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I think this is just the natural conclusion of the new generation of devs being raised in the cloud and picking a scalable serverless PaaS like Vercel as the de

I think this is just the natural conclusion of the new generation of devs being raised in the cloud and picking a scalable serverless PaaS like Vercel as the default option for any web app. A more charitable reading is that they pick the technologies that the jobs they want are hiring for, even if they don’t make sense for this simple application.

diggan 2y ago
> I think this is just the natural conclusion of the new generation of devs being raised in the cloud and picking a scalable serverless PaaS like Vercel as the default option for any web app. I'm not sure, I'm also "new generation of devs" I suppose, cloud had just entered the beginning of the hype cycle when I started out professionally. Most companies/individuals at that point were pushing for "everything cloud" but after experiencing how expensive it really is, you start to look around for alternatives. I feel like that's just trying to have a "engineering mindset" rather than what generation you belong to.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Certainly, I just mean that we are hitting a point where there can be professional devs, with multiple years of experience at tech companies successfully building software, who have only ever known and worked with a PaaS to deploy an app.
  - consteval 2y ago
    It's frustrating too because deployment technologies and tools continue to get better and better. It's never been easier to deploy an application + database to some arbitrary computer. You can do it declaratively, no SSH, no random shell scripts, no suspicious fiddling. Also, sidenote: but for small stuff you can just deploy in your home. I've done it before. It's really not that scary, and odds are you have a computer laying around. The only "spooky" part is relying on my ISP router. I don't trust that thing, but that can be fixed.
    - majoe 2y ago
      >It's never been easier to deploy an application + database to some arbitrary computer. You can do it declaratively, no SSH, no random shell scripts, no suspicious fiddling. May I ask, what you are using?
      - consteval 2y ago
        Ansible + Docker. The only "catch" is you still have to manage the host. It's trivial with Debian stable, and really the goal is to have a little on the host as possible and as much containerized as possible, so you can automate.
- mxuribe 2y ago
  > ...after experiencing how expensive it really is, you start to look around for alternatives... One would think that to be the common sense case...but, in corporate America - at least the last handful of companies that i worked at - some companies are *only now just getting work loads up to the cloud now*...so they have not yet felt the cost pain....Or, in other cases, other firms are living in the cloud, have seen the exorbitant costs, but move waaaaay toooo sloooow to migrate workloads off cloud (or hybridize them in smart ways for their business)....Or, in even other cases that i have seen, instead of properly analyzing function and costs of cloud usage - and truly applying an engineering mindset to matters - some of these so called IT leaders (who are too busy with powerpoint slides) will simply layoff people and "achieve savings" that way. Welcome to being a technologist employed at one of several/many American corporations in 2024!
x0x0 2y ago
Or they're optimizing for not being a sysadmin, which some people can't do and even some of the people who can find to be very ungratifying work. For a project that runs on this person's enthusiasm, that seems not crazy. It's certainly possible to spin up your own db backup scripts, monitor that, make sure it gets offsite to an s3 bucket or something, set yourself a calendar reminder to test that all once a month, etc... but if I had to write out a list of things that I enjoy doing and a list of things that I don't, that work would feature heavily on the "yeah, but no" list.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Yes, if you don't want to do that work and are happy to pay someone else to take care of it, then that is great. But if you like making free web apps, relying on a PaaS will get expensive.
- immibis 2y ago
  If you become a sysadmin, not only do you save $100 per month but you can also add it to your CV. DHH (Rails founder) thinks you should dare to connect a server to the internet: https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-internet-01d25a07 https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-in... (I already submitted this once, but given the discussion here, I think it's worth posting again, if my rate limit allows it)
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    > The merchants of complexity thrive when they can scare you into believing that even the simplest things are too dangerous to even attempt by yourself these days. Awesome first sentence! I know I'm going to agree with the article just by that. This applies to so many things in life, too. We're been taught that so many things people routinely did in the past are now scary and impossible.
    - Youssef-1992 2y ago
      [flagged]
joshdavham 2y ago
> new generation of devs being raised in the cloud I unfortunately sorta put myself in this category where my PaaS of choice is Firebase. For this cost-splitting app however, what would you personally recommend if not Vercel? Would you recommend something like a Digital Ocean Droplet or something else? What are the best alternatives in your opinion?
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  Yes, I believe a Droplet or VPS (virtual private server) from some other provider would be sufficient. Digital Ocean isn't the cheapest, but it's pretty frictionless, slick, and has a lot of good tutorial articles about setting up servers. You'd have a Linux machine (the VPS) that would have at least 3 programs running (or it is running Docker, with these programs running inside containers): - Node.js - the database (likely MySQL or PostgreSQL) - Nginx or Apache You'd set up a DNS record pointing your domain at the VPS's IP address. When someone visits your website, their HTTP requests will be routed to port 80 or 443 on the VPS. Nginx will be listening on those ports, and forward (aka proxy) the requests to Node, which will respond back to Nginx, which will then send the response back to the user. There are of course security and availability concerns that are now your responsibility to handle and configure correctly in order to reach the same level of security and availability provided by a good PaaS. That's what you're paying the PaaS for. However, it is not too difficult to reach a level of security and availability that is more than sufficient for a small, free web app such as this one.
  - maccard 2y ago
    I don’t think that the difference is $110/month, but surely reading that you realise there’s a lot more going on there than “point vercel at a git repo and you’re done”. I don’t know how long it would take me to install docker and configure the above, but it’s certainly a few hours. I tried vercel for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a production ready site online with a custom domain in about 5 minutes. I’ve commented here before that on AWS (which I’m fairly familiar with) I could set up ECS with a load balancer and have a simple web app with rds running in about 30 minutes, and literally never have to touch the infra again.

diggan 2y ago

> I think this is just the natural conclusion of the new generation of devs being raised in the cloud and picking a scalable serverless PaaS like Vercel as the default option for any web app. I'm not sure, I'm also "new generation of devs" I suppose, cloud had just entered the beginning of the hype cycle when I started out professionally. Most companies/individuals at that point were pushing for "everything cloud" but after experiencing how expensive it really is, you start to look around for alternatives. I feel like that's just trying to have a "engineering mindset" rather than what generation you belong to.

