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14 Comments

What do Indie Hackers use for feature ticketing, integration & deployment?

Greetings,

I hope all your projects are going well.

It is all in the title. But let's break it down :

  • What do you use to ticket your features?

  • What do you use for/how do you handle your integration & deployment?

  • Where (provider: AWS, GCP, DO, etc) and what (VM, Auto scaling group, K8S, etc) are you hosting on?

    1. 1

      Precise and concise!

  1. 2

    Ticket: Notion Kanban Board
    Integration & Deployment: Following the git flow, creating a PR and having auto build activated in the CI/CD pipeline
    Where: AWS only
    What: Only managed services but mainly AppSync, Lambda, DynamoDB

    1. 1

      Thank you for your anser @Sunny_
      I suppose you are using AWS CodeBuild and CodeDeploy for your CI/CD then. Are you finding the prices OK ?

      1. 2

        No I use Amplify Console https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amplify/latest/userguide/welcome.html

        I haven't checked the prices for the pure build because I have AWS Activate but most of it is still in free tier

        1. 1

          Follow-up question @Sunny_. Would care to elaborate a bit more about building a serverless app? Are there any notable insights you have discovered compared to a classic setup?
          I have played with lambdas and other serverless services, but I am still finding it difficult to wrap my head around a fully serverless app, feels kind of strange.

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            I had to maintain or build something with a classical Java Spring recently, ECS application and I really see the benefits of fully serverless applications. Way easier to maintain and faster to develop IMO

          2. 1

            Jep there are some key differences. What is amazing for me is that scalability, performance, on-demand costs are all given for you for free. Also the overhead of handling any infrastructure or network communication is all done by AWS.

            The main thing is that most of it is completely event-driven and stateless, that is a big difference.

            I'd say if you want to learn it, go for it. But if you want to build something ASAP and are proficient with a typical architecture use this.

            I'd go with Amplify CLI. They abstract A LOT for you but has some drawbacks and magic as well. But I already used it a couple of times.

            If you need help getting started DM me on Twitter. I am happy to help :)

            1. 1

              Thank you for your answer.
              The ease and speed of development definitely seem like a big plus. But as you said, there seems to be a lot of magic happening and that is fine and dandy when things are working as expected but it is scary when problems arise. Another thing that bothers me is that serverless seems to me to be very tied to the provider, should AWS prohibitively raise their prices in a year or two, the switching cost would be a pain in the behind. Then again, this is how it seems to me with my very limited knowledge of all things serverless. I will definitely take you up on your offer to discuss serverless in the future 😁

              1. 1

                The ease and speed of development definitely seem like a big plus
                Yes, and I would say this is often underrated. You are very fast and don't handle any infrastructure.

                lot of magic happening
                This was referred to using Amplify. If you are a bit deeper within CloudFormation and AWS it is not that much magic tbh. But if you want to handle the provisioning of infrastructure I would definitely use CDK. Amplify just creates CloudFormation templates for you.

                serverless seems to me to be very tied to the provider,
                Yes, that's true. But I am not a huge fan of this argument tbh. So far AWS changed its pricing to have an ms calculation instead of 100ms in lambdas which made it cheaper for a lot of people. In general, I wouldn't say this is a common scenario. IMO the benefits outweigh the risks immensely.

                1. 1

                  TBH, part of my reluctance toward serverless stems from the fact that I love handling the infrastructure. But I guess in the case of an IH project, serverless offers a lot of benefits. I will definitely keep that in mind.

                  1. 2

                    I get that completely. Infrastructure is complex and handling all of that is interesting and makes fun. Nothing bad about that that's not my point :D

                    I don't like it that much tbh and I focus a lot on building the application but if you're proficient with building the infra by yourself I'd keep doing it. It still should be fun building it ;)

                    1. 1

                      Fun but time-consuming. Battles need to be chosen, and marketing always wins 😗

        2. 1

          Very interesting. Best of luck with that!

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