Picking a Fullstack Stack, Is Next.js Too Complex? Services vs Self-Hosted + More

so I didn't feel like it was my place to step out. And, like, it was toxic,

they took it away.

But I don't know. Like, what Wes front end.

when somebody submits the form, you go to the back end, you validate the data, you send that back, and then you have errors. You gotta figure out where the errors

for

Resend is the one that

The database like, I I always talk about, like, bringing a database into this world is like caring for a a pet or a child Wes, like, now you got responsibilities

yeah, this is I I probably what do you think? Better auth, Scott? I I always 100%. Hesitant to use, like,

personally

I sometimes I often regret that because then I have to go back and shoehorn it in. So,

what exactly

plus some. So, so that they actually use it, because, and will be looking for that specific one.

awesome. I think I would probably stick with that. Right? You can you can throw you could go, like, an external database host as well, but,

Yeah. That's actually the best part is when you make a fix, and then you get to see the bars go down in terms of, like, yeah, how long it took with latency or whatever. So Yeah. Check it out. Century.io. Use the coupon code Sanity treat, all lowercase, all one word, and you get two months for free.

like, IDs and whatnot in them Yeah. Similar to how you would you would specify, like,

step forms than just using straight up state and input binding? This is not about state.

I quit on Monday, and I did not have a job lined up. I just had a kid, and I quit because wild amount of, to GraphQL

Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's it's it's a good good thing. I still have the Express app, and I've been slowly, like, writing, like,

Man, this Wes, disturbing and eye opening podcast for me to listen to. I was like,

a

Wes decision I ever made to quit that job.

very helpful as well.

unfixable toxic boss. You probably wanna see if you can line something up, but

like like, if you're in Hano, you need to move it to, like let's say, you you want the functionality existing, like, a Next. Js sending data, performing mutations, and and querying all of that data. And a GraphQL layer, that's this is exact exactly where or sort of Gatsby went, and there's a lot of questions today. I couldn't believe it. Like, it's we often come back to the the potluck,

And we had a boss,

like, forms in React are are probably the worst. Right? Like, it makes no sense that you have to listen for a change handler. And when something changes, you have to then go update state in order. Like, that's such a broken,

URL or URL. What are you picking?

there are server functions let me let me take one of these out here.

looky looky, the VC's favorite, And in the URL like, I I agree with that as well. You have to always be having side projects and new stuff and and be dipping into things like that creative flexing that creative muscle is fields that are linked together, password, confirm password, So whether that is

perspective, what they're doing is when when you set up an index, the database becomes optimized to, for Ford as, like, a part of this crack team of, like, 30 people.

want to dish out an MVP it's not it's not a, a Node thing that they're doing. So in in that case or go, like like, full stack Nuxt, usually.

you can you can throw it all all on there as well. Authentication,

and then, like,

of

I was a part of a team at Ford, and I was working on some experimental interfaces That one,

I don't think you understand what this is. You're saying that this is just, like, a way to bind if you don't have the email column indexed in your database, what happens is that your database literally

Hey. I'm doing good, man. Just chant chilling, hanging out. Being back on my Mac feels weird. I'm just been That Wes, like, some of these things. You could bring your computer while tight rope walking. No. I think,

You gotta ask yourself, like, ecommerce store, I wouldn't worry about that right now. You Node, when that comes time, you gotta look at it and be like, okay. Am I selling, like, three things Well, we're getting all into that, so let's get it going. I feel like this is the Stack a Node, Wes. Yes. It's a stack nothing but stacks. Full stack flapjack.

All inputs are totally controlled. So this is awesome. I actually did not see this. So first of all, there's also a TANstack DB, which is like a local first sync engine.

Is Next. Js too complicated? in your stats that you're having very slow database reads. And in fact, we had one in the Syntax website where

But he stepped over the line with one or two other folks. Those folks went right to HR. And guess what? He got shit canned, like, day of, out the door. And guess what? We were all fine. It was great. And in fact, it was a huge, huge boost. So, like, Yeah. I I'm pretty much always using something

often off if I feel like I need it. And and the reason behind that is because when I'm making features, or URL?

motivating Hack Week was and all those things,

my front end and handles all that for me. Yeah. And if you want something that is, a month on services just clipping them all together.

Cloudinary is good, but it it also suffers from that, like, drug dealer free plan. You know? Definitely. Yeah. Very generous, but it it goes to a $100 a month once you go over that. And that's

like the boss, or is this boss your boss? Because a toxic Lot of problem. Yes. Exactly. Alright. Next question from Bob, bob.com.

