Ask HN: best cheap easy setup for initial development

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557456

by bavcyc • 17 years ago

15 31 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What is the best cheap setup for initial development? Low cost, easy to change to different languages (or web server) if first choice doesn't work, easy to move to a colocation site if that time ever comes and easy to administer. GUI isn't required.

My last webserver was circa 2000 with Apache and Redhat.

csomar• 17 years ago

I didn't understand what are you looking for, but I think you want to start a project on a given platform.

For that I recommand, Visual Studio.

1- It's 100% free of cost (express edition), you get the editor (Visual Studio Express) for free and .net frame work is free to install and compatible on Windows versions

2- It's very easy to use and Object Oriented. It also has a lot of power and by learning .net you can develop for windows, web or mobile interface.

3- You can code a program in different languages with Visual Studio

Also lot of videos and tutorials can help you getting started with it

pclark• 17 years ago

what benefit would that give over (for example) Eclipse?

Ubuntu + Eclipse IDE = develop pretty much any language, for free.

cjbos2• 17 years ago

A small warning here, the free express version is a little crippled. I went through the .net mvc Nerdinner tutorial last weekend (was bored), but the express version didn't support the unit test setup, nor does it support scm plugins (So the visualsvn plugin didn't work).

Might not be a show stopper for some people but it's not ideal.

pingswept• 17 years ago

You're right, of course, that the weakest edition of Visual Studio is free, but I think it's a mistake to choose that way. If you're serious about programming, you want the lowest lifetime cost per performance ratio, not the lowest entry cost.

Call me cheap, but I think choosing Visual Studio is like training yourself to spend money. I'd stick with Eclipse or Notepad++ or Gedit plus Apache and Django or Rails, or something in that direction. Especially for web development, money doesn't buy you much beyond bandwidth.

mannicken• 17 years ago

Emacs. It can be configured to be much more powerful than Studio, it's completely free, open-source, incredibly programmable in the best language in the world (LISP), fast.

I should shut up now though.

sho5• 17 years ago

Choosing the Windows platform, regardless of any perceived benefits, locks you into Windows-everywhere for the life of your application. Even if it seems easier at first, it could turn out to be a very restrictive and expensive straitjacket in the future. I'd think long and hard about choosing to deploy on anything but linux (or FreeBSD).

pj5• 17 years ago

What exactly is the difference between being locked into Microsoft or being locked into Mac or Linux or FreeBSD or Java or Python or AppEngine or EC2 or technology in general?

If you start building your project on a particular stack and then need to move, there will always be a transition cost.

pj5• 17 years ago

You're new here, so a little advice: Don't ever mention anything outside the open source realm around here -- especially anything about Microsoft. HN'ers hate microsoft. pg writes articles about how Microsoft is dead. Hacker News is an environment that is not conducive to open discussion, only open source.

sho5• 17 years ago

"HN'ers hate microsoft."

I think you're onto something there, although we could expand it into an even more general rule: "Anyone who has ever done any standards-compliant web development at all, ever, hates Microsoft".

Fair?

grinich• 17 years ago

Microsoft can't even build a standards-compliant web browser. How can you expect them to have a good web development suite? A nonprofit feeding off donations from Google has constantly outperformed one of the largest software corporations in the world here. (!!)

Free software is chosen not because it's free, but because it's /good/ software. Hackers have helped develop their own tools and fixed bugs themselves, so most stuff is very stable. And when there's a need for a new feature, they make it, so it's very capable. It's like survival of the fittest for software.

I think a lot of people (and companies) have the idea that you can't get anything good for free. In the software world, that just isn't true.

Companies like Slicehost realize this, and give you full control over your slice. Before you deploy though, you could probably just do with a ubuntu box shoved under your bed.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

Ubuntu Linux. You can use aptitude or apt-get to install pretty much whatever you want, it will run on whatever hardware you have at the moment, and it's free of charge.

If you already have a Mac you could decide to stick with the Mac OS for development instead (I use it; it works fine), though you will almost certainly not be running Mac OS on your server. So you'll have to figure out Linux anyway sooner or later. The Slicehost tutorials make it much easier -- a lot of the grunt work has been figured out and documented.

jlees• 17 years ago

I develop on a Mac and deploy on Slicehost (Ubuntu), it's easy as pie and cheap as chips.

berntb• 17 years ago

How does Ubuntu compared to Debian on the server side, these days? Will the new FreeBSD kernel support get moved to Ubuntu? The admins I know doing this for big installs swear by FreeBSD. (I've only managed my own desktop for quite a few years and have no clue. No O/S flamewar, plz! :-) )

Edit: I went Ubuntu-only on my desk a few years ago, previously Debian-only (well, one computer still have a Debian partition too and I also have a Mac). I'm asking about servers.

mikeyur• 17 years ago

Ubuntu is just.. easier. That's what I get out of it. It's super simple to setup and keep up.

jackowayed2• 17 years ago

OK, you're pretty ambiguous on what you want, but based on "easy to move to a collocation center" and "GUI isn't required" it sounds like you're mostly asking about servers.

