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Comment by git-pull | Hacker News Reader

It takes 1-2 days just to get a frontend setup working the way I want. What create-react-app / @vue/cli gives out of the box isn't sufficient if you're connecting to a backend.

I like graphql in the backend and having it generate a schema file, and getting typescript typings from that, so all the data structures align nicely.

Add pushing to heroku / some cloud service via fabric, that'd easily put me at 1 week.

It's after the first week stuff really comes together. Then there's a reliable hot reload loop, scripts, familiar stuff you're used to is prepped.

I don't like the 1 week thing because I think you'd be stuck inside a framework/starter kit that'd hold down what you want to build. I think a month is minimum if you wanted to impress and get your idea across.

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Maybe you are over-engineering for an MVP?

The stack I suggested is opinionated for an MVP. I won't defend something so specific to my personal case.

However there's more than that at play. Let's just assume bootstrapping the basics, with a requirement there's a backend and it has to be deployed:

1. If there's a requirement to have a backend connection and deploy the mvp, that rules out create-react-app / @vue/cli in most cases since it'd be too custom. The app would need to be ejected. But even further, the ejected app is overengineered.

The byproduct of create-react-app's ejected output is so bad I wrote https://github.com/tony/react-typescript-vanilla-starter, https://github.com/tony/vue-typescript-vanilla-starter simply for the sake of getting a minimalist webpack+typescript+hotreload+prod build config working.

I found it challenging to patch together webpack + ts + react/vue from scratch.

2. Going to a stack outside of our usual stack takes time to relearn. Not necessarily a bad thing, but people are going to be rusty.

I can’t understand what you mean by the Vue or React apps being insufficient if there’s a backend. What else would they be except an interface to an API?

My point is - configuration takes time. Having a dev loop to gain velocity is necessary, as is having to deploy. I believe MVP's flouting 1 week figures aren't going that far. Maybe showing it off during a presentation. I'm assuming a public demo with a backend where you can share the URL, register/login, etc.

Te output having to land somewhere. (More than half?) the time pushing dist/ files to a static host won't cut it, even for an MVP. From the beginning, the quickstart tools and workflow become a burden. Cases vary widely, here's mine:

With create-react-app, I don't want to use the included index.html / default dev-server config. I'd be using django-webpack-loader to load the webpack entrypoints. That requires webpack-bundle-tracker [1]

In my case, it'd also involve compiling via webpack, collecting static files and pushing them to S3.

[1] To be fair, you could use https://github.com/timarney/react-app-rewired to add it.

I don't quite follow your issues, but when I use Nuxt (a SSR config for Vue), I can get the basics of the app interface itself in a day, polishing on the next day or so, and then I can work on getting the endpoints I stubbed out to work on the backend, or hopefully a dedicated backend dev has worked on that concurrently. Basic login and authentication will add another day or two. Whatever ejecting is doesn't come into the equation, and I can get the hosting instantly on Now.sh.

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