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Ask HN: What tools are you using to quickly build websites/apps?

• 1GZ0 2y ago
  HTML, CSS & Javascript.
  • aydgn 2y ago
    "tool"
    • 1GZ0 2y ago
      Well, depending on your definition of "tool" I'd say its still a proper answer. Unless you're calling me a tool, which would just be funny :)
    • muzani 2y ago
      Sometimes you need a hammer. Sometimes you just need a large rock.
  • jayFellows 2y ago
    Hosting and database?
    • muzani 2y ago
      Netlify works great for prototyping, but becomes expensive af at scale. For classic use, friends recommend KnownHost.
    • 1GZ0 2y ago
      You could try hosting on a cheap VPS and use PocketBase for your backend, or if thats too heavy handed, just use sqlite. If you're building something quick you don't wanna worry about handling a million requests per second.
• wruza 2y ago
  Not sure if this counts, but my toolkit is: tsc -w + vite, tsc -w + tsx and vim + ale. The stack is bootstrap, mithril, express, postgres. It’s not “quickly”, and I’d like to learn about faster ways too.
  • 1GZ0 2y ago
    Its not too bad. You could take a look at something like "BunJS + HTMX", its pretty killer.
    • fi_investor 2y ago
      htmx looks very useful! Can you share your personal experience in using it? Pros and cons?
      • 1GZ0 2y ago
        I haven't used it much. (don't use it for work) But I'll say its different. Very "backend first", so there's a bit of setup required server-side, setting up end-points and such. But not having to manage state or unpack json in the frontend is probably the best thing about HTMX. You send a request to a server from frontend, the backend responds with html and places it on the page where specified. Its much more intuitive and lower mental load than something like react or vue.
      • wruza 2y ago
        I had this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40710782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40710782 But the thing gp suggested looks much better, at least here: https://github.com/danawoodman/bun-htmx https://github.com/danawoodman/bun-htmx (see src/components, they use react-dom/server renderer to template-render tsx (also note that “tsx” I’m using is not a file format, but `npm i -d tsx`)). I guess I can try that in node too. That said, I don’t see the “quicker” part here tbh, imagining my mithril code in htmx templating code doesn’t make a big difference, unless I am missing something. It’s the same parametrized html but on server. Not even a glimpse of RAD-like paradigm shift. I guess htmx looks better if you’re using react but never allowed yourself a thought that it’s a useless esoteric bullshit everyone agrees to out of fear of being ostracized, which htmx removes silently (and it’s server-side). Mithril is just a vdom-based templater with simple autoredraw and doesn’t implement esoteric bs already. I somewhat agree with gp’s “unpack json” part, although it’s not a big deal with types shared across ends. I just re-new Date’s after fetch and that’s it.
• Leftium 2y ago
  With SvelteKit I can take an idea for a non-trivial web app to working prototype in less than a day. For example, I built an experimental beat-aware video player in less than a day. And this was while I was first teaching myself Svelte. (This was before SvelteKit was even a thing.) My freelance clients are often surprised how fast I can get them results. And I keep getting faster as I gain more experience. - The SvelteKit starter template is like a collection of best practices for web development. - The Svelte community is pretty helpful, too. (Both core maintainers and regular users.) Here's one of the apps I'm currently working on: - https://weather-sense.leftium.com https://weather-sense.leftium.com - https://github.com/Leftium/weather-sense https://github.com/Leftium/weather-sense
  • sriram_malhar 2y ago
    This looks lovely. May I ask who your preferred hosting providers are?
    • Leftium 2y ago
      Vercel. - Vercel hired the founder as well as a few core-maintainers to just work on Svelte(Kit) full-time. So Vercel tends to have the best class support for SvelteKit. - Other platforms like Netlify and Cloudflare have officially maintained adapters too. - SvelteKit was designed as serverless-first, but Node and even static deployments (like Github pages) are supported, too
      • jayFellows 2y ago
        Database?
