I am super inspired by Pieter. At the same time, I'm also not a believer of a one size fits all approach. A lot of Pieter's work these days is built around remote working communities. His first ideas when he was doing 12 months, 12 startups were very singular in focus. Nothing wrong with that at all. At the same time, Pieter's approach has not been used across a broad range of products in terms of product complexity.
I'm basically curious which larger products have been made with this kind of relatively ultra-light technological approach and have still succeeded.
I'm particularly curious if there are products that started out as a super simple application and then grew in complexity while maintaining this kind of approach. At what point did it break? Are there examples where it did not break?
Edit - by growing in complexity I mean feature/product complexity while maintaining technical "simplicity".
Or am I thinking about this backwards? If you are a single developer, you use your basic tools, and launch products that are light on complexity where the focus is to ensure it earns money and that's it.
i mean, facebook started as a very light php app and then they just built layer upon layer upon layer on top of it until they basically now have their own fork of php.
Well-deserved in my opinion. His no-nonsense and unpretentious way of building products, often out in the open, should be a source of motivation for others who can come up with a dozen reasons why they shouldn't attempt to do X. His blog-posts and Tweets are not hustle-porn but just straight-up "works for me, I honestly don't care what you say". A quote that I recently read applies to him very much: "Pessimists sound smart, optimists make money". Pieter doesn't try to sound smart, after all what could possibly sound smarter than making this amount of revenue as a solo founder.
Yeah a lot of people get stuck in the loop of worrying whether they're using the right framework or programming patterns or whether their blog will scale to 1 million daily hits. They rarely ship anything.
If you never put your work out there, you'll never be successful, so the key is to stop messing around and just build. If it's shit, it's shit, no one can see the code, if you want to rewrite it then ship it and do it after.
The quicker it's out there, the better it is for you, and it's also incredibly motivating to get feedback ASAP without guessing what people might want from your product.
I am a solo founder and I recently saw the post of solo founder persistence, which I am yet to read in full. Pieter is one of those that can consistently deliver. He has been doing that for years now. I admire him and what he does, yet I know I can not. I am plagued by mental, emotional issues that break my routine every few months. I started focusing on perseverance and I am happy with where I am now. There is still a long way to go for me and Pieter will stay an inspiration.
Hey :) you should see my brain and discover what I'm plagued by! I struggle with moderate anxiety and depression on and off too and esp this year has been quite hard.
Work is quite therapeutical for me because it keeps me creative, active and have goals. It keeps me on the rails really. Daily creative stuff to work on. My dad does the same as he's always renovating the house, doing woodworking, or studying film history. Just tasks to do.
Even if those tasks feeling meaningless and motivation drops (eg symptoms of sneaking up depression, especially during this crazy year), getting one task done usually helps to alleviate that and get back into it. That and a supportive girlfriend, working out a lot and trying to eat healthy.
I think it's much more common especially in entrepreneurship and ambitious pursuits than we think, so the moment I drop the word depression or anxiety people are like "omg are you okay?", but it's just a part of my and many people's existence I think.
So just so you know, while it might look like my brain has it together from afar, it's somewhat of a struggle on and off and will be the rest of my life, and I think for many people. And my work might just be a result of trying to deal with that, instead of an obstacle.
> I admire him and what he does, yet I know I can not.
Of course you can! I'm like you in that I haven't had a successful project yet, but it'll only happen if we keep trying!
And like Pieter said in his reply to you, pretty much everyone struggles with mental stuff, even him and people like Tim Ferriss. So don't let that hold you back. Acknowledge the hardships and then keep on going.
Sometimes I think it's fascinating the rabbit holes we'll go down, when ultimately, the user just doesn't care.
TypeScript vs. plain JS
Logic-less templates like Mustache vs. Handlebars
Vue vs. React
Using async/await, and adding the relevant infrastructure to support that (transpiler)
Clean code practices in general
Unit tests, end to end tests
CSS BEM vs. tailwind
You can make indirect connections to imply the user does care, e.g. E2E tests catch a bug which meant the user didn't see it, but generally, these things are meaningless to them.
