The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#431

Post by orhanhh » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

r_singh wrote: post #334

Volrath89 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. My default stack is now react + an api in the backend. The way you can reuse components is a great time saver (even for simple apps). I also like redux-thunk to separate all my API calls from the components. Makes everything very lean and readable. I feel way more productive today than in the old jQuery, knockout messes

Same here! What's your choice of stack for the api? PS - I need to build an api for an app with a React front-end. My choice of language is Python (because I'm super familiar and because of the great ORMs Python has).

Django-rest-framework is super productive once you learn it. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s worth it if you are writing a lot of APIs, especially if you’re doing a lot of CRUD.

It’s my go to tool when I need to get stuff done. Combined with react and typescript, developing full stack is really smooth.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#432

Post by BrandonMarc » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

pikzel wrote: post #320

jstummbillig wrote: post #318

Ansible, AWS, SES, React and Cloudflare? Gusto, Notion and 10th of different services and integrations? That's boring now? I was expecting something more along the lines of PHP + a single MySQL machine, plus all the accounting is done on a tablet made of actual stone. This is not that.

Agree. To learn all of this as a single developer is not an easy task either. These are real frontend, backend and devops languages, frameworks and tools. It takes time to learn.

Indeed. He mentions halfway down his previous employer is a billion-dollar startup, and why what works there won't work for his micro startup. And yet ... I'm sure a lot of what he learned there is being applied here.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#433

Post by squeaky-clean » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

ankit70 wrote: post #373

Wonderful stuff! I've been trying to learn programming and able to code the CRUD apps for almost 6-7 years. I've tried to learn Rails (Ditched learning Rails because JS framework are all the rage). Tried learning Flask/Django because it was considered easy. Ditched it too cause internet people said it's slow. I tried learning Go, Phoenix and jumping between what's considered cool in last few years. And here I a…

I agree with the general consensus pick one and stay with it for a few projects. If you can't pick one, just roll a die or anything. Maybe pick one a friend knows so you can collaborate in the future.

The differences between languages and frameworks won't matter very much unless you're joining a team with a preexisting stack or an edge case company/application that needs top-of-the-line everything.

Even if your app usage does scale beyond what your first version can deliver, you'll often get a bigger improvement by rewriting your app in the same stack using the new knowledge you've learned, than you would by rewriting the same logic in a newer stack.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#434

Post by danjac » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #371

danjac wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your field is web development, what is not a niche skill? It seems the choice of backend frameworks is somewhat fragmented with no clear default winner.

I'm not sure there's an outright winner, but RoR was the hot thing what, 12 years ago? It can be difficult to recruit for now. (Also no, I'm not in web development, I have just observed this)

I'm not a Rails developer myself, but definitely noticed a lot of demand for Rails work in the various remote job newsletters I'm subscribed to. Can't say how much is legacy vs greenfield or whether this is a reflection of demand for a niche skill or that Rails is still a popular choice for companies. Either way, makes me regret a little I didn't stick to Rails development years ago as it seems quite lucrative even today.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#435

Post by karambir » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

welder wrote: post #175

karambir wrote: post #126

I thought I was reading my own blog post :) We use very similar tech stack at my current company: - Ansible for provisioning - Python/Django for website/api - VueJS for frontend(where needed, some pages are simple Django templates) - Celery for background work - uWSGI and Nginx as servers with AWS Load balancer - Elasticsearch for search - Redis for caching - Postgres with Postgis as main datastore - Datadog for moni…

What's your website? Mine's also on the same stack ( https://wakatime.com ). Would love to trade notes sometime.

Ours is (https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/). We cater to Data science community. You can contact me through my profile info.

Also, I am a long time user of wakatime. Awesome product :)

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#436

Post by seamyb88 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #357

theonething wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought was "I wish the startup I'm working for would read this". My second, "eh, wouldn't change anything." > so I’m working on a new website and series of engineering posts to help share my approach to a lot of these problems. Do you have a mailing list or something to get on to get updated on this?

I will hunt down this comment and reply to you in your profile once it’s out!

