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"Since it is impossible to build everything from scratch.."

Impossible how? If anything, web/api dev has become way easier than it was 10 years ago.

Do you write your compiler from scratch every time you push an update to your web server?

Edit: it is turtles all the way down (and the only way it's not impossible is by virtue of standing on the shoulders of giants).

the parse server is just a couple K sloc, and not (from a cursory browse) exactly revolutionary. writing such a backend (which one would probably leverage over several projects) is qualitatively different than "writing your own compiler from scratch every time".

I understand and appreciate your point.

Mine was that, in the larger context that is computing, you must build on top of something because redoing everything from scratch every time would be ridiculous. You likely trust your CPU instruction set, and your bios and a million other things, but some things you can't trust. Knowing the difference is non-obvious, which is the fact I was lamenting.

Read the post carefully. "Parse Server" isn't the actual Parse server. It's a reference implementation of many features.

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