7 ms·

I'm someone who likes configuring & running my own servers, it is always a pleasure reading how others small / solo businesses are running their show. It is so

I'm someone who likes configuring & running my own servers, it is always a pleasure reading how others small / solo businesses are running their show. It is so cool to see one-person SaaS business running on old school bare metal servers without needing any fancy devOps / containerize tooling.

altdataseller 4y ago
That fancy devops/containers tooling is easier to maintain and work on vs running on bare metal servers.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  Is that some kind of universal truth or just what you think
- dolmen 4y ago
  When there are just 9 servers and a single developer like in the article your opinion doesn't matter.
- hakube 4y ago
  It's not easy to maintain I can tell you
  - altdataseller 4y ago
    I said easier, not easy.
    - BilalBudhani 4y ago
      I don't see how it is easier to maintain. I follow a simple rule of thumb - the more abstractions you introduce the more complex it gets to maintain Life is easier if you can get away with lesser abstractions.
- holoduke 4y ago
  The more tools you have the more difficult it is to maintain yourself. In a larger team with dedicated DevOps you might be right. But in my case where I maintain frontend, backend, databases, security, hosting and the servers I cannot have too much complexity. And i find container tools too complex to fully understand as a full stack software developer (not an expert in anything). Same for heavy weight frontend or backend frameworks. I like to keep it simple without too many abstractions on all layers. So far I managed to build apps used by millions of daily users for about 10 years.
- curun1r 4y ago
  I think you and the people disagreeing with you are both right, in a sense. These tools can absolutely simplify and improve even a small deployment…for someone with significant experience using them. But there’s a lot of learning that has to happen to get to that level of experience. And for a solo operator or small team without that experience, investing that time into learning may not be the best investment. You see this contextual disagreement a ton here on HN. Those who gave taken the time to learn these tools and have practical experience using them for real deployments see the alternative as primitive, error prone and fundamentally limiting. Those without the experience see the tools as overly-complex distractions. Both are true, depending on your situation. Like almost all tech decisions, there are no universally correct answers. The best decisions are those tailored to the specific circumstances.
CoolCold 4y ago
From what I observe, developer prefer to stay in API abstractions than spending time on servers/other infrastructure. Partially I can understand their choice.
- zerkten 4y ago
  What do you mean? The economics and decision-making are different between one-person companies through small and large organizations. When you have to know to to do everything, and fix anything, it is a problem when there is complexity, and you lack control. As organizations get larger, there is more value from abstractions and more leeway for their use. In many ways it is a luxury to be able to use said abstractions and be able to open a ticket with someone else. Of course, a single-person startup could use the same tech, but it seriously impacts their costs and they don't have time to deal with the sprawl of abstractions.
  - Destiner 4y ago
    I believe it’s the opposite? In a large org, you can have a dedicate team managing your servers. When you’re a one man business, you want to abstract as much as possible to focus on value proposition.
    - sdevonoes 4y ago
      True. Although more often than not it's the opposite in my experience. Large organizations can afford to spend the money on GCP/aws/Azure and deploy thousands of services. They can also afford the money to hire infrastructure engineers to maintain such services. Also, in large companies everything needs to be implemented "the same way", so no matter if you want to deploy a tiny service or a huge one, you must do it the same way other services in the company are deployed. Whereas when you are a one-man business, all you have is (free) time and prefer to spend as little money as possible while your business is not profitable. This means: walk away from dedicated databases, managed servers, huge aws bills, etc. You do everything "the old" way: rent a server (bare metal or cloud) and maintain it yourself.
    - 4y ago

altdataseller 4y ago

That fancy devops/containers tooling is easier to maintain and work on vs running on bare metal servers.

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
Is that some kind of universal truth or just what you think
dolmen 4y ago
When there are just 9 servers and a single developer like in the article your opinion doesn't matter.
hakube 4y ago
It's not easy to maintain I can tell you
- altdataseller 4y ago
  I said easier, not easy.
  - BilalBudhani 4y ago
    I don't see how it is easier to maintain. I follow a simple rule of thumb - the more abstractions you introduce the more complex it gets to maintain Life is easier if you can get away with lesser abstractions.
holoduke 4y ago
The more tools you have the more difficult it is to maintain yourself. In a larger team with dedicated DevOps you might be right. But in my case where I maintain frontend, backend, databases, security, hosting and the servers I cannot have too much complexity. And i find container tools too complex to fully understand as a full stack software developer (not an expert in anything). Same for heavy weight frontend or backend frameworks. I like to keep it simple without too many abstractions on all layers. So far I managed to build apps used by millions of daily users for about 10 years.
curun1r 4y ago
I think you and the people disagreeing with you are both right, in a sense. These tools can absolutely simplify and improve even a small deployment…for someone with significant experience using them. But there’s a lot of learning that has to happen to get to that level of experience. And for a solo operator or small team without that experience, investing that time into learning may not be the best investment. You see this contextual disagreement a ton here on HN. Those who gave taken the time to learn these tools and have practical experience using them for real deployments see the alternative as primitive, error prone and fundamentally limiting. Those without the experience see the tools as overly-complex distractions. Both are true, depending on your situation. Like almost all tech decisions, there are no universally correct answers. The best decisions are those tailored to the specific circumstances.

CoolCold 4y ago

From what I observe, developer prefer to stay in API abstractions than spending time on servers/other infrastructure. Partially I can understand their choice.

zerkten 4y ago
What do you mean? The economics and decision-making are different between one-person companies through small and large organizations. When you have to know to to do everything, and fix anything, it is a problem when there is complexity, and you lack control. As organizations get larger, there is more value from abstractions and more leeway for their use. In many ways it is a luxury to be able to use said abstractions and be able to open a ticket with someone else. Of course, a single-person startup could use the same tech, but it seriously impacts their costs and they don't have time to deal with the sprawl of abstractions.
- Destiner 4y ago
  I believe it’s the opposite? In a large org, you can have a dedicate team managing your servers. When you’re a one man business, you want to abstract as much as possible to focus on value proposition.
  - sdevonoes 4y ago
    True. Although more often than not it's the opposite in my experience. Large organizations can afford to spend the money on GCP/aws/Azure and deploy thousands of services. They can also afford the money to hire infrastructure engineers to maintain such services. Also, in large companies everything needs to be implemented "the same way", so no matter if you want to deploy a tiny service or a huge one, you must do it the same way other services in the company are deployed. Whereas when you are a one-man business, all you have is (free) time and prefer to spend as little money as possible while your business is not profitable. This means: walk away from dedicated databases, managed servers, huge aws bills, etc. You do everything "the old" way: rent a server (bare metal or cloud) and maintain it yourself.
  - 4y ago