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The funny thing for me is how much more intuitive this is when you run an actual server, or vps, and how fundamental it is in that context ("Oh crap, bunch of v
by SanchoPanda 7y ago
The funny thing for me is how much more intuitive this is when you run an actual server, or vps, and how fundamental it is in that context ("Oh crap, bunch of views, they are slowing this laptop down a bunch!") while being so much more involved here.
I'm hesitant to generalize past myself, but I really wish someone made me learn the basics on a web server in my own home, where I could reboot it by pulling out a power cord, and transfer files with a usb stick. I would have been so much more able to make thought out trade-offs or attempt grander things.
Its straight-forward and free (at the margin) to throw up a password protected site on a server, but daunting in SaaS world. Same story for having a bash script update some page with a gnuplot chart with data obtained via curl/wget, vs. CORS and an API, and a charting library, and json ...
I shudder to think of how much time I wasted as I was just learning web anything on solutions that were way too big and complex for my goals at the time - from docker, to lambdas, AWS orbit based nuclear powered whatever to run a clock widget or whatnot. I'm certainly glad I learned those things, and they are scalable and safer and all those good things, but hard to put into context without knowing how one stupid server doing it all by itself would do it.
This is all a drawn out way of saying that the cheapest lightsail vps is like 3 bucks a month, and you can implement all the fanciest netlify features right on it, and if you never have done that, you really should. If anything when you do move to netlify, you will really appreciate it on a different level.
- bfred_it 7y agoThis is the same exact comment I see on most HN posts about services. Probably most people’s time in maintenance and development is worth more than $9/month, that’s why these services exist. Semi-related xkcd https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/
- dc_gregory 7y agoNo, its not. The OP has a different point to make, and its worth a re-read!
- OrwellianChild 7y ago> lightsail vps is like 3 bucks a month, and you can implement all the fanciest netlify features right on it, and if you never have done that, you really should Can you expand what Netlify features you're talking about or provide any guides/links that would steer a newbie in the right direction? I appreciate the "back to basics" attitude, but don't know where to even get started...
- SanchoPanda 7y agoHackiest way - pick the wordpress VPS options for $3.50, then sub out the wordpress homepage with your static site Poor Man's Netlify identity - Apache or nginx password rules. Poor Man's Netlify Large Media Management - Upload some files over sftp. Poor Man's Netlify Lambda functions - crontab -e, 0 * * * * LynxDumpWeatherToHomepage.sh. Poor Man's Netlify Teams - Create a new user with access to that site. Poor Man's Netlify Forms - A php form. Poor Man's Netlify Analytics - Less +F (or tail -f) web.log file. ^^ This is isn't tax, legal, or sysadmin advice. SanchoPanda doesn't offer tax, legal, or sysadmin advice. Please consult your tax, legal, or sysadmin advisor before making any tax, legal, or web infrastructure related decisions.
- OrwellianChild 7y agoThis is perfect... You've given me a multitude of Google-able rabbit holes to dive down into! Thanks!
- shriek 7y agoI'm curious how a cronjob would be used as Lambda functions here? I'd have expected it to be CGI here instead. Do note that I'm not encouraging people to use CGI for their serverless needs whatsoever but if we're going back to basic then CGI is the closest thing I can think of for serverless.