For my first course, I put time into those things - time taken away from making content. The more I think about it for my new course, the more I wonder should I just sell on a platform which already handles all of that, like gumroad.
Where's the line though? When is gumroad or squarespace not the answer?
Yeah that is what it boils down to often; the user doesn't care. It's more about what's best for the developer.
The problem is that a lot of developers want to work with what is 'sexy' at the moment. That's one factor that also drives e.g. job adverts; most vacancies I've seen will have "cryptocurrency" and "IoT" sprinkled in, just for the sake of looking attractive.
And old applications get rewritten in newer tech because of a combination of technical debt and developers going "I did not write this so I cannot read it and do not want to work with it".
Granted, newer programming languages (or versions thereof) often have better developer ergonomics (I spent my morning trying to get a C codebase to work while with my new Go codebase it should be a matter of installing the Go tools and doing 'go build').
Another factor is the perception of productivity; rebuilding software greenfield will feel super productive for at least the first six months to a year, after which things become more of a slog as the backlog fills with bug reports and change requests, instead of new features.
Source: I've seen this happen a number of times.
Disclaimer: I'm in a rebuild project myself now, the old codebase is nearly 200K of very poorly written PHP / JS, and the Decision was made to rewrite it from scratch. I'm going with Go and React at the moment; Go because it's unsurprising and boring code that should be fine for the next decade, and React because it's a de facto standard now and should be fine for the next 3-5 years as well. Both tools were decided on in part for future developers that will work alongside or to replace me.
But I'm sure in a few years my opinion on what is the best tech stack may change, idk.
> Sometimes I think it's fascinating the rabbit holes we'll go down, when ultimately, the user just doesn't care.
All those things you mention don't affect the user's first experience on your site, you're right: you can use plain JS, ignore clean code practices, have no unit tests, and use the frameworks you're most familiar with even though they don't quite fit, and still start a successful service.
However, they all come into play when you start to evolve your website or service. TypeScript makes it easier to refactor your code when it gets complicated. async/await lets you serve more users. Clean code practices lets you onboard more developers easier. Unit tests and end-to-end tests mean you can iterate more quickly without worrying about breaking existing functionality — something users definitely do care about — which makes it something you should care about too, if you want to keep them around.
> Where's the line though? When is gumroad or squarespace not the answer?
Gumroad is going to handle payments for you.
You mentioned a course. If you plan to offer video streaming, you'd have to come up with something to provide that platform.
There's places like Teachable and Thinkific for that. That's what I did initially and now years later I want to build my own platform because there's a massive laundry list of things that I don't like about those existing platforms.
But now it's difficult to move an audience from platform A to B because they expect a working and fairly feature rich solution since that's what they are used to. It means the custom solution needs to be shipped as something more than an MVP, which makes it take longer to develop. At the same time, like you said, building the platform takes away from creating the content.
If I could go back in the time I would have built my own platform first while testing the demand with free videos on Youtube.
I'm making massive assumptions and generalizations here, but, a lot of developers are pretty introverted and really dislike being in the spotlights, whereas instagram people are the opposite. Without trying to make the term sound negative (it's a personality trait IMO, not a value judgment), it's a narcissistic trait that not everyone has.
I mean I'm working remotely at the moment because of the 'rona and it's not glamorous at all. My desk doesn't look like a generic marketing photo (you know the type, top-down view on a wood grain desk, clean Macbook, steaming cup of coffee, phone, Moleskin notebook, random plant), I don't spend my time lounging and networking (a beer in the back yard at night maybe), I just go upstairs, do my thing for eight hours, etc.
Extroverts and narcissists make software development look a lot sexier, because they have no qualms with putting themselves forward and advertising themselves and their lifestyle.
Me, I hide behind an online moniker and shitpost on HN, often not even looking whether anyone replied to my comments because What If I'm confronted with something.
I'm sure I'd have a much cushier job if I was more extroverted (alongside my current skill level, I'm no genius but I get the job done). Maybe one day I'll go self-employed or work remote for wealthy US companies, idk.
Conversely working for FAANG or even just a generic corporate job can land you in a position where you can be comfortably mediocre. Are those people failures too?
