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

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

#461

Post by tim333 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 11:37 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.

Check the top comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20920555

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

#462

Post by northstar702 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #110

avip wrote: post #30

First, that's a great stack and very well written/presented. One comment - he dismisses serverless as being overengineering . I think the correct POV, moreso for the single-man company, is that running a server to perform a task is the overengineered option. One can see from the snapshot the servers are indeed severely overprovisioned and underutilized. Building an api with api-gateway + lambda is less work than runn…

Completely agree. Cloud functions are in many cases a better option than maintaining a server, specially for those background tasks that fire occasionally. The only issue I've found about using serverless is the database. In most cases (Firebase, Fauna, Cosmos, DynamoDB) you have to couple your stack to the DBaaS provider which is not a great idea. AWS recently announced Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless but while…

One hopes that GraphQL abstractions will enable the decoupling. So if you opt for a database that offers GraphQL natively, it might address the issue. You do have to learn the GraphQL ecosystem (new tools/language etc.)

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

#463

Post by spiderfarmer » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 11:25 AM UTC

jeegsy wrote: post #452

spiderfarmer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like bragging but I also run a one man company and the loneliness is what I enjoy most. Granted, I only work from 08:45 to 14:30 and some hours in the evening, because I bring my kids to school and I pick them up in the afternoon, but the hours when I’m alone, I am 100% productive. When the kids are at home I mostly do some kind of manual labor to get some sort of exercise. Right now I’m building a shed. L…

Super broad question here but how do you guys do it? I mean, how do you go from knowing how to build a basic webpage to knowing that you need e.g. Elasticsearch for search queries. It seems like there is so much specialized tech to learn but no obvious learning progression path.

I shared this answer before on HN:

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I only learn when I have a project in mind that I want to do. No matter if it’s work on or around my house, creating an app or designing something like a logo or interior. Then I just start. Walk into a wall. Stop. Look for learning material or inspiration. Start over.

Reiterate. Learn more. Reiterate.

I’m not easily frustrated by failure, starting over or general lack of progress. If I have an interesting goal I just keep going. It might not be the most efficient way, but it’s how I learn best.

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There is no magic bullet. It's a combination of inspiration, motivation and perseverance. Example: I spent 1 year learning to built an app in Swift (together with a friend, one evening every two weeks), then we decided to ditch most of what we learned and start over in Flutter, knowing that it would take us another year and I just don't care. I'll get there eventually.

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

#464

Post by drenvuk » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

tnr23 wrote: post #134

Is this seriously considered as being a boring stack nowadays?

Thanks, for all of your comments so far on this site. I don't know what you do specifically but what I can glean from them is inspiring to say the least... even the secrets you keep reinforce what I feel is the right way to act.

Just wanted to say it.