alt Hacker NewsMost of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite.
I've found it's enough for most projects.
One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month. For this, I use the following setup:
1. S3 (I wanted reliable data storage) 2. In front of it, I have Cloudflare (with Tiered Cache enabled, which makes POPs prefer pulling from Cloudflare rather than the origin). I've set rules to cache everything on both the browser and Cloudflare for 1 year, ignore origin cache policies, ignore query strings, etc., and I simply use immutable objects that require revisioning. 3. BunnyCDN in front
Cloudflare will not let you run an image heavy site on its own, so I use this approach to massively cut the bills. Their policy says you cannot use it primarily for images; it must be used for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other site content.
And if you run only S3, the bills will be huge.
But yes, lately I’ve been building mobile apps. PWAs are limited; the OS can evict IndexedDB storage, so I cannot offer people reliable data storage in the app without sign up or involving a backend.
What can I do? So I was forced to switch to Flutter on Android, but I ran into another pain point: app updates sometimes spend a lot of time "under review," which is frustrating. For the same app, I maintain a web app that is very quick to update by comparison.
I wonder why there isn't a mobile OS that simply lets you build apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS and gives you reliable storage without all this effort.
I like how quickly you can update PWA app.
Replies
> I wonder why there isn't a mobile OS that simply lets you build apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS and gives you reliable storage without all this effort.
There is! You just have to time travel all the way back to 2009 when webOS was launched by Palm. Time travel is the easy part, you then also need to somehow prevent Palms demise and webOS fading into obscurity as a smartphone OS.
If 2009 is too far back you can try your luck in 2012 with Firefox OS.
Joking aside, people and companies have given it a go. But a combination of bad timing and various other events never made that reality happen in our timeline.
Are you me? I've been on a tear building stuff with HTMX + Go + SQLite. It's like the trifecta of boring technology that jives with me. Stuff gets deployed to a colo server using a generic bash script.
I created a couple libraries to abstract the SQL and HTMX/web/OAuth bits; my apps are now very similar and easy to copy features between.
Go is so awesome for server apps. I should have discovered it much sooner. It somehow sits in the exact optimal point having no bullshit overhead like C, yet also getting out of your way so you can focus on the business logic like Java (not Rust).
It's not great for every task - in particular the lack of abstraction-building capabilities - but it's great for business-logic-heavy server apps, probably because it's specialized for that and not trying to be a jack of all trades.
> Most of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite.
Very cool!
> But yes, lately I’ve been building mobile apps. ... What can I do?
I am currently building HTMXNative.
Together with Objective-Smalltalk, which has linguistic support for REST built-in.
The idea is that you create your model in a natural way and then thinly wrap it to deliver wherever.
>One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month
I can't imagine this kind of traffic without acting as a CDN, advertising broker, pornographer, or part of a massive ecommerce site. I have to wonder, what are you doing that generates 10TB of traffic per month?
On the mobile point, there is https://github.com/instawork/hyperview
Your Go server can have endpoints that render XML instead of HTML and basically get the same server-driven experience of your HTMX site. Fully skips the need for the app review process since you're not updating the actual client app code to make UI changes.
> Cloudflare will not let you run an image heavy site on its own, so I use this approach to massively cut the bills. Their policy says you cannot use it primarily for images; it must be used for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other site content.
Pages has a 20k-100k limit on static files, but if they just guide you to R2 to offload it, which is still Cloudflare.
Did you mean the CDN? In which case, I'm not seeing that in the terms. [0] Though, I would have expected they'd have a similar thing. R2 resources don't generally count towards your cache limits.
[0] https://www.cloudflare.com/service-specific-terms-applicatio...
> I wonder why there isn't a mobile OS that simply lets you build apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS and gives you reliable storage without all this effort.
Because there isn't a 30% walled garden you can create with that.
Since you're using HTMX, I have to ask: do you have any tips or idioms for composing complex forms and UI without things getting out of hand? I love the approach, but I'm having a bad time figuring out where the ideal balance is between too few or too many HTMX-replaced areas in a page. Thanks.
10TB is nothing these days. All Hetzner virtual servers in Europe have 20TB/month traffic included (excess less than $2/TB) and all their dedicated servers have unlimited fair use (which is probably about 200TB/month averaged over many months).
Where do you store the SQLite database files? What is your strategy for partitioning your data into SQLite files? One per user or…?
Developing webapps only for iPhone was Jobs original strategy. Only changed when developers complained.
> Most of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite.
Would like to hear about your Go stack for building htmx apps.
Can't vouch for it's effectiveness, but Hotwire Native might meet the needs for mobile paired with plain HTML. Despite the name, it doesn't seem that using Hotwire for the web UI is necessary to use Hotwire Native. I could be wrong about that though.
https://native.hotwired.dev/