Go + Kubernetes + React: tradeoffs from building an indie PaaS

I've been building a developer-focused hosting platform solo, and the biggest theme so far is simple: everything is a tradeoff.

Here are the ones that mattered most (and why I chose them):

Infra: Ansible + Kubespray instead of Terraform

• 6 years of Ansible muscle memory → faster to ship now.
• Pro: super flexible, easy to run just the pieces I need.
• Con: not centralized; human coordination is needed.

Control plane: a Go operator (Kubebuilder)

• Reconciles desired ↔ actual state for Apps/DBs/Redis/Volumes.
• Emits events that the backend subscribes to (dashboard stays fresh).
• No tradeoff here actually, it is what it is.

Backend: schema-first Go (Gin + Ent + oapi-codegen)

• OpenAPI → generated interfaces → manual impl → glue to Ent + operator types.
• Conversions (from type to type between packages) aren't perfect, but the consistency is worth it.

Frontend: React + AntD

• A friend helped me bootstrap React (speed > novelty).
• Autogenerated OpenAPI client = strongly-typed calls, quick refactors.

A recurring lesson: the most expensive resource is time. I'll pick "familiar + ships today" over "shiny + learn for a week," unless there's a clear long-term payoff.

Question for you all: what tradeoff saved you the most time recently?

PS: Happy to answer your questions if any too. A bit more in detail write-up is on dev.to.