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The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
271–280 of 334 posts
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#272My one-man-SaaS setup: - Static frontend hosted on Netlify (free unlimited scale) - Backend server on Google App Engine (connecting to Gcloud storage and managed DB via magic) I realize I'm opening myself up to vendor lock-in and increased costs down the road (if I even get that far), but I've wrangled enough Docker/k8s/Ingress setups in the past to know it's just not worth the time and effort for a non-master.
Interesting, thanks. I used to use Google AppEngine a lot and very much liked it, but haven’t touched it for years. Now, I like the idea of using Heroku better, and just pay a little more.
If you don't mind my asking, can you say why you moved from GAE to Heroku and/or why you prefer Heroku over GAE?
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you happy with Cloud Monitoring? I ended up moving away from it. I find the UI to be too slow for the purpose it serves. I'm fine with a slow-ish app sometimes but not when I have to use it often and during incidents. I also had a few instances over the course of several years where policies seemed to have transparently broke because a system metric name changed. It's possible the issues were of my doing but I do…
Pretty happy for my use cases. Stackdriver is no more and now fully integrated into Cloud Console. Error Reporting is useful for production errors, even on frontend. Monitoring uptime is quick and easy. Metrics alerting has been okay. Mobile app alerts via GCP app.
Cool. Like you said, having everything under one umbrella is very nice. It's a big reason why I stuck with it for so long. Ultimately, it just didn't fit well enough for my use cases.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#274Loved reading this, thanks for putting in the effort to share with community.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#275Wow, this is worse than node_modules.
So all this crap is required to run a Django app?
Wrappers over wrappers over wrappers. IT is broken beyond repair. And fucking J2EE now looks normal.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#276Anthony - if you're reading this, thank you!! To arrive at this architecture takes 100s if not 100s of hours, and to share it with the community is dang inspiring. I was feeling a bit down on my projects, but this has me amped up seeing how the ultimate goal of working on features rather than deployment is possible, and very real! Best of luck with Panelbear!
Maybe helpful to you or others: I have a similar startup architecture, Django apps on K8, and found that AWS Fargate extracted a lot of the madness away. Still not a walk in the park but it does a lot of crap for you. Been $300/month servicing light traffic.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#277My one-person SaaS architecture: It’s a Rails monolith deployed on Heroku. I’d rather have the time to build new features for my user base than spend it learning how to use k8s or wrangling AWS through its abysmal console website.
Do you think you're better than the OP because you're using a simpler stack?
Nope, just different. I'm a big proponent of the notion of 'innovation tokens,' which has come up elsewhere in this discussion[1].
If the project that I was referring to had been a 'just for me, just for learning' side project, I would have chosen one new-to-me technology. It might have been some JavaScript SPA framework. It might have been Kubernetes. Or maybe GraphQL. It might have been something completely different.
But, this project was absolutely critical for its users, and it had to be delivered on an incredibly tight timeline. I didn't have the luxury of playing around with anything new. And this is still the case. In fact, the project has grown in importance for its users and I have even less flexibility to play around with new-to-me technologies right now.
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[1] Here's an example of me discussing this six years ago, although I was unfamiliar with the term at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9291437 ... Re-reading this comment, I'm actually kind of surprised how little I disagree with here. The only thing that has actually changed for me is that I use Swift instead of Objective-C for my iOS apps.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#278Panelbear's homepage:
>"Web Performance and Traffic Insights
From the small stuff to the big picture, Panelbear gives you the insights you need while respecting the privacy of your visitors. It's simple, and fast."
Price is based on client websites' page views per month, with free tier to 5K page views.
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#279Who was the very successful startup guy who ran all of his services from a single digital ocean VPS?
I think you're thinking of https://levels.io/
Re: The architecture behind a one-person tech startup
#280How do you start learning this breadth of software engineering? I consider myself good in the python / django space, but where do I start with learning these infrastructure technologies? I find that I use them once or twice periodically, and then don't touch them for so long, so I forget much of what I have learned.
It only takes two things – curiosity and time. When you are working on a project, if you hit the edge of your current knowledge / skills, push just a little bit further when it’s something that interests you instead of just aiming to hit the basic requirements / lean on other people. This minor effort compounds over time; do it for twenty years and you’ll be an expert in multiple disciplines and also an expert in how…
It may also be helpful to share some details on effective ways to be curious. I’m a curious person too, but in the early days I just didn’t know where to start.
My advice: - There is no defined learning path yet (to my knowledge). - Start by reading the GitHub readme of technology in these articles (ex: nginx or kubernetes). - If interested, try to spin up a tutorial app. - Try to make something useful. Maybe this is a spin on a tutorial, or something novel. This is the hardest but best way to learn.
Finally, I’ll add that many folks learn these skills on the job either directly or having worked in proximity to new tech. It does seem this was how the author learned.
Hope that helps! I’m sure others will have great advice, too!