don't recall anything huge after 7.0 or so. There's a huge ecosystem of packages to do just about anything web-related, and the documentation and community resources are way better than anything I've seen with say, Java/Spring.

Laravel is a great way for a small team to get an application up and running quickly and really shouldn't be overlooked.

Re: Four ways to build web apps

#70

Post by arsome »

Learning dozens specific cloud services and shelling out money everywhere I go is way less appealing to me than buying a cheap dedicated server and firing up exactly what I need.

It'll take me far longer to figure out what FarGate and Cloudflare Pages and all these are and infinitely longer to keep up with the latest and greatest because it keeps changing constantly. And even once I get it, I'll have very limited control or understanding of my stack, and migration? I'm screwed. I'm not interested in playing games like that.

nginx is comparatively simple, run it, it serves. Config is easy, learn it once, run it anywhere, it doesn't get a dozen new features and breaking changes every month, just does its job.

I guess I'd just rather understand the real underlying technologies than some crappy commercial wrapper for them that will differ every time someone tries to rip me off.

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