Going solo means you have to get shit done, and you have to pick a viable niche. There's no inertia to rely on, and no safety net.
So the tech stack makes a difference. Because if it takes you months of learning before you can start making a site out of cloud + containers + automation + components you've failed before you started.
These are fair points, and you are very likely correct about the ratio of success to failure. Survival bias is strong on HN.
I would add though that "shipping it" greatly increases your odds of success, and choosing a simple stack that lets you ship an idea quickly is a good thing.
I feel like his choice of a super basic tech stack likely contributed to Pieter's success in some way.
I am going to take the opposing side of HN's groupthink and tell why I don't like that this guy is celebrated as a hero.
I haven't checked since a while but a long time ago when I tried to sign up to his site it was a showcase of dark patterns. What I specifically remember is that it sucked in all my data on a sign up form before telling me that I actually have to pay for access. I specifically checked every square inch of the opening site beforehand to see if it's a paid system. But it was filled to the rim with all the other usual dishonest marketing psychology bullshit too.
Usually it's best to avoid anybody who does any business with "digital nomad" in its description. So many hustlers preying on clueless people who are sucked into the promise of easily setting up an online passive income while travelling the world. Coaches, masterminds and paid-for online communities are the worst: newcomers pay access to people who are either essentially in the same shoes as themselves or are only part of the community to make a profit out of it. Obviously the ones who are willing to pay for this (and fall for the above described dark patterns) are the ones who want to get value out of it, not the ones who can provide. Why would any serious "digital nomad" pay to be part of such a community?
Also the original nomad list site was like a distillation of everything that's wrong with the lean startup ideology. The content was not only thin, it actually looked like it was totally made up. Whenever I saw someone link it as some authority on a location I always wondered whether anybody who has ever been to that place had any input on it. But it didn't matter, it was sleek and easy to digest so it took off. And then could be used as a traffic source for the other ventures under the same umbrella.
So the guy is now making half a million a year based on a site spreading completely useless and misleading information and riding the hope of a better life of newb digital nomads. Yes I am bitter that I am not his position. But I am also bitter that this is the kind of business practice that makes money nowadays.
I don't think it's at all surprising that there is no relation between tech stack and business success. End-users don't care if you use a single PHP file or a Go binary, they never get to see that anyway. So I don't really see "it was all a single PHP file" as a gotcha. The whole thing could've been coded in Assembly, the difference is in the effort required for development, ease of maintenance/scaling up and how well-guarded you are against vulnerabilities.
If there is one thing I've learned in this business it is that when your tech stack becomes an "issue" for your business success, you've probably "made it" success-wise.
So many technical folks lose site of the fact that no matter how many "cool" technologies you deploy out of the gate, it really doesn't matter if the market and customers aren't paying you revenue. Period.
If you don't get why the fact a high successful venture is using such a barebones tech stack is not noteworthy, you must be following a different tech industry than I am
> sqLite - This is described as being unsuitable for
> production by it's makers.
I would doubt that is what the creators of SQlite intend one to take away from their documentation:
"SQLite works great as the database engine for most low to medium traffic websites (which is to say, most websites). The amount of web traffic that SQLite can handle depends on how heavily the website uses its database. Generally speaking, any site that gets fewer than 100K hits/day should work fine with SQLite. The 100K hits/day figure is a conservative estimate, not a hard upper bound. SQLite has been demonstrated to work with 10 times that amount of traffic.
> The SQLite website (https://www.sqlite.org/) uses SQLite
> itself, of course, and as of this writing (2015) it handles
> about 400K to 500K HTTP requests per day, about 15-20% of
> which are dynamic pages touching the database. Dynamic
> content uses about 200 SQL statements per webpage. This
> setup runs on a single VM that shares a physical server
> with 23 others and yet still keeps the load average below
> 0.1 most of the time." (Source: https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)
So SQlite is quite a valid choice if you need a database and stay below ~500k HTTP requests per day. So it probably is "production ready" for many a site.
Having done exactly opposite to what Pieter has done as a solopreneur for many years -
i.e.
• Best Engineering practices set by industry leaders.
• Using state of the art tools, libraries, architectures etc.
