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Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

supabase.io

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Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#191
post #183

To be a Firebase alternative, you would expect a full-stack solution; DB, Auth, Cloud Functions, Analytics...etc. That's the main selling point of Firebase. This just seems to be an Open-Source implementation of Firebase's " Realtime Database ", which is kind of superseded by the new " Firestore ", which is much more popular. However it's a smart business move, as many products are locked into the " Realtime Database…

That's true. See my comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23320443

tldr: > We've been building furiously since January but (not surprisingly) we haven't yet reached feature parity. But we will :)

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#192
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've built your business so it is dependent on someone else's pricing model the problem is of your own making.

Then I think you would agree:Don’t trust Google to keep the prices low. Or any cloud SaaS company that has raised prices

> Don't trust Google. Or any company.

FTFY :)

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#193
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid someone wants to get money for their product

No one's saying they shouldn't. If the current business model isn't sustainable, then it's a predatory lock-in scheme to monopolize the market and then take advantage of the people who've become dependant on your product.

I remember some software VC lady explaining this tactic among others for OSS businesses on the software engineering daily podcast. Her world seemed so inherently competitive, yet here she was, revealing her cards. Even though burning bridges to get ahead is typical behavior, it remains destructive. Calling it out helps us all move in a better direction.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#194

This is really interesting. I spent a while a few weeks ago looking around for a serious, open-source BaaS effort backed by... anyone. I've been influenced by code generators like xo/xo [0] and sqlboiler [1] recently (so you can have type-safe APIs and you still manage/own the resulting code). My bet is that you can generate an entire API _and_ basic CRUD browser UI from a db schema. I've been working on a code gener…

> My bet is that you can generate an entire API _and_ basic CRUD browser UI from a db schema That's what we're building! We already have the auto-APIs, and auto-documentation. The auto-UI is in the works. It essentially is Airtable, but backed by Postgres Also, we will provide "meta" REST APIs for your database. Want to programmatically add columns or fetch all your database types? No probs.

As an eng manager, my concern with Supabase is the complexity of the systems involved. There's PostgREST (Haskell) and then a bunch of Elixir on top? Not only is that two services (plus the database) but they're in languages that aren't easy to hire for if I have to do maintenance or development.

I don't think this will be a problem for attracting startups (who will take up the new hotness) or for large enterprises (where you can package all the services into a black box that you support). And I get that you're building on some well-known existing software (PostgREST, primarily) but I'm still concerned about the operational overhead.

My preference (as an eng manager) would be to operate (and develop hooks for) a single generated server in Go, Java, or Python rather than manage a real BaaS.

Still, it's a cool project and good to have open source _and_ backed by YC. I passed it along to friends whk are looking for this kind of thing. Best of luck.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#195
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am an old fart, but what’s wrong with the steps you mention? What would your ideal sequence of steps be? If the answer is “just call an api to handle your data” sure that works for POCs/Small apps. But I’m a bit hesitant to put all my businesses data inside a proprietary data store that I don’t control and which isn’t collocated with my app (Ie every data store request makes a round trip to the google server…

It's not bad doing it once. Furthermore I'd suggest you do it truly from scratch once just for the learning experience (no framework [Go makes this easy] or from TCP socket [synchronous with Python is easy]). However it's ridiculous going through the same sequence for every single app you build over a career. Nothing changes, it's all just boilerplate. I don't want to ever write this sort of boilerplate code again, I…

To me there's a sliding scale between productivity, where you use a heavy framework like Django and Rails to do everything for you, and control, where you write boilerplate to stitch all your favorite single-purpose libraries together using your preferred patterns.

They each have their purposes. Django will get you to market fast with all the features you need, and keep you there for a long time. But it forces (through its library structure) and encourages (through its common patterns) ridiculously tight coupling.

I work on a Django Monolith now that runs an org needing to grow beyond it. We need something not quite offered by a Django library, or we need to move something with different scaling needs out to another service - it's all miserably difficult, because they followed all the Django recommended best practices The framework controls you, you don't control it.

Now we're back to writing boilerplate to enforce a semblance of clean architecture onto it. It's kind boring sometimes, but once a domain gets refactored out of the Django way, our ability to deliver features quickly and safely in that domain goes up 10x.

The "Fat Models" recommendation is one of the most destructive in my opinion: https://django-best-practices.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appli..., along with Django Rest Framework "Model Serializers". A JSON serializer that talks directly to the database is just madness.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#196
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've built your business so it is dependent on someone else's pricing model the problem is of your own making.

Then I think you would agree:Don’t trust Google to keep the prices low. Or any cloud SaaS company that has raised prices

I trust Google the same way I trust any company I deal with whether they are a SaaS company or my local butcher. I trust them to act in their own self-interest. Hopefully that will be inline with my own but if not be prepared.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bad doing it once. Furthermore I'd suggest you do it truly from scratch once just for the learning experience (no framework [Go makes this easy] or from TCP socket [synchronous with Python is easy]). However it's ridiculous going through the same sequence for every single app you build over a career. Nothing changes, it's all just boilerplate. I don't want to ever write this sort of boilerplate code again, I…

To me there's a sliding scale between productivity, where you use a heavy framework like Django and Rails to do everything for you, and control, where you write boilerplate to stitch all your favorite single-purpose libraries together using your preferred patterns. They each have their purposes. Django will get you to market fast with all the features you need, and keep you there for a long time. But it forces (throu…

Absolutely. There's a big curve to understanding Django, Rails, .NET well enough to be able to prototype a real application. There's an even bigger curve to doing that in a maintainable way.

I think it's good to get familiar with a variety of ways of building applications over a career so you can pull from the best of them to, again, be able to focus on _business problems_ you have and can solve. To me that includes a sustainable development model and system architecture.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#198

Nice! ... What are the features you are adding on top of postgREST?

We're trying to support postgREST - at the moment that means client libraries:

https://github.com/supabase/postgrest-js

https://github.com/supabase/postgrest-rs

https://github.com/supabase/postgrest-py (coming soon)

But for additional features, it's a lot of UX - auto-docs, API gateways, auto-UI (like Airtable). For distinct features, check out our realtime server: https://github.com/supabase/realtime

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#199
post #161
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but mention that I rather like the alternative approach of keeping steps 1-3, and using Phoenix LiveView (or C#'s Blazor?) for the rest. Not saying it's better or worse, but I quite like it.

If you don't pick a db, where do you store data ?

That would be step one out of the first three that I bother with :).

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#200

Is this a good option to host sensitive data? I'll have to opt on a backend to store medical data in my app. I had discarded Firebase due to some opinions I found on the web stating it would not be the best option.

It's not a good option for medical data. Also, we are far too early and need to go through a security audit.

At some stage we will make it easy to self-host, and at that point it might be worth checking out again. If you need any recommended alternatives, feel free to message me (email in my profile)

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