6 ms·

This is awesome. I’ve also built a number of services for myself (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes, analytics service for my website

by gyomu 2y ago

This is awesome. I’ve also built a number of services for myself (Pinterest style photo hosting for archival/research purposes, analytics service for my websites, tracker for the books I’ve read, message board for micro communities I’m a part of, etc). I also share them with friends who express interest in them. The costs are minimal (they all run on a shared $4/mo instance + $10/yr domain per project) and I get to control where the data lives, the features I want to have, etc. No need to worry about getting the rug pulled on me because the company got acquired or needs to raise revenue or anything like that. No frustration because a redesign made the UI worse or removed features I cared about. It obviously takes a bit of time upfront, but I see it as a long term investment in my productivity. I use boring, basic, stable technologies so once something is deployed it keeps on humming with extremely minimal involvement on my behalf. I’m basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every 3rd party app I use with something I wrote myself (it’s going to take a while but that’s okay). My grandpa was a carpenter and pretty much every piece of furniture in the house was something he or his friends had made. As software craftspeople, we should strive to do the same with our digital houses. Kudos to the author and anyone else who does this. You don’t hear about these things in the mainstream because there’s no reason for people doing this to shout it from the rooftops, but this is software at its best.

eGQjxkKF6fif 2y ago
For the love of technology, and the love of coding, and the love of self hosting, good. This is the way.
mdrzn 2y ago
Same. Since Claude 3.5 Sonnet has been released I've been building a lot of "microservices" that are just useful to me, or Chrome Extensions that I've seen that I just recreated using Cursor. Awesome learning experience and now I can customize them as needed.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  I think you mean that you've been building a lot of simple applications? Because that's not really what microservices are. I mean sure it's just a word and HN especially loves to spit on original definitions, but it is always kinda jarring to hear these technical terms in settings that have pretty much no overlap with the original definition.
  - dewey 2y ago
    If you think as yourself as an application and you are surrounding yourself by small service applications that do one specific task...then I could see it make sense.
  - radlad 2y ago
    Seems like we'll need to coalesce on a term for these. A microapp[0]? Or a tiny app[1][2]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microapp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microapp [1] https://tinyprojects.dev/projects https://tinyprojects.dev/projects [2] https://tinyapps.org/ https://tinyapps.org/
    - hansvm 2y ago
      μApp?
sim7c00 2y ago
this makes it sound very nice. i only do this stuff out of sheer frustration. not understanding stuff (i hate 'magic' , its 1s and 0s...), or not agreeing with decisions after i do understand stuff. i really dislike i have to build everything myself. though then again. i guess i do like building stuff :')... it's a never ending s/shitshow/joy/g
- sim7c00 2y ago
  oh, and yeah, looks like a really nice project honestly. i never do frontend stuff, but when i do, man, something like this would be useful :')... typing chromium index.html -> realizing it just spawned on the different workspace because chromium is trying to be smart (more likely i am being dumb ;D). having it side by side like that looks really nice if u have the screenspace.
rambambram 2y ago