• Being paranoid about Technical Debt.
I would say Pieter's strategy is a better if you're a serial-solopreneur. I had a CS degree, so its even hard to think of such a route and I considered my startup to be a long haul but there are valuable lessons to take from no-code/non-CS community; after all they solve problems for their consumers and make money from it.
But, I wish every solopreneur knew and suggests one advise in every interview they give 'Buy a fat health insurance, largest you can afford, take care of your health as when you go down your startup goes down and no amount of automation can save it' and that's what happened with my startup.
I don't think this has anything to do with tech stack.
React is generally easier to use correctly than plain JavaScript, PostgreSQL is as easy to use as SQLite (and more powerful), Node is as easy to use as PHP (but has more libraries, and you can use TypeScript which makes it easier to write correct code), etc.
The only actually simplifying choice seems to be using a single VPS instead of a Kubernetes-based cluster.
It's far more likely that both the financial success and the tech stack are caused by a pragmatic attitude focusing on the business itself rather than tech details, rather than the tech stack being the cause of the success.
Absolutely disagree. One is incredibly secure out of the box, the other is certainly not, they probably shouldn't even be compared. We can check Shodan if you want some empirical evidence for this.
I agree - for me, its about continuing to use React/Python/Go/Node for new projects, instead of trying (say) Elixir or Clojure. I'm already much less focused..
I don’t usually like to toot my own horn, but I make $600k/year off a plain HTML static site that isn’t even coded well, in-line CSS, many pages not responsive, broken links, etc.
I have a site like this as well and it makes about a paltry $40k on a good year. I mostly got lucky because I had some niche domain knowledge for a specific industry that was lacking a web product. I wasted money trying to grow it for some time but I've come to accept even at it's full potential it would probably only make maybe double of what it does now at max. I hope someday though i'll stumble across a $600k a year opportunity.
You wrote in another comment that it is an "information rich" site. Has the absence of a search feature ever been a problem for you? Or did run into any issues that could have been easily solved with something like a WordPress plugin (if the site wasn't static, of course).
I'm asking because these are the things that bug me when it comes to this "static all day, every day" trend.
Levels is quite transparent about how to build and monetize communities. I 'd expect he 'll receive a lot of hate if blogs like this make him a posterchild about "making money without a degree". He is talented, which the blog fails to mention, not everyone with or without a CS degree is talented. I also like his opinionated approach of not engagint with haters.
This has nothing to do with Tech and everything to do with his MBA and business knowledge. The way he markets, writes copy and actually builds communities is what is making him a shit ton of money, not the single index.php
I met a guy travelling in South Africa / Namibia in 2013 who had two web businesses (https://www.replacementkeys.co.uk/ and InternetRadio.com). Had No Degree, just self taught / on the job training. He had written most of his stuff in Perl :o! Similar philosophy to this to Pieter Levels!
If you don't know who Pieter Levels is, the title makes it sound like this person makes $600k doing remote coding work on jobs found on Nomad List and Remote OK.
In actuality, he is an MBA who runs these two businesses.
I have a broken bootstrap template that I've recycled for over half a decade to make landing pages for new products.
It's always funny when junior developers come to support the product and balk at the code.
Yessir, its a one page static website that just got me $1,000,000 in three weeks and your attention and ability to pay you.
Funnier because I used to be that junior developer.
The memes that recognize this are so good and spot on: the pedantic guy with glasses and out of place bowtie complaining about some irrelevant best practice, while money printer go brrrrrrr
[+] [-] nstart|5 years ago|reply
I'm basically curious which larger products have been made with this kind of relatively ultra-light technological approach and have still succeeded.
I'm particularly curious if there are products that started out as a super simple application and then grew in complexity while maintaining this kind of approach. At what point did it break? Are there examples where it did not break?
Edit - by growing in complexity I mean feature/product complexity while maintaining technical "simplicity".
Or am I thinking about this backwards? If you are a single developer, you use your basic tools, and launch products that are light on complexity where the focus is to ensure it earns money and that's it.
[+] [-] swyx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heipei|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Philip-J-Fry|5 years ago|reply
If you never put your work out there, you'll never be successful, so the key is to stop messing around and just build. If it's shit, it's shit, no one can see the code, if you want to rewrite it then ship it and do it after.
