jakubgarfield

Thank you! I've decided to keep one server per "serious" application. And I have one with a few toy projects that are not critical. Containers would make a lot of sense there. Still containers would make the setup story slightly easier even for this one server (and things like upgrading ruby versions, ...).

Good point. I have experience with Rack attack on application level. Would you recommend webserver instead (nginx)? Or even Cloudflare? (I bet they have a solution).

You are not wrong. Docker (paired with Kamal in Rails world) would simplify a few bits of the setup. But not all. The reason I haven't switched is:

1. my lack of experience with running docker in production

2. don't fix something if it ain't broken

But I'm planning to revisit it when my current LTS version runs out of support. Also, Kamal defaults change a few core pieces (caddy vs nginx, puma vs passenger) so there's a bit of extra learning curve). Oh and you'd still need to harden the server and keep it up to date.

100%. And super easy to scale up to a certain point. Alternatives have it's place though (PaaS is excellent for 100% product focus in limited timeframe, cloud/orchestration when you have scale, Kamal in Rails world is a neat middleground for some extra robustness).

I'm using external "send-only" SMTP server (Sendgrid) and Google Workspace as receiving/sending. Email itself is something that I'm not keen on DIYing (though I looked into it and other SMTP alternatives).

I curate a few weekly ones (simple format – 5 top hand picked links):

https://programmingdigest.net – best for intermediate+ programmers

https://leadershipintech.com – senior+, management, executives in tech

And two tech specific:

https://csharpdigest.net – C# and .NET

https://reactdigest.net – about React

C# Digest – newsletter for .NET developers https://csharpdigest.net/

Programming Digest – top 5 links for the week https://programmingdigest.net/

I’ve been publishing newsletters for programmers for the past 7 years and running my custom software that always needs an extra feature or two.

This month I will try to launch a job board for .NET developers.

Thank you for the kind words. It is interesting that everyone has a slightly different set of requirements for apps like these.

Maybe it is my unwillingness to learn how to work with different apps. For a time I was happy with WalletApp but at a certain point they migrated Categories and sync stopped working properly and there were discrepancies between my and my partner's lists. Also, lots of functionality I wasn't using.

I wish I knew about http://www.material-ui.com/ before I started finished this project.

They are React material design components – the integration would've been much simpler (I assume – haven't tried).

I looked into Ledger when I was writing a small invoicing app (of course I wrote it from scratch – but I learnt a few things and have a small app in my portfolio).

For this project I'd argue that you need to host it yourself, you don't get powerful visualisation (charts for monthly breakdowns) and extensions (like GoogleFinance for currency conversions).

From a privacy perspective – it'd be a better choice but you are responsible for securing your server.

It seems to have a nice mobile app as well – cool!

Nice approach – we don't separate between the that many accounts and it is harder to automatically track the spendings afterwards.

I missed the part about selenium scraping – thanks for pointing that out.

There has just been a project submitted to solve this on HN – https://blog.teller.io/2017/06/12/the-api-for-your-bank-acco...

But it seems to support only a handful of UK banks – no ANZ or Kiwibank.

Well played! :)

I just looked into it and it seems that Kiwibank doesn't provide any API access (you can download exports manually thought). ANZ might be a good option then :)

How do you deal with investments and transfers into savings account?

When I track my expenses I want to ignore them – as I set a budget to spend $1000 this month. Savings are not really an investment but if I transfer $500 into savings it's hard to track the budget – maybe some reference code could help with that.

Yeah, that inspired me to spin off my own – see the reply above.

The tracker is heavily inspired by Mitul's work – also I contributed a bit to his project. But I wanted to customise it slightly to my needs and use React along the way (to have a nice showcase for it).

And yes, you are right – Google is 3rd party and the wording is slightly unfortunate, but what I meant is that the security will be totally different level if I'd implement the backend myself and there won't be anyone machine learning on your expense records (apart from google looking at a generic spreadsheet).

Thank you!

The visualisation happens in the spreadsheet – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eYrQf0xhs2mTSWEzQRfS... – check out the Current and Previous sheet. I like to use it on the spreadsheet side to keep the app simple and I use bigger screen for the analysis anyway.

I put together a few every week for technologies that I like:

* Programming Digest – https://programmingdigest.net/

* C# Digest – https://csharpdigest.net/

* Elixir Digest – https://elixirdigest.net/

* React Digest – https://reactdigest.net/

I hope that a few people find them useful and they save them time.

I publish 4 weekly digests with only 5 links per each every Monday (so you have one article a day).

Programming Digest - https://programmingdigest.net/

C# Digest - https://csharpdigest.net/

Elixir Digest - https://elixirdigest.net/

React Digest - https://reactdigest.net/

Yep, I'm trying will-try-to-do approach. It gives me some order and discipline and I could keep a record for myself. And I'd like to think that someone else would be interested in my plans and steps and potentially benefit from them.

I'm from the Czech Republic so I'll tell you how would that work here.

Each year you have to submit a tax return - a paper where you admit how much money you earned in the last year. If you are an employee and you have just one source of income, it's usually done by that employer.

If you would have another income (there is also some treshold) you have to do it yourself and add this income to your salary and pay taxes. It's not that complicated.

You made an interesting point about ad-funded projects. Thank you for that.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to create SaaS with my existing projects and I would have to come up with something brand new. (The closest to that model Bonobo Git Server won't have a chance against Github)

Thank you for the kind words, I'll try to do my best.

I see what you mean, but at the moment, I don't have any way of making money of the "advertised" products.

The intention is to document the process of monetization, nothing more.

No, not really. If I couldn't make money from my projects, what would I write about.

I think, that it could be interesting to follow the monetization from the beggining, keep it public and track down the history.

Currently, I have 3 types of projects - application (Bonobo Git Server), web project (the blog) and mobile app and I'm considering different models.

I plan to discuss them in the future in more details, but what I think I'm going to do is to sell licences for Bonobo Git Server, advertise on the web and I'm not sure about the mobile ones (freemium or ads).

I agree with you. These soft skills are often overlooked by programmers and they chase they technical knowledge, even though it is fun you have to remember that there is more to be successful developer.