        • Leftium 2y ago
          So far, my personal projects haven't used a database. If I need a DB (service), these would be my top candidates: - https://supabase.com https://supabase.com - https://pockethost.io https://pockethost.io - https://fauna.com https://fauna.com - https://www.edgedb.com https://www.edgedb.com They all support serverless and also provide auth (to avoid the user storage/query problem[1]) While SvelteKit does include backend functionality, unfortunately it doesn't have any special DX for databases. I think there are other starter templates built on top of Kit for that... [1]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1651434348174778370.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1651434348174778370.html
• mmarian 2y ago
  I use only Astro for websites / blog sites, and host with Cloudflare Pages. For web apps, I still use Astro/Cloudflare for the frontend. For the backend, I use Django Ninja, hosted as one of the many services I run on a Hetzner instance using CapRover.
  • jayFellows 2y ago
    Recently learned bout CapRover... Curious if you would ever consider the "bare VPS" route after having used it or if it (or something like it) has become essential.
    • mmarian 2y ago
      No, I wouldn't consider. It's so much easier to Dockerize every application. And I'm running about 10 services on the single instance, so it's a lot cheaper too.
      • jayFellows 2y ago
        How do you prevent issues with potential traffic spikes and such (with running 10 services on a single instance) (this is probably a dumb question... most of my experience is on the frontend)?
        • mmarian 2y ago
          I don't :) I've just delayed thinking about it until I have a service that actually does have that spike, which hasn't happened yet. It looks like the CapRover devs have a solution https://caprover.com/docs/app-scaling-and-cluster.html https://caprover.com/docs/app-scaling-and-cluster.html but I haven't tested it.
    • Lord_Zero 2y ago
      CapRover is very interesting... I actually just use Linode + Treafik + Portainer and self host all my own stuff using Docker Compose. If I have a new app, I just use GitHub Actions to build and push a container to GitHub Packages (GHCR) and then on my server I create a docker-compose.yaml and I fire it up, the labels link it all up to Traefik. Obviously deploying is manual right now since I have to SSH in and then pull and `docker compose up -d` but I could probably find something to bridge that gap. Id be interested in seeing how CapRover can simplify all that for me...
• BWStearns 2y ago
  This might be a weird one but if you already know rust loco-rs is pretty great. I've been using it on a nights/weekends project. It's axum + some rails-esque QOL features. Because it's rust the time to make a given feature might be slightly slower (10-20%?) than in python/js, but I've found you gain that time back almost immediately from things just working nicely the first time. Also refactors/feature rework are super easy.
• hpen 2y ago
  Mostly a bunch of non-scalable, half baked solutions with JS ;)
  • aspyct 2y ago
    Not the solution we deserve, but the solution we need :D
• moonleay 2y ago
  Dotnet Blazor when it needs a Website, Kotlin if it doesn't.
• vladsanchez 2y ago
  WIX.com LOL
• ale_jacques 2y ago
  Django + Postgres + Redis (only when necessary) + Unpoly + Bootstrap
  • alumic 2y ago
    Fantastic. I was stunned at how quickly and easily Unpoly transformed my small Django app from "dusty" to snappy and SPA-like.
    • ale_jacques 2y ago
      Yeah. I love the productivity that comes with this stack.
    • michaelyin 2y ago
      [dead]
• reducesuffering 2y ago
  Next.js (even backend /api) + React. TailwindCSS. Next Auth.js. Prisma ORM (drizzle or kysely work too). Supabase Postgres DB. The UI <-> DB flow for almost anything is very intuitive and quick to implement.
• graypegg 2y ago
  Rails, SQLite
• alumic 2y ago
  This is slightly orthogonal to the point of this post but I've been looking at Webflow again for some potential client work and I was curious what people's thoughts on it were.
• beryilma 2y ago
  Call me old fashioned and simplistic: JS, HTML, CSS, NodeJS, pm2, nginx, AWS server, S3, github.
• mmmuhd 2y ago
  If you really want to develop and deploy something fast, try filament php.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• _lvbh 2y ago
  import ( _ “embed” ) // go:embed frontend/* Just plain HTML/CSS/JS. I’ve been trying out templ but I still prefer having static files I can host separately.
• wjgilmore 2y ago
  I recently used NextJS by way of a TailwindUI.com template to relaunch my personal website https://wjgilmore.com https://wjgilmore.com. NextJS was actually pretty fun and surprisingly easy considering I never used it prior to this project. Hosted on Netlify free tier. For everything else I use Laravel.
• owenpalmer 2y ago
  Supabase is excellent