The quicker it's out there, the better it is for you, and it's also incredibly motivating to get feedback ASAP without guessing what people might want from your product.
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brainless|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pieterhg|5 years ago|reply
Work is quite therapeutical for me because it keeps me creative, active and have goals. It keeps me on the rails really. Daily creative stuff to work on. My dad does the same as he's always renovating the house, doing woodworking, or studying film history. Just tasks to do.
Even if those tasks feeling meaningless and motivation drops (eg symptoms of sneaking up depression, especially during this crazy year), getting one task done usually helps to alleviate that and get back into it. That and a supportive girlfriend, working out a lot and trying to eat healthy.
I think it's much more common especially in entrepreneurship and ambitious pursuits than we think, so the moment I drop the word depression or anxiety people are like "omg are you okay?", but it's just a part of my and many people's existence I think.
So just so you know, while it might look like my brain has it together from afar, it's somewhat of a struggle on and off and will be the rest of my life, and I think for many people. And my work might just be a result of trying to deal with that, instead of an obstacle.
[+] [-] RikNieu|5 years ago|reply
Of course you can! I'm like you in that I haven't had a successful project yet, but it'll only happen if we keep trying!
And like Pieter said in his reply to you, pretty much everyone struggles with mental stuff, even him and people like Tim Ferriss. So don't let that hold you back. Acknowledge the hardships and then keep on going.
You can do this!
[+] [-] umaar|5 years ago|reply
TypeScript vs. plain JS
Logic-less templates like Mustache vs. Handlebars
Vue vs. React
Using async/await, and adding the relevant infrastructure to support that (transpiler)
Clean code practices in general
Unit tests, end to end tests
CSS BEM vs. tailwind
You can make indirect connections to imply the user does care, e.g. E2E tests catch a bug which meant the user didn't see it, but generally, these things are meaningless to them.
For my first course, I put time into those things - time taken away from making content. The more I think about it for my new course, the more I wonder should I just sell on a platform which already handles all of that, like gumroad.
Where's the line though? When is gumroad or squarespace not the answer?
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
The problem is that a lot of developers want to work with what is 'sexy' at the moment. That's one factor that also drives e.g. job adverts; most vacancies I've seen will have "cryptocurrency" and "IoT" sprinkled in, just for the sake of looking attractive.
And old applications get rewritten in newer tech because of a combination of technical debt and developers going "I did not write this so I cannot read it and do not want to work with it".
Granted, newer programming languages (or versions thereof) often have better developer ergonomics (I spent my morning trying to get a C codebase to work while with my new Go codebase it should be a matter of installing the Go tools and doing 'go build').
Another factor is the perception of productivity; rebuilding software greenfield will feel super productive for at least the first six months to a year, after which things become more of a slog as the backlog fills with bug reports and change requests, instead of new features.
Source: I've seen this happen a number of times.
Disclaimer: I'm in a rebuild project myself now, the old codebase is nearly 200K of very poorly written PHP / JS, and the Decision was made to rewrite it from scratch. I'm going with Go and React at the moment; Go because it's unsurprising and boring code that should be fine for the next decade, and React because it's a de facto standard now and should be fine for the next 3-5 years as well. Both tools were decided on in part for future developers that will work alongside or to replace me.
But I'm sure in a few years my opinion on what is the best tech stack may change, idk.
[+] [-] cytzol|5 years ago|reply
All those things you mention don't affect the user's first experience on your site, you're right: you can use plain JS, ignore clean code practices, have no unit tests, and use the frameworks you're most familiar with even though they don't quite fit, and still start a successful service.
However, they all come into play when you start to evolve your website or service. TypeScript makes it easier to refactor your code when it gets complicated. async/await lets you serve more users. Clean code practices lets you onboard more developers easier. Unit tests and end-to-end tests mean you can iterate more quickly without worrying about breaking existing functionality — something users definitely do care about — which makes it something you should care about too, if you want to keep them around.
[+] [-] nickjj|5 years ago|reply
Gumroad is going to handle payments for you.
