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Comment by rambleraptor | Hacker News Reader

I’m working on [Homestead](https://myhomestead.dev), which is my OSS solution for building personal apps. You can build web-apps and Homestead will handle backend, agent support, authentication, notifications, and a bunch of other stuff.

I’ve used it to build a grocery store list, credit card perk tracker, address book, mini-golf scorecard app, and a bunch more. It’s really helped having all of the “platform” stuff handled for me so I can just focus on the app.

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This is cool! I have recently been building a "life admin" system that is focused around keeping track of bills and insurance reimbursements, and I am currently extending it to support a recipe database. My data model is markdown + CSV, but it has reached a point where a real database would be helpful. I'll check this out as it may be a good migration. Thanks for sharing.

@rambleraptor, I haven't actually tried to do anything with your solution. It looks like you've put a good amount of work into it, enough that it works for you and you're willing to share. That's more than I can say about my similar ideas. So don't take the following as anything negative. It's actually more a self-critique than anything else...

Ok, so, how many of us see something like this, and instantly just want to do it ourselves in our own way? I've seen at least 5 different versions of a "self-hosting platform" make their way on HN, sometimes more than once, but every time I really look at them, they just don't fit quite right, and often end up abandoned a while later. I've tried to make my own, and never have gotten anywhere worth sharing, and the couple times I've tried what others have made, I haven't been able to do what I want.

I mean the idea is really good. Make it easy to host apps for yourself and your family. But it seems like we're all more interested in building the platform than actually picking one, or two, platforms and turning them into something sustainable...

Anyway, what would it take for you to actually use something like this that someone else built?

Or am I just dealing with a bad case of not-invented-here?

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