> I’m basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every 3rd party app I use with something I wrote myself (it’s going to take a while but that’s okay). My grandpa was a carpenter and pretty much every piece of furniture in the house was something he or his friends had made. As software craftspeople, we should strive to do the same with our digital houses. I do the same. Both with software and furniture in my house. I've built all kinds of little dashboards, a big website software project, a local-only bookkeeping system, etc. With furniture, I'm not that far that I dare to build a chair or couch, but I've built a bed frame, an over-engineered shoe rack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzO8BOIlhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzO8BOIlhk), a weight rack, and now I have some bookshelves in the works. I don't know if you're Japanese, maybe it's coincidence, but I really get inspired by watching Japanese craftsmen on Youtube. It's not only the techniques or style that I like, but the careful working on something that should last.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  For others of like interest, NHKOnline is an ever-growing and fantastic collection of videos in English (or at least subtitled) that showcase Japan's fascinating sub-cultures, many of them craft-oriented. Our favorite is "Design Stories" (which used to be "Design Talks Plus") that features many such fantastic Japanese crafspeople. Our family hasn't missed an episode in quite a few years. And, of course, there is the Canadian resident of Japan, David Bull, who does traditional wood-block prints in the style of the magnificent Hokusai. His attention to detail in his work is inspiring to us as well.
- bityard 2y ago
  Same here. I got into woodworking because I was astonished at the price of decently-made furniture here in the US. You can literally buy all the materials AND tools for less than one solid wood rustic-chic kitchen table and bench costs to buy. Anyway, the hard part about this is that you need a space and then the tools and some tools are easier/cheaper to build than buy (e.g. bandsaw, router table) but there comes a point at which you have to stop building the shop and start building furniture. Most of the YouTubers I follow haven't gotten this message yet...
videogreg93 2y ago
What service are you using that's 4$/month? I've used the free tier of Render on the past which I enjoyed but the lowest paid plan is 20$/month.
- diggan 2y ago
  Some options that pop up frequently on HN: Vultr, DigitalOcean, OVH and Hetzner Cloud, all have cheap VPSes, $4-$5 per month for the cheapest I think. And usually if it's an app for just you/your small family, you can get away hosting multiple apps per VPS without suffering atrocious performance (depends on the apps/usage obviously). The trick (and somewhat the drawback in many's eyes) is to rent a VPS (or dedicated/bare metal) instead of a "App hosting service" (what Render is). You'd need to know some basics about infrastructure and networking, but not anything too advanced and that's stuff will be useful regardless too, so not too easy to rationalize away :)
- mediumsmart 2y ago
  Dreamhost shared unlimited is good for this I think. 3,95 - After 3 years the price triples but still worth it. Unlimited traffic, bandwidth, emails and subdomains. https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans
- indigodaddy 2y ago
  Some excellent VPS deals with high storage here. Host has a good rep on LET. Believe these promos are ending soon and many are sold out in any case, but I think they have some stock in a few of them.. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/199617/hostbrr-bf-storage-deals-epyc-10-gbps-storage-vps-directadmin-storage-boxes-500gb-7-year/p1 https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/199617/hostbrr-bf-storage-...
bityard 2y ago
100% I'm not a programmer by trade but I write tools for myself all the time. My favorite is a wiki-style knowledge base that I built for myself because I did not like the bulk or design of all the existing solutions. (I am a bit picky.) I use it every day for both work and personal stuff. There are lots of ways I want to improve it, but finding the time is difficult.
- canadiantim 2y ago
  I’d love to see the UI, you don’t by chance have any screenshots? I’m always interested in how people organize their own knowledge based especially wiki style

