157 karma · joined October 16, 2023
hello@ayuhito.com
I think Plausible’s self-hosting is not simple, requiring unnecessarily heavy databases like ClickHouse, which can be overkill for the average website owner. Comparatively, this project can effectively run on a 256MB VM for most small website with no external dependencies.
So much so that I made my own that focuses on self-hostability using SQLite and DuckDB (no external dependencies, can run on a 256MB VM): https://github.com/medama-io/medama
Two experienced Rust devs tackle the same task, and their solutions will be worlds apart.
(I write both, but I do love Go for its simpleness)
It’s done wonders when I’ve had to wrangle poorly commented legacy JavaScript codebases where most of the overhead is tracing what type the input parameters are. Otherwise it’s just nice when writing a small library where you don’t want to setup a bunch of build tools.
Personally, I’m impartial to TypeScript or JSDoc at this point. But I’d rather have either over plain JavaScript.
People happily (or sometimes unhappily) lock themselves in with AWS since it’s convenient and useful. And that’s what Cloudflare is aiming to be in the serverless landscape even if it isn’t ideal.
> simply telling people about your future self also helps massively.
However, this is something I’ve found hit or miss. Telling people you know can set expectations, especially if you are passionate about it. You can set the bar incredibly high for yourself and be satisfied with partial success, but you won’t feel as satisfied if you didn’t match up to a friends expectations after hyping it up, even if they are still incredibly supportive of you. In the end, I’d rather show them my actions and results than overhype them with words that shoot for the moon.
Out of curiosity, what sort of tool were you offering? I’ve always heard about this but it’s never been my experience, so it really depends on the type of end user you have imo.
OP is currently trying to find a job and I think any attempt at open-sourcing his tooling (especially if it is useful) allows potential employers to review him in a better light. Abandoning it all seems wasteful when more and more companies try to find more reasons to filter out candidates.
The difference is that LiteFS is meant for high availability and low global latency, whilst Litestream is designed for disaster recovery.
You may also be one step behind when it comes to infrastructure related bugs or support if you want to focus on providing the best product. Competitors who host your product have a much smaller scope to worry about which may lead them to have a better infrastructure and support structure that customers flock to. E.g. Elastic vs AWS
Except infrastructure and support may also be the only revenue stream for the original developers too.
Some may say that’s exactly how it should be in the free market and I agree (since you chose the OSS license model over something else like FSL), but it does highlight how the original developers may feel this is an unfair situation.
These are based on the accounts of my local coworkers, but their experiences with previous traditional Japanese companies involved strict social hierarchies, long working hours, constant overtime[0] and overall a very oppressive work culture (though this is slowly improving in general). Getting a chance to escape all that while still working for a local company that really understood them is a huge win. As a foreigner, they made it really easy for me to integrate into their work without feeling like an outsider (which is unfortunately a common trope in more traditional offices).
There is a spectrum to this. For example, I’ve heard Rakuten has a lot of bad rep with a bunch of foreign engineers I’ve met. They still have a lot of “traditional” influence in their management culture that I’ve heard has created a high turnover rate on the foreigner side. This Reddit thread last year also was a hot topic that led to a small exodus[1] and some of their Glassdoor reviews are scathing.
On a side note, the government actually takes some interest in these companies too through inspections, as they seem to observe how well-integrated foreign talent can be with Japanese offices. I’m assuming they’re looking long term to increase immigration to compensate the decrease in local talent from the declining population…
Please do take these as stories and not fact. Experiences can wildly differ from company to company and I’m just one perspective.
[0] I recall a story where a company made employees “tap-out” but not actually leave the office to get around government regulations.
It is interesting to note that they can integrate the best and worst elements of both aforementioned work cultures.
One floor had an open-plan layout where people were open to chitchat, another open-plan floor that expected everyone to be quiet, and there was a floor with reservable cubicles or sound-proofed rooms. In general though, I do agree that the culture is on the quieter side.
I really enjoyed working there because the level of isolation was entirely up to you, depending on your mood.
This project has undoubtedly set of a series of impactful events in my life, and I attribute many of my successes to it. I've had opportunities to network with numerous amazing engineers through it, leading to a part-time role and multiple internships. Turns out companies that approached me for support also wanted to keep in touch! I also graduate this year and I am going with a full-time role from one of the aforementioned internships.
While I acknowledge my circumstances are extremely fortunate, I genuinely believe that having open source projects early on in your career can significantly contribute to standing out as a developer.
Personally, I stick to opinionated rulesets such as Standard[1], AirBnb[2] and Unicorn[3] since you won’t spend hours tweaking and selecting new rules.