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I love the attitude of this guy. From the "Background" section: > "This project started from two points: as part of my PhD, I had to become very familiar with

I love the attitude of this guy. From the "Background" section: > "This project started from two points: as part of my PhD, I had to become very familiar with working with NOAA forecast results. Separately, an old tablet set up as a "Magic Mirror,” and was using a weather module that relied on the Dark Sky API, as well as my Home Assistant setup. So when I heard that it was shutting down, I thought, "I wonder if I could do this.” Plus, I love learning new things, and I had been looking for a project to learn Python on, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity! Spoiler alert, but it was way more difficult than I thought, but learned a lot throughout the process, and I think the end result turned out really well!"

hospitalJail 4y ago
Apache2 license as well. No need to worry about them selling out.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  I'm not familiar with AWS, but I'm not sure if everything needed to run your own version on your own AWS account is open source?
capableweb 4y ago
To me it's a bit worrying that someone who is still is a student, builds such a complicated and hard to maintain architecture (https://github.com/alexander0042/pirateweather/raw/main/docs/images/Arch_Diagram_2023.png https://github.com/alexander0042/pirateweather/raw/main/docs...). Maybe it's complicated on purpose, to educate themselves on how to create infrastructure like that, but for a production environment, you want to keep things as simple as possible. I'd have opted for a setup where basically every single "service" in that architecture diagram is one function in a monolith program. Easier to maintain, more performant, easier to deploy and basically better in every single way except you can't individually scale components. But at the scale that the project currently is, I don't think that's needed for a long time, nor is it hard to scale one machine if needed. But again, if it's just a educational exercise in "web scale architecture", then it of course is OK. But I wouldn't want other students to see something like that and think that it's necessarily to create such a monster for a relatively simple "moving data around and wrangle it a bit" program.
- anaganisk 4y ago
  I don't know if a person pursuing a PhD is a student
  - ale42 4y ago
    They're "graduate students", usually. Still have a student status at most universities.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I'm guessing they are studying? That would make them a student, as far as I know. But English is not my first language, maybe there is multiple meanings of student and not all of them fit someone who is "pursuing a PhD".
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  This whole comment reads so weird. Why do you or anyone else care how complicated someone else’s architecture is? Why is it only “OK” if it’s an educational exercise? Are you going to be maintaining it? Are you going to even be using it? Why does it matter to you what someone else did in their spare time for their own amusement? Or even to make a commercial product out of it? Either way, it’s not your architecture to backseat architect, let people do what they want.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I think I already elaborated on why? A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. I'm personally dealing with infrastructure at loads of different places, and the amount of engineers who over-complicate their infrastructure pains me, they all go for a distributed architecture before the products they are building even have any users, because they've read bunch of blog posts about building it that way. It sucks to spend so much time and effort on maintaining and improving something when it's not really needed in the first place. Like using a Ferrari to deliver food in a traffic-heavy city, instead of just having a moped. So basically, I want to save myself and others time.

hospitalJail 4y ago

Apache2 license as well. No need to worry about them selling out.

RobotToaster 4y ago
I'm not familiar with AWS, but I'm not sure if everything needed to run your own version on your own AWS account is open source?

capableweb 4y ago

To me it's a bit worrying that someone who is still is a student, builds such a complicated and hard to maintain architecture (https://github.com/alexander0042/pirateweather/raw/main/docs/images/Arch_Diagram_2023.png https://github.com/alexander0042/pirateweather/raw/main/docs...). Maybe it's complicated on purpose, to educate themselves on how to create infrastructure like that, but for a production environment, you want to keep things as simple as possible. I'd have opted for a setup where basically every single "service" in that architecture diagram is one function in a monolith program. Easier to maintain, more performant, easier to deploy and basically better in every single way except you can't individually scale components. But at the scale that the project currently is, I don't think that's needed for a long time, nor is it hard to scale one machine if needed. But again, if it's just a educational exercise in "web scale architecture", then it of course is OK. But I wouldn't want other students to see something like that and think that it's necessarily to create such a monster for a relatively simple "moving data around and wrangle it a bit" program.

anaganisk 4y ago
I don't know if a person pursuing a PhD is a student
- ale42 4y ago
  They're "graduate students", usually. Still have a student status at most universities.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm guessing they are studying? That would make them a student, as far as I know. But English is not my first language, maybe there is multiple meanings of student and not all of them fit someone who is "pursuing a PhD".
mynameisvlad 4y ago
This whole comment reads so weird. Why do you or anyone else care how complicated someone else’s architecture is? Why is it only “OK” if it’s an educational exercise? Are you going to be maintaining it? Are you going to even be using it? Why does it matter to you what someone else did in their spare time for their own amusement? Or even to make a commercial product out of it? Either way, it’s not your architecture to backseat architect, let people do what they want.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I think I already elaborated on why? A bunch of people take information they come across on the internet and think that's the only way of doing things, so if someone comes across the post, looks at the architecture they might think building it with so many components is a required thing, not just optional for really big projects. I'm personally dealing with infrastructure at loads of different places, and the amount of engineers who over-complicate their infrastructure pains me, they all go for a distributed architecture before the products they are building even have any users, because they've read bunch of blog posts about building it that way. It sucks to spend so much time and effort on maintaining and improving something when it's not really needed in the first place. Like using a Ferrari to deliver food in a traffic-heavy city, instead of just having a moped. So basically, I want to save myself and others time.