Hunt me also.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#437

Post by em-bee » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 11:57 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #414

em-bee wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is very true. at least angular1 was stable for quite some time i'd say, it was quite usable until they started working on angular 2. that means when selecting a framework, don't pick the newest, but look for something that promises stability, and then stick with it. i picked aurelia to once angular 1 was no longer usable. and although i mainly chose it for other reasons, it looks like it will be a stable choice.

It could be a good stable framework, though can you put yourself in my place, say in 5 years you are called to work on your current project, some new small feature must be added or some bug needs to be fixed. So I will have to learn to work with yet another old framework that is no longer populkar and the developers that wrote the code moved to the next cool thing. It is what it is, I will have to learn and maintain…

well, one of the key things of aurelia is to use standards as much as possible. so as javascript evolves aurelia will pick up on these things and remove any homegrown things to use whatever javascript provides instead. so it is up to javascript to grow a decent standard library.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#438

Post by whalesalad » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

brillout wrote: post #399

whalesalad wrote: post #273

Technology is usually just a means to an end. Unless IP is what you are selling, boring is great. I’ve seen SO many teams burn SO much energy on complicated stacks just to drink kool-aid. It’s mind bogglingly frustrating, especially as a contractor. At the end of the day it’s great for me: I get brought into shit shows to clean up the mess. But deep down, I want projects to succeed and clean/sound systems architectur…

What is it that Rails has that Node.js doesn't? Node.js is missing a great ORM but other than that I don't see many things missing in Node.js anymore. There is also Rails' admin panel but most projects don't need that.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with what Rails really is. It doesn’t have an admin panel.

Node is a language that you could compare to Ruby.

You can ostensibly do the exact same thing with Node that you could do with Ruby on Rails... but you’d be reinventing the wheel all over the place and duct taping lots of different modules together that all utilize different design patterns.

If you’re good at designing systems, you can do it just fine, albeit slower than I could with Rails. But it’s possible. I have nothing against Node but there’s a time and a place for all tools. Getting an MVP up is not one of them, imho.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#439

Post by ademup » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

0b1010011010 wrote: post #280

ademup wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VMRacks (now hipaavault.com). I'm not affiliated, just a completely satisfied customer. As to setting up the business, I would also recommend a HIPAA auditing/hand-holding company. I use Compliancy Group ( https://compliancy-group.com ).

Just finished my undergrad in cis, and have been grasping at the many services in the industry. How did you find yourself in freelance within clients needing HIPAA compliant?

I am surrounded by people in the primarily private-pay Mental Health space because my (romantic) partner is a consultant in a tiny cottage industry. In my case, it's 100% "people you know". Dealing in PII suuuuuuucks because I constantly have an elevated anxiety about it. However, if it wasn't PII plus the people I know and met......then I probably wouldn't have the opportunity I have.

That said.....had I not done "this", then I probably would have done something more lucrative and "easy". I see non-PII opportunities everywhere, and (mostly) only hang around because what I do now pays the bills.

Re: The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company (2018)

#440

Post by fyfy18 » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

thekingofh wrote: post #423

lacampbell wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the correct POV, moreso for the single-man company, is that running a server to perform a task is the overengineered option. I was all gung-ho about serverless for a while. I wanted to release a demo for my product and thought I'd cut through all the hassles of managing my own server. I found it bewildering. It was a whole new skillset with new benefits, but also new considerations and headaches. When push ca…

I've yet to find someone explain a serverless API based setup that isn't more complicated than good old fashioned LAMP or equivalent. Serverless seems to always come out more expensive as well.

I've been exploring serverless for a project at work, and this is my conclusion too. It's great that we don't need to manage any servers and can easily deploy tasks with one command - but we already have infrastructure to do all that for that for our existing apps.

For someone starting out you don't need to worry about learning Linux and how to configure Apache to serve SSL certificates in the right way, but that is important to know, unless you are happy to always rely on (and pay for) someone else to do that.

To me serverless is similar to Heroku, it's great for starting out but as you start to grow it's going to quickly become a lot cheaper to maintain you own systems. Except with serverless it's not so easy to self-host because you end up relying on all the tooling the vendor provides.