Do developers even like using boilerplates?
I’m lazy sometimes and when I want something like Firebase authentication or want to make a quick CRUD app, I wish there was a boilerplate I could just download and get going with. But at the same time I like starting from scratch.
Do you like using boilerplates? Or do you think they’re not worth using?
From my experience no, at least not other's people boilerplate. It's rare that the boilerplate matches your specific needs and in the end adds more work.
Boilerplates , blueprints or frameworks are common in bigger organizations. And they can make a lot of sense.
The bigger the organization, the more valuable it becomes to have a common architecture and code base across the org. The ability to onboard new team members, move people between teams and react to the day-to-day of people leaving, joining, getting promoted etc. far outweighs having everything fully optimized.
Especially since the definition of optimized tends to be highly subjective and engineers love to disagree, to put it mildly.
Also, having a common foundation reduces the maintenance effort and allows rolling improvements out to more applications once made in the framework. So short term it may seem like you're less optimized. But medium to long term each improvement pays manifold.
Many enterprises will use frameworks and have their own internal blueprints how to configure the framework and what modules to include.
There is
https://usegravity.app/
https://spark.laravel.com/
and many more.
But most developers I meet would rather waste time instead of using tools to help them code/get something out faster. Harsh generalisation but seems to be the case.
Shameless plug, I am also working on https://nodewood.com/ in the same space.
So of course, I am biased fully in favour of using boilerplates. It always just kind of irks me when I hear on a podcast that a bootstrapping business is working on features that come in a boilerplate instead of features that are core to their business. So much wasted time, effort, and money!
I think the answer may be: It depends. Some do, some don't. Some developers like using boilerplates in some cases and prefer to start from scratch in others - and vice versa.
I think as Indie Hackers looking to generate revenue, we may evaluate these things more often. So yes, it depends.
No, I just copy my code from one project to another.
When you build from scratch, you gain experience. If you need to go into territories with your app you didn't think about, this experience will be valuable.
If you use a boilerplate in that case, you might need to modify code which is not yours, and sometimes even rewrite everything, which is really, really slow. It's always difficult to make sense of code you didn't write, and even if you do, you'll miss weird shortcuts and subtleties, which will slow you down even more.
This is true for apps which grow in scope. If it's for testing an idea quickly, for a prototype, or for a landing page, just use a boilerplate.
Thats some good insight. Whenever I use create react app I end up deleting all the fluff haha
I LOVE templates! They can save a ton of time! The great thing about a template is that it is your choice whether to use them or not. I typically look at them and copy pieces of it.
After I used my own boilerplate SaaS Forge I never start from scratch anymore!
I mean, Ruby on Rails, right... 💁♂️
Boilerplates seldomly are focused enough or a good fit - and often they come with too many bells and whistles. But boilerplates are often a great way to learn IMO.
The issue with boilerplates is that I have to understand how it's done and read the code to know how to use it. I don't like reading code.
Maybe I should have used a boilerplate, but I just made a new landing page from scratch, which I am very proud of.
https://dogger.io
Hey, I love the color scheme! Brown is so rare on websites nowadays.
Thank you! That warms my heart. I've put a lot of time into it as well.
Do you know React Milkshake? It might be what you are looking for if you like building with React: https://www.reactmilkshake.com/
The serverless edition also lets you scaffold CRUD actions with Firestore. Let me know if you have any questions.
I'm a big fan of Divjoy made by @Gabe.
Actually wrote a blog post about it the other day: https://drew.tech/How-to-build-side-projects-while-employed-full-time
I'm all about adding value for users as quickly as possible. Boilerplates enable that imo.
Thanks for the mention Drew!
@benpaine My big frustration with boilerplates in the past has been that they try to cram too much stuff in you don't really need (like lots of redux abstraction) and it's hard to find one with with technologies you want. So Divjoy is basically my attempt to build a better solution by keeping it super lightweight and making it fully customizable before exporting your codebase. Would love to hear your thoughts!
Awesome @Gabe. Ive seen Divjoy before. Its a brilliant app. I have that same problem with boilerplates. I love Next.js for that reason, its simple and not crammed with stuff. Have you found any limitations in the 'plug and play' model? (not sure what else to call it when you pick whats in your app )
The main limitation I’ve found is it just takes me a bit longer to expand the functionality (just got database integration in a few weeks ago, Stripe payments is next). Just more complexity on my end than if I was just selling a single opinionated codebase.
Other then that, not too much. There’s an example repo at https://github.com/gragland/divjoy-next-vercel if you care to check it out.
If you already understand the technologies the boilerplate is using, you can just copy the config from your existing project. If you haven't used the technologies before, you're not going to understand the boilerplate so it's unusable.
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