6 ms·

Netlify and Vercel are frontend developer productivity and workflow tools. The value is not "CDN caching".

by mrkurt 5y ago

dreyfan 5y ago
Does it solve any problems which aren’t self-inflicted by the convoluted JS ecosystem and toolchain?
- mrkurt 5y ago
  Yes.
  - dreyfan 5y ago
    https://i.imgur.com/PF7uxDY.png https://i.imgur.com/PF7uxDY.png What about end user experience?
    - mrkurt 5y ago
      Also yes. That screenshot doesn't have anything to do with Netlify, it's our own busted app release on our own servers. :D
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dreyfan 5y ago
        Obviously but you’re in the same pool of “commit and magically deployed globally” service offering, except I think you’re actually providing value (deploying backend services alongside static content) as opposed to a commit hook and a cache update.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tbarn 5y ago
Agreed, it's a whole new git based workflow. When I was doing full stack applications 10 years ago, it looked similar in some ways, but it was a lot different to me. I also had to care much more about servers. CDN caching is just one feature.
vagrantJin 5y ago
Yeah. I've used Netlify for a few years as a frontend guy and they're awesome.
_fat_santa 5y ago
This. I consider Netlify and Vercel to be more focused versions of AWS for static site hosting. You can host a static site on AWS no problem, but AWS is so massive that a good chunk of your time is going to be spent just wrangling with the AWS services themselves. What Netlify (and Vercel) did is take all those disparate features across AWS that you use for static site hosting, and package them up with a nice UI and easy access.
- latortuga 5y ago
  I know I'm nitpicking a bit here but it's more accurate to say that it's static HTML, JS, and CSS hosting. If you want to host images you have to solve that yourself. This part is pretty confusing to me given that both Vercel and Netlify have pretty much 1-click solved the rest of static site hosting.
  - nsp 5y ago
    For vercel you can't just throw the images in your `public/` folder or equivalent? I'm almost positive I've done that. Doesn't work for user generated images ofc, though cloudflare has some sort of solution there
    - tbarn 5y ago
      basically do this for sites that are on Netlify too.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  I host a static site on GCP with buckets, just have a quick script to build my site and use the GCP command line tool to push the site to the buckets, and then I proxy those buckets with Cloudflare and I'm good to go. No need for Vercel / Netlify there. I think when it comes to hosting Next.js or other frontend frameworks that do SSR, then it makes sense to use these. Am I mistaken?

Netlify and Vercel are frontend developer productivity and workflow tools. The value is not "CDN caching".

by mrkurt 5y ago

Netlify and Vercel are frontend developer productivity and workflow tools. The value is not "CDN caching".

dreyfan 5y ago

Does it solve any problems which aren’t self-inflicted by the convoluted JS ecosystem and toolchain?

mrkurt 5y ago
Yes.
- dreyfan 5y ago
  https://i.imgur.com/PF7uxDY.png https://i.imgur.com/PF7uxDY.png What about end user experience?
  - mrkurt 5y ago
    Also yes. That screenshot doesn't have anything to do with Netlify, it's our own busted app release on our own servers. :D
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dreyfan 5y ago
      Obviously but you’re in the same pool of “commit and magically deployed globally” service offering, except I think you’re actually providing value (deploying backend services alongside static content) as opposed to a commit hook and a cache update.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tbarn 5y ago

Agreed, it's a whole new git based workflow. When I was doing full stack applications 10 years ago, it looked similar in some ways, but it was a lot different to me. I also had to care much more about servers. CDN caching is just one feature.

vagrantJin 5y ago

Yeah. I've used Netlify for a few years as a frontend guy and they're awesome.

_fat_santa 5y ago

This. I consider Netlify and Vercel to be more focused versions of AWS for static site hosting. You can host a static site on AWS no problem, but AWS is so massive that a good chunk of your time is going to be spent just wrangling with the AWS services themselves. What Netlify (and Vercel) did is take all those disparate features across AWS that you use for static site hosting, and package them up with a nice UI and easy access.

latortuga 5y ago
I know I'm nitpicking a bit here but it's more accurate to say that it's static HTML, JS, and CSS hosting. If you want to host images you have to solve that yourself. This part is pretty confusing to me given that both Vercel and Netlify have pretty much 1-click solved the rest of static site hosting.
- nsp 5y ago
  For vercel you can't just throw the images in your `public/` folder or equivalent? I'm almost positive I've done that. Doesn't work for user generated images ofc, though cloudflare has some sort of solution there
  - tbarn 5y ago
    basically do this for sites that are on Netlify too.
notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I host a static site on GCP with buckets, just have a quick script to build my site and use the GCP command line tool to push the site to the buckets, and then I proxy those buckets with Cloudflare and I'm good to go. No need for Vercel / Netlify there. I think when it comes to hosting Next.js or other frontend frameworks that do SSR, then it makes sense to use these. Am I mistaken?