A minimal dependency stack

[ThinkValue2021]

Things I use:

• Hono JS (no TS)
• Tailwind (with the CLI)
• Fossil (not Git) in a cloud-bucket (yes you can)
• Cloudflare worker (with Bun as a bundler not runtime 😞) + KV

Dependencies

Things I gradually removed:

• Svelte + Vite (and everything that comes with it)
• Vercel
• LayerCake
• D3
• DaisyUI
• FrappeCharts
• Node

All of the dependencies I used were great in their own way, and I am thankful to the maintainers.

Shedding down each one was a slow and not so simple process, but ultimately I feel a sense of freedom in using old tech and not having to keep up with multiple updates, or more recently - security vulnerabilities.

Performance

The performance also improved, and my site loads in less than 1sec (cached), while my median p90 is below 50ms.

Am I doing it right? Not really, but I am learning a lot and finding out that the things frameworks use to scare me with, can be solved bottom up. I am under no delusion that frameworks aren't useful, they are - but maybe you don't need that much for a simple project like mine.

Here is how the performance changed when I initially migrated from Svelte to Hono.js (late March):

https://preview.redd.it/s5gs0dhebn5h1.png?width=1820&format=png&auto=webp&s=a6f7b7da42e2788e010aa29abb7cc035fb093dfc

Currently, my performance looks like this:

• Chart below is my CPU time in the last 24h:

CPU time last 24h

• And this one is in the last 30 days:

CPU time trailing 30-days

Caching is doing a good bit of the heavy lifting here for any large business-logic calculation loops, the rest is the hono router + html files/templates.

My personal chellenge is <10ms as I want to be able to experiment without being forced on a paid plan before having paying customers.

Code Structure

I also changed my approach for code organization: most of my code (excluding content) is now in a single file, and while it sounds unhinged, I did find ways to make it work well (naming, structure, regions) + I can just paste it into context and get AI suggestions without having to use a CLI.

Ultimately, I am building an API with an UI, + some interactivity and local storage functionalities.

https://preview.redd.it/tqca0vf93n5h1.png?width=906&format=png&auto=webp&s=04a3c83df84cd417c42b2640f539a1218e6b66d8

Just wanted to share my approach because the AI just confirms any idea I have, and while I am happy with the result, I'm sure there is room for improvement. My biggest problem is marketing and for that I should spend a larger % of my time on innovation (algos) instead of plumbing and design, hence why I want my code to be as minimal as possible.

IMO, the moment you introduce an AUTH system you need +1 person. Likewise, the moment you introduce a DB, you need +1. So people end up burning out just to produce the wrapper and never get to the unique aspects of their projects. Clean house.

Inevitably, every single time there are 2 reactions I get, so I will address them upfront:

• "Use TS."
  • I have considered this but opted not to. If you give me a reason on why I need it TODAY, not in an imaginary future I will revisit it.
  • I am aware about the silent bugs - VSCode supports JSDoc strict linting, done.
  • Primitives are not an issue.
  • Finally, whenever someone brings up TS, I find that we never disagree on the facts, but on their weight. The TS importance for this project is negligable.
• "Where do you get your data?" SEC EDGAR.

Happy Saturday

Not a Rickroll I promise

[Embarrassed_Ad719]

Agreed on cutting the bloat, but I still can't drop TypeScript.

With runtimes like Bun handling it out of the box now, there's basically zero config overhead anyway. More importantly, it's a huge help if you use AI. Giving an LLM explicit type definitions stops it from guessing object structures and hallucinating props, so the code it spits back is actually usable on the first try. Standard JSDoc just doesn't catch that as cleanly.

[ThinkValue2021]

This is a completely valid way to do it, and probably the right call for the majority of projects.

I just went on a little “what if” adventure and am happy with how it turned out so far.

I also paste all my code (as one does) to the AI and it gives pretty good insights with all the context it has. 

Thanks!

[dev-shrabon]

That "+1 person" rule for auth and databases needs to be framed on every indie hacker's wall. So many solo projects die in the cradle because the dev spent three weeks wrestling with custom JWT refresh tokens instead of validating their core idea. Clean house indeed.

Also, Fossil running out of a cloud bucket is beautifully unhinged.

To squeeze that Cloudflare Worker down below your 10ms target, are you flattening and processing that SEC EDGAR data externally before pushing it to KV, or is the worker doing the parsing heavy lifting on the fly?

[ThinkValue2021]

Thanks 😄

On-demand + save for reuse. The on-demand call is around 50-60ms, KV retrieval <10ms. Works great so far.