I forgot to mention that I also set up automated database migration systems in my personal projects. I’m such weirdo.
https://kind.social/@bo_brinkman/115663891259094850

Anyway, this is where I'm currently at in my "why is it so hard to launch real personal projects" journey. I'm trying to figure out how we can see more "small software". Apps that are useful or fun but will never be a huge business that makes people money. The developer graveyard of abandoned side projects is littered with this kinda stuff.

I use s3 for files. This is again something I end up introducing way earlier than most people. For basically the same reason as databases. I just don't wanna worry about losing anything. And if I make it Amazon's problem, that's one less thing for me to worry about.

I also tend to see these things as keeping myself sharp on what it takes to make things "production ready". Every single time I do s3 I have to look up the right way to secure a new s3 bucket without just making it public.

I'm really annoyed at database options right now. Keeping a local database in a container feels bad. It risks losing data. Probably not a big deal for personal projects, but it causes me anxiety. The project is immediately not "low maintenance" anymore.

I like managed databases, but getting a separate PaaS to talk to RDS is not a thing. And if the PaaS you're using offers their own managed databases, that's usually the place where you hit the paid tier and the project is no longer free/cheap.

Part of the reason for this is that I believe in "deploy early and often" when building real projects. I don't like waiting until I'm done to figure out deployment. I like to see it live and what that's gonna feel like. It also allows me to show other people the work in progress.

It's almost always overkill. But it's helpful for me personally because if I get bogged down with the stuff that's not fun late in the project, I'll probably give up and never get it out there.

I asked this question the other day and I promised to leave some of my own thoughts.

In general, I prefer to move towards automation and push-button deploys sooner rather than later. For my least several projects, I've introduced docker and github actions way sooner than most people would or a personal project. I like a good PaaS system that allows me to just chuck a package at it and set how many nodes I want. Right now fly.io is my goto.
https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/115652296376163656

Yeah I realized that my personal assumption was a web-based app. Something with a server component. And potentially a database. This would include native mobile apps assuming it needed some server to talk to. Obviously the word "app" can cover a much wider range. Sorry for any confusion.
https://social.belkadan.com/@jrose/statuses/01KBGKPDQCE8E84HDZJCCVVFHG

Random question. If you were building a small personal app today, one that you will actually use and that want to be relatively robust and available. How would you deploy it? Would you use docker for packaging and deployment? Or something else?

this fall I worked with the core Git folks on writing an official data model for Git and it just got merged! I learned a few new things from writing it. https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/gitdatamodel.adoc

I'll leave some of my thoughts a bit later. Don't wanna bias any answers right now.

Wizard Zines is doing another Big Zine Sale again this year on Friday, November 28th! One day only.

here’s a google calendar link for the duration of the sale if you want a reminder: https://wzrd.page/cal (or an ICS link: https://wzrd.page/cal.ics)

Using an older node version didn't even solve my current problem. About an hour wasted. 😩

These yaks ain't gonna shave themselves I suppose.

For the record, I like fish a lot. It's so much more intuitive to me than bash and even zsh. And it's got good defaults out of the box. I don't mind rewriting lots of scripts in the native fish syntax. And this fisher tool seems to make that ecosystem available fairly conveniently. Not a bad thing. Just not what I wanted to be futzing around with today.

This actually works. Thanks.
(I came across this but my thought was "there's no way you need a whole new tool")
https://cosocial.ca/@boris/115567402898837846

Please assume I've already googled for a bit and the common results came up short. Don't just do that and send it to me. Thanks.

I usually use nvm to manage multiple node versions. But I can't get it working with fish shell. Anybody done this before?

... TOUUUUUUUUUCH MEEEEEEE ...
... it's so easy to leave me ...
... all alone with the memory ...
... of my days in the sun ...

I'm trying to collect some best practices around building modern, multi-tenant web apps. Today I'm thinking about how to create firewalls between different customer data. Both at the organization level and the individual user level.

If anybody has thoughts or resources to share, I'd like to hear it.

I got GitHub Codespaces working. I'm not sure this will fit everyone's needs, but I wrote down all the lessons I learned. Thanks to everyone who gave tips and resources.
https://polotek.net/posts/running-pull-requests-in-github-codespaces/

I know there are a lot of CSS magicians on the fediverse, is anyone open to freelance work? we're looking for some help with https://wizardzines.com

share a link to your site?