You mentioned a course. If you plan to offer video streaming, you'd have to come up with something to provide that platform.
There's places like Teachable and Thinkific for that. That's what I did initially and now years later I want to build my own platform because there's a massive laundry list of things that I don't like about those existing platforms.
But now it's difficult to move an audience from platform A to B because they expect a working and fairly feature rich solution since that's what they are used to. It means the custom solution needs to be shipped as something more than an MVP, which makes it take longer to develop. At the same time, like you said, building the platform takes away from creating the content.
If I could go back in the time I would have built my own platform first while testing the demand with free videos on Youtube.
[+] [-] sushshshsh|5 years ago|reply
The success of his business niche doesn't have much to do with tech stack or even programming, but rather Instagram style lifestyle businesses.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
I mean I'm working remotely at the moment because of the 'rona and it's not glamorous at all. My desk doesn't look like a generic marketing photo (you know the type, top-down view on a wood grain desk, clean Macbook, steaming cup of coffee, phone, Moleskin notebook, random plant), I don't spend my time lounging and networking (a beer in the back yard at night maybe), I just go upstairs, do my thing for eight hours, etc.
Extroverts and narcissists make software development look a lot sexier, because they have no qualms with putting themselves forward and advertising themselves and their lifestyle.
Me, I hide behind an online moniker and shitpost on HN, often not even looking whether anyone replied to my comments because What If I'm confronted with something.
I'm sure I'd have a much cushier job if I was more extroverted (alongside my current skill level, I'm no genius but I get the job done). Maybe one day I'll go self-employed or work remote for wealthy US companies, idk.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago|reply
Going solo means you have to get shit done, and you have to pick a viable niche. There's no inertia to rely on, and no safety net.
So the tech stack makes a difference. Because if it takes you months of learning before you can start making a site out of cloud + containers + automation + components you've failed before you started.
[+] [-] sbarre|5 years ago|reply
I would add though that "shipping it" greatly increases your odds of success, and choosing a simple stack that lets you ship an idea quickly is a good thing.
I feel like his choice of a super basic tech stack likely contributed to Pieter's success in some way.
[+] [-] kiza|5 years ago|reply
People buy into the dream.
[+] [-] blocked_again|5 years ago|reply
Aren't this all successful companies? There is a reason why all big companies spend 100s of millions of dollars in marketing every year.
[+] [-] mnw21cam|5 years ago|reply
https://xkcd.com/1827/
[+] [-] thrownomadaway|5 years ago|reply
I haven't checked since a while but a long time ago when I tried to sign up to his site it was a showcase of dark patterns. What I specifically remember is that it sucked in all my data on a sign up form before telling me that I actually have to pay for access. I specifically checked every square inch of the opening site beforehand to see if it's a paid system. But it was filled to the rim with all the other usual dishonest marketing psychology bullshit too.
Usually it's best to avoid anybody who does any business with "digital nomad" in its description. So many hustlers preying on clueless people who are sucked into the promise of easily setting up an online passive income while travelling the world. Coaches, masterminds and paid-for online communities are the worst: newcomers pay access to people who are either essentially in the same shoes as themselves or are only part of the community to make a profit out of it. Obviously the ones who are willing to pay for this (and fall for the above described dark patterns) are the ones who want to get value out of it, not the ones who can provide. Why would any serious "digital nomad" pay to be part of such a community?
Also the original nomad list site was like a distillation of everything that's wrong with the lean startup ideology. The content was not only thin, it actually looked like it was totally made up. Whenever I saw someone link it as some authority on a location I always wondered whether anybody who has ever been to that place had any input on it. But it didn't matter, it was sleek and easy to digest so it took off. And then could be used as a traffic source for the other ventures under the same umbrella.
So the guy is now making half a million a year based on a site spreading completely useless and misleading information and riding the hope of a better life of newb digital nomads. Yes I am bitter that I am not his position. But I am also bitter that this is the kind of business practice that makes money nowadays.
[+] [-] gargron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blantonl|5 years ago|reply
So many technical folks lose site of the fact that no matter how many "cool" technologies you deploy out of the gate, it really doesn't matter if the market and customers aren't paying you revenue. Period.
