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Comment by impulser_ | Hacker News Reader

If you are using these to start a SaaS then you are asking for trouble later on.

The reason why you build from scratch using a framework like Rails, Next, Django, Phoenix or w.e is you build an understanding of your application while building your application. You know how the piece fit together so when a problem comes up or you need to build a new feature you have a full understanding of the application and know how to remove pieces and add pieces to fit the future of the application.

Most of these things aren't even hard to build into you application. The hardest probably being stripe because of webhooks and dealing with the company.

Don't be the hare.

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> If you are using these to start a SaaS then you are asking for trouble later on.

Problems that (may) arise later on can be tackled later on.

The idea that it's desirable, or even possible, to do things "the right way" from the start is a complete fantasy.

Startups fail because their ideas are bad, the market is bad, cash flow isn't right, they have bad luck, they have the wrong people, they lack business skills, etc.

They very, very rarely fail because they use the wrong technology. Indeed, the right technology is the one that gets you to launch the fastest, so you can realize that your genius idea is actually garbage after 3 months instead of 3 years.

It's not about doing the right thing from the start or picking the wrong technology. It's about knowing the tools you're using and being able to build a good product.

I agree with that sentiment.

Boilerplate templates should be useful for people with experience.

Most likely should not be used by people without experience trying to skip „tech part” without having anyone tech experienced on their ship.

Just like contract templates shouldn't be used by people without legal expertise trying to skip the "law part" without having a legal professional on their team.

And yet...

But you know that is not an argument against templates legal or software and using templates to have most things set up well from the start to save time of experienced people.

I think it depends.

I used Petal Pro (https://petal.build/) to build Persumi (https://persumi.com) in three months and Rizz.farm (https://rizz.farm) in six weeks, both in my spare time. It would not have been possible if it wasn't for the boilerplate taking care of things like authentication and user management.

With a bit of digging around, things are pretty straightforward.

Most are also just reselling other people's free open source work as their own with a fancy marketing page. Don't support thieves.

Choose a framework in your preferred language, follow the tutorial, and install stripe yourself. It's not hard and then you'll be able to customize and extend it yourself.

The same can be said for Django vs Flask. The amount of magic in these frameworks isn't for the faint of heart.

No it can't. I mean, people can say it, but it's not true.

Although it's been a while since I've done Django/flask, they're tried, tested, frameworks that have been around for a very long time, and have a large community. They're also pretty low level in comparison to other things in that list. It's very likely that a purely django project can easily be converted to a flask project because it's the same old stuff. Maybe the plugins and libraries will be slightly different, but I would still say it's very doable to convert from one to another.

I've used some of the stuff in the linked site like Prisma. It's a lot of magic. If someone told me that there was a problem somewhere in the process, I'd do my best to delay by a few months and hope that I can switch jobs.

that only helps if you don't bring on other people "later on"

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