Ask HN: A modern website and other advice? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: A modern website and other advice?

2 pointsoceanghost5 comments

Dear HN-- I could use some advice... Covid has changed my living situation, my marriage situation and my child care situation. I take care of my daughter 4-6 days a week and cannot maintain a normal job due to this honor.

I have had a business idea kicking around my skull for a decade. It's a niche industry-- the SW package would mostly consist of a landing/social media/marketing/store site+CRUD web app+Mobile apps for this specific industry. Nothing groundbreaking.

I have celebrity contacts in this industry who have agreed to market this software, and I would like them to be able to say to their brethren, "We can deploy a website/mobile apps for you in X many hours." Meaning, I'd like to automate/parameterize everything as much as possible.

My question is-- what platforms and technologies should I be using? I don't think learning anything should be difficult for me.

But I'd like to do things in the most modern way possible, and need your input.

Thank you kindly, OceanGhost

My question is-- what platforms and technologies should I be using?

Unless you're operating at a scale where tech is the bottleneck (and by the sounds of it you won't be) it doesn't matter. There is no "should" here. Optimize for the dev experience and for writing robust, bug-free code. I'd recommend TypeScript and FireBase, with React Native for the mobile apps, but only because that's what I trust for doing the sort of thing you're talking about. If ten more people post you'll get ten more recommendations.

I have celebrity contacts in this industry who have agreed to market this software

If it's your livelihood, don't depend on people who have other interests to do the only thing that matters. The only thing that matters is finding people who actually pay. Use your contacts to get a meeting where you do the listening and selling. None of the tech matters unless someone is paying you to solve their problems and then the tech that matters is the tech that solves their problems -- the tech that solves your problems doesn't matter.

Good luck.

Boy is this true. Thank you.

Lets say I also wanted to learn some new things and be employable if this venture failed... what would your advice be then?

Learn sales.

Use whatever you think you can be most productive in. There is tooling in most languages to support your API requirements.

if it were me, I'd do the front-end in React and the mobile apps in React native, because you can easily share code between the two. There is a learning curve to doing things the React way, but probably less of a learning curve than maintaining 3 codebases in 3 languages.

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