[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How can a BE/infra developer handle the FE s...
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Ask HN: How can a BE/infra developer handle the FE side of personal
projects?
I have expertise in web backend and infrastructure development, and
like to work on pet projects in my free time. I'm hoping that one
of these will turn into something "real" one day that I can
hopefully launch and share with others, and maybe even turn into a
business. The problem with every single project has been that
while I make quick and great progress on the areas I'm familiar
with, they all get stuck when I have to dive into client side work
- web pages, JavaScript, mobile apps or whatever else. Even the
most basic versions seem like a chore and I inevitably give up. I
have brainstormed three ways forward: - Pay someone else to do it
- likely to be too cost prohibitive considering they are just hobby
projects. - Find a co-founder/partner with those skills - I have
no idea where to look, and am wary of forming any kind of
professional relationship at this stage again considering these
aren't businesses but just something I like to work on on the side
along with my day job. - Use no-code app builders and other
similar tooling - this option seems to be the most intriguing, but
not an area I am too familiar with. Has anyone had success with
building an MVP using these? If someone could share their own tips
and experiences with the above, or something I am missing, I would
love to hear it.
Author : paxys
Score : 7 points
Date : 2023-06-13 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
| chunk_waffle wrote:
| Why not learn these skills? If they're just pet projects it
| doesn't matter if they don't look perfect right away.
| Dave-hawkins wrote:
| I'm the opposite of you, always been happy on the frontend,
| backend is a bit of a black box.
|
| If you can already code you can probably fake it til you make it
| and learn yourself.
|
| P.s if you just want to shoot your ideas past someone, maybe get
| a little help figuring out where next with a frontend, my sites
| in my bio, feel free to say hi.
| cweagans wrote:
| I'm in the same boat as you: backend and infra are my areas of
| focus.
|
| I spent a lot of time digging into the Javascript ecosystem
| trying to find a framework that I actually enjoyed using. There
| just weren't any. I've come to the conclusion that I just really
| don't enjoy working with javascript (and related tools,
| languages, etc) at all.
|
| I've had a lot of fun with Flutter, though. Here's a quick
| overview if you're not familiar:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHhRhPV--G0
|
| It's easy to get started, there are numerous learning resources
| out there (I really liked https://appbrewery.com/p/flutter-
| development-bootcamp-with-d...), and it's opinionated without
| being opaque. You can install the SDK and have a hello world app
| up and running in like 5-10 minutes (including tight VS Code
| integration, hot reload, etc -- all of that stuff works out of
| the box). You still have to think about responsive design and
| state management and stuff like that, but it's not too difficult
| to reason through it even if you don't have any prior frontend
| experience. It even comes with a library of pre-styled components
| (Material Design) that you can just _use_ without having to make
| decisions.
|
| People are going to complain about a ton of things about Flutter,
| but I encourage you to give it a go (if for no other reason than
| it's a good example of opinionated, powerful tooling that you can
| just _use_ without having to fiddle with it).
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| What is your backend stack?
| nimish wrote:
| I've used it as an excuse to learn front-end stuff. I wouldn't
| use no code or builders if learning is your goal. If you want it
| to be productive then they are good. Very much "master the rules
| so you can break them" attitude needed IMO.
|
| Modern front end isn't that compelling to me but at least there's
| a lot of tooling to make something OK quickly. I just picked
| something with a good tutorial (sveltekit and tailwind) and it
| got me to a good enough point.
| simplecto wrote:
| Htmx.org and a minimum css style sheet.
|
| Done and done.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| I'd recommend using a template engine like Pug / EJS with a
| bootstrap like CSS framework.
|
| More generally, try to think of your sever as sending a static
| HTML document for each web request and much of the UI complexity
| automatically shifts to the backend.
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(page generated 2023-06-13 23:03 UTC)