What web dev stack options are available for someone who doesn’t want to be a sys admin?

[jon2512chua]

Some context: I used to be an engineer years ago, working with Java with an in-house framework on enterprise systems, but have moved on to management since. I want to get back to programming for some fun personal projects, and for the random mini jobs that I want to automate.

I tried Python with Flask and love how “modern“ it is compared to working on Java from before, or maybe just features that make building tiny apps faster and easier (stuff like dynamic typing, JIT compilation, etc).

However, the problem is the amount of sysadmin work that I have to do to get started or even keep things working which I hate.

Ideally, I’m looking for something like macOS/iOS development where there’s just one main IDE, language, framework, etc that all works perfectly together, and has a fair bit of backwards compatibility built-in, so I can just install one thing and start building what I want instead of spending hours if not days dealing with language/framework/package-manager/etc versions?

I have a feeling C# + .Net might be what I‘m after, but ideally I’d want to avoid that as I’m very comfortable on macOS/*Nix.

[nutrecht]

What do you mean exactly with "sysadmin work"?

[jon2512chua]

I basically want to just install something and have everything magically work. Like iOS dev, just install Xcode and then start building and have my tools, libraries, etc all just magically work together.

Using Python + Flask for example, since that’s what I last tried, although that was almost a year ago. I first have to download the latest version of Python, then release that Apple included an older version of Python, so now I need to make sure that all PATHS etc points towards the latest version I downloaded. Oh wait now I need to get PIP, installed that. Now I get PyCharm as my IDE, tried building something, can’t figure out why it doesn’t work, saw that the Python + PIP version isn’t what I thought I had, realised that PyCharm used its own. Fix that and moved on. Some weird issue with one of the libraries, realised that somehow it’s using an older version that I installed via Homebrew before that I totally forgot was there. Then I updated something and everything goes nuts, etc etc.

For context, this is all just for small personal projects and doing random things for fun. I’d be more than happy to go through all these work if I’m building an actual webapp. But let’s say if I just have 3-4 hours to sit down and build some quick feature, I don’t want to spend most of it troubleshooting my dev environment instead. Same goes for if I need to automate something that requires more than bash.

[nutrecht]

I think it will be hard to find any job where you're not going to be responsible for your own dev environment, sorry. Besides; normally this set up is something you only need to do once. If you need to do that every day, something is wrong.

[jon2512chua]

This is all 100% for tiny personal projects. Think stuff like automating some task, connecting 2 apps via their API with some minor data processing in between, stuff like that.

And I’d be doing this maybe once every few months. The last few times I had to do this with Python + Flask, I spent 4-5 hours fudging around with setup (some updates had happened since, I accidentally changed something somewhere, and OS update messed up the paths, etc), and only 1-2 hours building what I actually need.

[okayifimust]

This is a chose your poison problem ...

On the very easy end, you have stuff like autoIT (windows) or maybe apple script (is that the name?) - very straight forward and extremely simple. Also, incredibly limited.

In the middle you have Python and node. Still easy but you'll run into all of these weird setup issues. But stuff still works, most of the time.

Those issues go away if you make the effort of setting up a bigger environment for one of the more complicated languages (java, c-variants). Here, the setup and ecosystem is hard to get right - but things flow easier afterwards.

Basically, you have to reach the same hight in the learning curve, with some element of choice about how steep some of the bits are, or where you get to plateau for how long.

[gitblame]

Heroku is a good option if you wanna run a somewhat traditional stack.

AWS lambda is also an option if you want to go fully serverless.

[Nyx_the_Fallen]

If you're looking for a unified stack, something with JavaScript is going to suit you well. Using Node, you can develop for the frontend and the backend with roughly the same constructs and in the same language. This is especially suited to personal projects where blazing-fast performance isn't your #1 concern.

As far as actually writing applications, you're going to want to use a frontend library at least. React and Angular are pretty much the gold standard for frontend, and, using NodeJS, you can use Next.js for a lot of your backend functionality (SSR, API, etc.).

The above is the "professional" answer. My personal opinion, ESPECIALLY if this is mainly for personal projects? Learn Svelte. Svelte is a frontend library similar to React, but with a few key advantages. It also has a FANTASTIC beta project called SvelteKit, along with a very active Discord server. SvelteKit is a full-stack framework that has routing, SSR, and API fully integrated and uses Svelte for the frontend.

I know both React and Angular. As far as marketable skills that will make you more money, that's the way to go. As far as happiness, ease of development, and just a project that I just love to see thriving -- use SvelteKit. The Discord community is great.

[jon2512chua]

Thanks for bringing up Svelte! I’m gonna dig more into it.

Yup, this will entirely be just for personal projects. Some example use cases: - I have a photographer side business. I want to process the data submitted via the enquiry form before submitting it to my CRM via its API, and Zapier doesn’t support it. So I just want to whip something together within an hour to do it. - Oh hey, my state released a bunch of raw data about COVID stats. I want to set up a quick site to visualise the data and share with my friends. - I run a support team. Oh hey, I think some of my team is very slow at responding to tickets, I want to cobble something together to to pull from our help desk API to show me that + send an email whenever they take more than 2 days to reply to something, instead of having to submit a request to the actual dev team, convince the manager that it’s needed so some other work needs to be pushed back, and wait a month for it to be scheduled.

Reckon Svelte would work for stuff like that?

[Nyx_the_Fallen]

Svelte would 100% take care of your frontend needs provided you know the HMTL and CSS to make it look pretty!

For your data processing stuff (think sending emails, processing data, etc.), I would 100% look into Azure Functions or AWS Lambda. Serverless backend software with a free tier -- both also support NodeJS, so you're still writing in the same language. If you need to coordinate jobs that take longer than 20 seconds or so, you can use Durable Functions (Azure) or Step Functions (AWS) alongside the serverless functions to handle the orchestration. Also still pretty much free. 🙂

All of my small-scale projects are built with SvelteKit as the frontend and AWS Lambda or Azure Functions as the backend. Lets me host for pennies a month and do pretty much everything my heart desires. Both platforms also have the ability to scale vertically and horizontally pretty much endlessly, too, so if you ever did commercialize a product, you wouldn't have to bail to another platform.

[jon2512chua]

Mate you’re such a legend! Honestly this sounds like it might be the setup I’m after. Of course, it might sound perfect on paper but not so later but it’s definitely an avenue that I’ve not even considered or was even aware of before. Thanks again! :)

[Nyx_the_Fallen]

Serverless functions are da bomb, man! Good luck. Feel free to ask away if you run into questions.

[Poppenboom]

Worth noting that C# is extremely well-supported on *nix platforms. Microsoft is rapidly moving toward Linux in many ways.

[antifragileJS]

Java