For initial development, you probably don't even need a server. There's pretty much always an easy way to have a local server run on your computer for development.

When you are ready for a server (probably not until you're about ready to go live), I'd suggest Slicehost. They're well-documented and cheap ($20/mo. for their smallest server!), and you can scale the server all the way to 15.5GB of RAM in just a couple of minutes.

You could look at Linode too though. It seems like you get a little more RAM for your buck, especially on the smaller end, but you can only go to ~2.8 GB of RAM on one server.

As for your development computer, I love Ubuntu, but it really depends what you want. If you want to do everything through an IDE, it depends on your language, but the best IDE may be for Windows. If you want to do much of anything through the command line or think you might in the future, develop on either Mac or Linux. Their shells are just way better. There is always Cygwin, which sorta fixes the problem, but I think true Unix works better.

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

Confirm.

Went through everything from old office computer used as web/subversion server while still on windows xp to slicehost. It all depends on the details... but if you're not sure what they are keep it simple.

Depending on what you feel more confortable with you could either slap ubuntu on an old computer, or take a small slice at slicehost. The second has less bandwith (then a local computer) but overall it's much more flexible.

patio11• 17 years ago

When you are ready for a server (probably not until you're about ready to go live)

I'd suggest getting it the day you start your project.

First: twenty-five bucks a month, seriously, what are you even doing thinking about this ($5 extra for backups, which is another "why are you even thinking about this" item).

Second: source control from the very first line of code. The production webstack, from the first line of code. The production deployment procedure, from the first line of code. etc, etc

jackowayed2• 17 years ago

I guess. Depends how strapped for cash you are.

I use GitHub, so I wasn't thinking about version control, but yes, definitely set version control up somewhere immediately.

blogimus• 17 years ago

I agree with getting your VPS and experimenting with it when you start (or early in the process). I use Debian on Linode, and I have learned so much. The experience is invaluable. Everything from configuration to automation to security.

This prepares you for the day that you go live, as going live won't be a completely new experience, it will be a new experience, but if you iterate on hosting a blog and sandbox apps, then you are much better prepared than if you go VPS cold with a new product.

sho5• 17 years ago

"I'd suggest getting it the day you start your project."

I agree with this. Having the server sitting there ready and waiting, and costing you money, has a certain motivating effect. Every time that monthly accounts email comes in, and you haven't gone live yet, you're gonna feel like an idiot, and that feeling is good for you.

It's like a gym membership, just sitting there sucking your money, mocking you and shaming you into action. It appeals to the exact right part of your psyche - you're paying for this, where's the results?

Take the step. If you're serious, sign up for a server first thing, I say. Buy a domain and wire it up. Load your blank page and stare at it and feel like a loser. For best effect tell all your friends about it and make all sorts of grand promises, and then stare at your blank page some more and feel like even more of a loser until finally you cross the threshold of shame, get started and then - you're on the track my friend!

Ah, blackmailing yourself into action. Tried and true. Shouldn't be necessary but hey, we're only human, and the only thing that matters is results.

jojoleflaire• 17 years ago

One thing that took us a while to figure out, but helped immeasurably once we did was getting good, at VM/image based development.

So in our case we wrote the code on whatever laptop we liked best (I did most of the coding for first few versions our software on a 12" PowerBook, other folks used ThinkPads or Dells with Windows).

But having a beefy server box with enough memory/disk to host a few different VM environments (various QA, staging, multiple different DBs etc.) and the ability to rapidly set up new ones was killer. It makes the laptop choice more a matter of personal preference, and keeps a consistent environment where it counts.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Strategy: Linux under Xen. (just copy disk image or dump/restore FS) Amazon EC2 for production.

Tactics: Fedora (It will become CentOS after polishing) everything already packaged - Django, Ruby, nginx, apache with tens of modules, etc.

Hint: Forget Java.

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

VirtualBox (free from virtualbox.org) running on top of whatever Windows, Mac-x86 or Linux system you have.

Debian or Centos as the operating system that you run as a VM inside VirtualBox.

You should be able to easily install Python, Ruby, TCL, Lisp, etc. on either platform for development language; Apache or NGINX or Lighttpd as the web server; Emacs or Eclipse or whatever as the editor.

hedgehog• 17 years ago

For a project I'm on right now we're using VMs w/ Debian on developer workstations. Deploying the app is a tarball & a shell script on top of a base Debian install. Any time we need a new public server we spin up a new EC2 instance (Alestic Debian) & run the script.

Ticket tracking is a Google Spreadsheet w/ some formulas to calculate ticket sort orders, estimated completion dates, etc.

Works well for us on the budget we've got.

Ask HN: best cheap easy setup for initial development

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