[+] [-] BoorishBears|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdoering|5 years ago|reply
I would doubt that is what the creators of SQlite intend one to take away from their documentation:
"SQLite works great as the database engine for most low to medium traffic websites (which is to say, most websites). The amount of web traffic that SQLite can handle depends on how heavily the website uses its database. Generally speaking, any site that gets fewer than 100K hits/day should work fine with SQLite. The 100K hits/day figure is a conservative estimate, not a hard upper bound. SQLite has been demonstrated to work with 10 times that amount of traffic.
> The SQLite website (https://www.sqlite.org/) uses SQLite > itself, of course, and as of this writing (2015) it handles > about 400K to 500K HTTP requests per day, about 15-20% of > which are dynamic pages touching the database. Dynamic > content uses about 200 SQL statements per webpage. This > setup runs on a single VM that shares a physical server > with 23 others and yet still keeps the load average below > 0.1 most of the time." (Source: https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)
So SQlite is quite a valid choice if you need a database and stay below ~500k HTTP requests per day. So it probably is "production ready" for many a site.
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|5 years ago|reply
i.e.
• Best Engineering practices set by industry leaders.
• Using state of the art tools, libraries, architectures etc.
• Being paranoid about Technical Debt.
I would say Pieter's strategy is a better if you're a serial-solopreneur. I had a CS degree, so its even hard to think of such a route and I considered my startup to be a long haul but there are valuable lessons to take from no-code/non-CS community; after all they solve problems for their consumers and make money from it.
But, I wish every solopreneur knew and suggests one advise in every interview they give 'Buy a fat health insurance, largest you can afford, take care of your health as when you go down your startup goes down and no amount of automation can save it' and that's what happened with my startup.
[+] [-] devit|5 years ago|reply
React is generally easier to use correctly than plain JavaScript, PostgreSQL is as easy to use as SQLite (and more powerful), Node is as easy to use as PHP (but has more libraries, and you can use TypeScript which makes it easier to write correct code), etc.
The only actually simplifying choice seems to be using a single VPS instead of a Kubernetes-based cluster.
It's far more likely that both the financial success and the tech stack are caused by a pragmatic attitude focusing on the business itself rather than tech details, rather than the tech stack being the cause of the success.
[+] [-] ShorsHammer|5 years ago|reply
Absolutely disagree. One is incredibly secure out of the box, the other is certainly not, they probably shouldn't even be compared. We can check Shodan if you want some empirical evidence for this.
[+] [-] gauchojs|5 years ago|reply
For Pieter its about staying with PHP.
[+] [-] break_the_bank|5 years ago|reply
His entire empire runs on one VPS that costs him just $320 a month.
[0]https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/11340898562654945...
[+] [-] sixQuarks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwdv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krewast|5 years ago|reply
I'm asking because these are the things that bug me when it comes to this "static all day, every day" trend.
[+] [-] kreetx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] person_of_color|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refresher|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|5 years ago|reply
I would re-think talent. Pieter works hard.
Talent can lead you to think people are born to be successful.
Pieter just works hard. Work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
[+] [-] nikolastojkov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] langitbiru|5 years ago|reply
The other story which is very inspiring as well is the Tailwind CSS (https://adamwathan.me/tailwindcss-from-side-project-byproduc...)
[+] [-] herrgigglung|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc86|5 years ago|reply
In actuality, he is an MBA who runs these two businesses.
[+] [-] bilbopotter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|5 years ago|reply
No snark, what does having an MBA have to do with running those businesses? Curious why you chose to include that?
[+] [-] person_of_color|5 years ago|reply
What's stopping a proliferation of job boards to arbitrage away his revenue?
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
It's always funny when junior developers come to support the product and balk at the code.
Yessir, its a one page static website that just got me $1,000,000 in three weeks and your attention and ability to pay you.
Funnier because I used to be that junior developer.
The memes that recognize this are so good and spot on: the pedantic guy with glasses and out of place bowtie complaining about some irrelevant best practice, while money printer go brrrrrrr
[+] [-] Pete-Codes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sturza|5 years ago|reply