by gyomu 2y ago

eGQjxkKF6fif 2y ago

For the love of technology, and the love of coding, and the love of self hosting, good. This is the way.

mdrzn 2y ago

Same. Since Claude 3.5 Sonnet has been released I've been building a lot of "microservices" that are just useful to me, or Chrome Extensions that I've seen that I just recreated using Cursor. Awesome learning experience and now I can customize them as needed.

ffsm8 2y ago
I think you mean that you've been building a lot of simple applications? Because that's not really what microservices are. I mean sure it's just a word and HN especially loves to spit on original definitions, but it is always kinda jarring to hear these technical terms in settings that have pretty much no overlap with the original definition.
- dewey 2y ago
  If you think as yourself as an application and you are surrounding yourself by small service applications that do one specific task...then I could see it make sense.
- radlad 2y ago
  Seems like we'll need to coalesce on a term for these. A microapp[0]? Or a tiny app[1][2]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microapp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microapp [1] https://tinyprojects.dev/projects https://tinyprojects.dev/projects [2] https://tinyapps.org/ https://tinyapps.org/
  - hansvm 2y ago
    μApp?

sim7c00 2y ago

this makes it sound very nice. i only do this stuff out of sheer frustration. not understanding stuff (i hate 'magic' , its 1s and 0s...), or not agreeing with decisions after i do understand stuff. i really dislike i have to build everything myself. though then again. i guess i do like building stuff :')... it's a never ending s/shitshow/joy/g

sim7c00 2y ago
oh, and yeah, looks like a really nice project honestly. i never do frontend stuff, but when i do, man, something like this would be useful :')... typing chromium index.html -> realizing it just spawned on the different workspace because chromium is trying to be smart (more likely i am being dumb ;D). having it side by side like that looks really nice if u have the screenspace.

rambambram 2y ago

> I’m basically slowly working on replacing pretty much every 3rd party app I use with something I wrote myself (it’s going to take a while but that’s okay). My grandpa was a carpenter and pretty much every piece of furniture in the house was something he or his friends had made. As software craftspeople, we should strive to do the same with our digital houses. I do the same. Both with software and furniture in my house. I've built all kinds of little dashboards, a big website software project, a local-only bookkeeping system, etc. With furniture, I'm not that far that I dare to build a chair or couch, but I've built a bed frame, an over-engineered shoe rack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzO8BOIlhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzO8BOIlhk), a weight rack, and now I have some bookshelves in the works. I don't know if you're Japanese, maybe it's coincidence, but I really get inspired by watching Japanese craftsmen on Youtube. It's not only the techniques or style that I like, but the careful working on something that should last.

MrMcCall 2y ago
For others of like interest, NHKOnline is an ever-growing and fantastic collection of videos in English (or at least subtitled) that showcase Japan's fascinating sub-cultures, many of them craft-oriented. Our favorite is "Design Stories" (which used to be "Design Talks Plus") that features many such fantastic Japanese crafspeople. Our family hasn't missed an episode in quite a few years. And, of course, there is the Canadian resident of Japan, David Bull, who does traditional wood-block prints in the style of the magnificent Hokusai. His attention to detail in his work is inspiring to us as well.
bityard 2y ago
Same here. I got into woodworking because I was astonished at the price of decently-made furniture here in the US. You can literally buy all the materials AND tools for less than one solid wood rustic-chic kitchen table and bench costs to buy. Anyway, the hard part about this is that you need a space and then the tools and some tools are easier/cheaper to build than buy (e.g. bandsaw, router table) but there comes a point at which you have to stop building the shop and start building furniture. Most of the YouTubers I follow haven't gotten this message yet...

videogreg93 2y ago

What service are you using that's 4$/month? I've used the free tier of Render on the past which I enjoyed but the lowest paid plan is 20$/month.

diggan 2y ago
Some options that pop up frequently on HN: Vultr, DigitalOcean, OVH and Hetzner Cloud, all have cheap VPSes, $4-$5 per month for the cheapest I think. And usually if it's an app for just you/your small family, you can get away hosting multiple apps per VPS without suffering atrocious performance (depends on the apps/usage obviously). The trick (and somewhat the drawback in many's eyes) is to rent a VPS (or dedicated/bare metal) instead of a "App hosting service" (what Render is). You'd need to know some basics about infrastructure and networking, but not anything too advanced and that's stuff will be useful regardless too, so not too easy to rationalize away :)
mediumsmart 2y ago
Dreamhost shared unlimited is good for this I think. 3,95 - After 3 years the price triples but still worth it. Unlimited traffic, bandwidth, emails and subdomains. https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/#shared-plans
indigodaddy 2y ago
Some excellent VPS deals with high storage here. Host has a good rep on LET. Believe these promos are ending soon and many are sold out in any case, but I think they have some stock in a few of them.. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/199617/hostbrr-bf-storage-deals-epyc-10-gbps-storage-vps-directadmin-storage-boxes-500gb-7-year/p1 https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/199617/hostbrr-bf-storage-...

bityard 2y ago

100% I'm not a programmer by trade but I write tools for myself all the time. My favorite is a wiki-style knowledge base that I built for myself because I did not like the bulk or design of all the existing solutions. (I am a bit picky.) I use it every day for both work and personal stuff. There are lots of ways I want to improve it, but finding the time is difficult.

canadiantim 2y ago
I’d love to see the UI, you don’t by chance have any screenshots? I’m always interested in how people organize their own knowledge based especially wiki style