Vegenoid 2y ago
Certainly, I just mean that we are hitting a point where there can be professional devs, with multiple years of experience at tech companies successfully building software, who have only ever known and worked with a PaaS to deploy an app.
- consteval 2y ago
  It's frustrating too because deployment technologies and tools continue to get better and better. It's never been easier to deploy an application + database to some arbitrary computer. You can do it declaratively, no SSH, no random shell scripts, no suspicious fiddling. Also, sidenote: but for small stuff you can just deploy in your home. I've done it before. It's really not that scary, and odds are you have a computer laying around. The only "spooky" part is relying on my ISP router. I don't trust that thing, but that can be fixed.
  - majoe 2y ago
    >It's never been easier to deploy an application + database to some arbitrary computer. You can do it declaratively, no SSH, no random shell scripts, no suspicious fiddling. May I ask, what you are using?
    - consteval 2y ago
      Ansible + Docker. The only "catch" is you still have to manage the host. It's trivial with Debian stable, and really the goal is to have a little on the host as possible and as much containerized as possible, so you can automate.
mxuribe 2y ago
> ...after experiencing how expensive it really is, you start to look around for alternatives... One would think that to be the common sense case...but, in corporate America - at least the last handful of companies that i worked at - some companies are *only now just getting work loads up to the cloud now*...so they have not yet felt the cost pain....Or, in other cases, other firms are living in the cloud, have seen the exorbitant costs, but move waaaaay toooo sloooow to migrate workloads off cloud (or hybridize them in smart ways for their business)....Or, in even other cases that i have seen, instead of properly analyzing function and costs of cloud usage - and truly applying an engineering mindset to matters - some of these so called IT leaders (who are too busy with powerpoint slides) will simply layoff people and "achieve savings" that way. Welcome to being a technologist employed at one of several/many American corporations in 2024!

x0x0 2y ago

Or they're optimizing for not being a sysadmin, which some people can't do and even some of the people who can find to be very ungratifying work. For a project that runs on this person's enthusiasm, that seems not crazy. It's certainly possible to spin up your own db backup scripts, monitor that, make sure it gets offsite to an s3 bucket or something, set yourself a calendar reminder to test that all once a month, etc... but if I had to write out a list of things that I enjoy doing and a list of things that I don't, that work would feature heavily on the "yeah, but no" list.

Vegenoid 2y ago
Yes, if you don't want to do that work and are happy to pay someone else to take care of it, then that is great. But if you like making free web apps, relying on a PaaS will get expensive.
immibis 2y ago
If you become a sysadmin, not only do you save $100 per month but you can also add it to your CV. DHH (Rails founder) thinks you should dare to connect a server to the internet: https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-internet-01d25a07 https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-in... (I already submitted this once, but given the discussion here, I think it's worth posting again, if my rate limit allows it)
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > The merchants of complexity thrive when they can scare you into believing that even the simplest things are too dangerous to even attempt by yourself these days. Awesome first sentence! I know I'm going to agree with the article just by that. This applies to so many things in life, too. We're been taught that so many things people routinely did in the past are now scary and impossible.
  - Youssef-1992 2y ago
    [flagged]

joshdavham 2y ago

> new generation of devs being raised in the cloud I unfortunately sorta put myself in this category where my PaaS of choice is Firebase. For this cost-splitting app however, what would you personally recommend if not Vercel? Would you recommend something like a Digital Ocean Droplet or something else? What are the best alternatives in your opinion?

Vegenoid 2y ago
Yes, I believe a Droplet or VPS (virtual private server) from some other provider would be sufficient. Digital Ocean isn't the cheapest, but it's pretty frictionless, slick, and has a lot of good tutorial articles about setting up servers. You'd have a Linux machine (the VPS) that would have at least 3 programs running (or it is running Docker, with these programs running inside containers): - Node.js - the database (likely MySQL or PostgreSQL) - Nginx or Apache You'd set up a DNS record pointing your domain at the VPS's IP address. When someone visits your website, their HTTP requests will be routed to port 80 or 443 on the VPS. Nginx will be listening on those ports, and forward (aka proxy) the requests to Node, which will respond back to Nginx, which will then send the response back to the user. There are of course security and availability concerns that are now your responsibility to handle and configure correctly in order to reach the same level of security and availability provided by a good PaaS. That's what you're paying the PaaS for. However, it is not too difficult to reach a level of security and availability that is more than sufficient for a small, free web app such as this one.
- maccard 2y ago
  I don’t think that the difference is $110/month, but surely reading that you realise there’s a lot more going on there than “point vercel at a git repo and you’re done”. I don’t know how long it would take me to install docker and configure the above, but it’s certainly a few hours. I tried vercel for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a production ready site online with a custom domain in about 5 minutes. I’ve commented here before that on AWS (which I’m fairly familiar with) I could set up ECS with a load balancer and have a simple web app with rds running in about 30 minutes, and literally never have to touch the infra again.