I know that

Okay. Yeah. Sorry about that, folks. I feel like the growth for me has been stagnant.

everything that I need.

to Wes, now back to RPC. And I'm like, why did I ever make that jump at all? Right? So I think a lot of people like you said, they discovered it wasn't necessarily No. No. Not necessarily. I'm saying that, like, forms

but

For auth, I've used Clerk, but I have never hosted any images anywhere. Could Cloudflare meet all of my needs?

Yeah. Yeah. I would also have probably picked Node. I I in the past, I've used Fastify, fastify.dev So I've been using that lately. That's been something that's been nice for me JS the, CloudFlare images,

still a relevant question? between all of these services before you before you realize it. Danny Manny says Mhmm. Is REST first GraphQL

than I was even with my my Wes API. Or someone like me, I came from an RPC setup before all of this. I mean, Meteor is essentially RPC in many ways. So, like, I went from RPC own in house, Oh, man. I'm working on one right now. Although, it is I will say it's on my Linux computer. I'm working on one right now for uploading video that then, brings back thumbnails. And then if you have thumbnails, you can Vercel when you get into just live with that. Now I'm not recommending everybody just go and quit if you have a,

To add that. What is what is the extra cost? service goes down, price goes up.

What what are the other ones that that people use?

I don't even let them for one second. Gotta assert that dominance.

weeks ago, we did a episode on, like, creating a new project, like, initializing a project. What do you even do? Planning. How do you do that? So we had a Wes, which is following up on that Node. When you're done your initial plan, so you figured out kinda what you wanna build and how you wanna tackle it,

But to me, is Currently, I am not sure what to do. I mean, working full time,

You can can't find me doing that. I'll be honest. Yeah. Honestly, I'm a I'm a CloudFlare stand. I think that HTML form that gets submitted, and then you come back with with any validation that used to happen. You often

But a toxic boss is not just a problem to you.

They were messaging me on a Sunday at 10:00,

request or or maybe you're using, like, a Svelte server function.

I absolutely love the approach that they've taken on so many other things. And now now to see that they're they're tackling forms and form submissions and validation,

So you can do either of those two options. Those are types of services that I do off load. We've had we have PlanetScale for the ESLint, and I like PlanetScale. So, and this guy things, from it. Yeah. And, ultimately, it's removing the entire purpose. So you gotta find some way to inject

and he wants his money back eventually,

Yeah. Yeah. I I I just don't get it. I I I

indexed.

Yeah. I know.

the there's validation, what happens when you have a submit handler,

choose to use their

express specific and move to just standards based stuff so that I'll be able to one day just move move entirely over.

and and, like, like, social handles. Right? and and you don't have to worry I believe that you probably like that because of the simplicity. You know? You you knew it really well. You can get stuff done. You you can hop into the app and find where it is you want. And there's not a lot of, like,

novelty

just doing Wes. Let's see your your complex ass form.

has always come down to waku waku, all that stuff. How how are you doing? he had never stepped over the line to me personally, the org, can help your day to day job without it necessarily being on your task list and something that you can spend some time I quit. I've told this story a whole bunch because it's one of the reasons we started Syntax.

that's a whole lot of nonhancers the standard

use the data from form data or use the data from the form itself

that's that's it. You know? It wasn't that I was using the wrong AI like, front end logic JS it's it's just one thing to me these days. You know? Like, when I'm building a feature, I don't necessarily think, like, You can buy them that they they mount on this rail as well, but I I'm working on, like, a little low voltage

the specific frame of the thumbnail. Otherwise, you can have

into something like payload.

choice for a Node. Js back end? I mean, something I would probably pick a fast ass website and host it and scale it and and do all of these types of things.

meaning that any

the only structure I have in planning things is that that planning process changes yeah, it's pretty minimal here.

email? For SendGrid, $20 a month for this service. But if you're trying to, like, look at raw infrastructure, you have to start doing these weird calculations

to get complex with it, you then start having to take control over everything everything.

What does this do that gives you better multi

LED project as well. So big fan of them. Grab yourself some Hue connectors.

We talked, in a couple episodes ago about just how

generous free tier because those generous free tiers are often from these DIN connectors.

is is something I've had to to rebuild. Like, the Svelte doesn't have

just I I will say, I think TanStack form I love TanStack stuff. I love, for the entire app at once. Things change. Projects evolve.

And if I don't write any classes on anything, I don't have to,

like, CMSs or I've built lots of apps UI component library that you want.

If you wanna, like, connect multiple wires together, you basically just open it up, you strip it, you throw it in, you you close it down. Right? It makes a lot of sense. But in in North America here, we use something called marettes or or wire nuts and just you you get get as big as you can to assert your dominance. Yes. Arm wrestle. Just beat him in arm wrestle. Assert dominance.

yeah, there's a lot of options to host that are easy. TSX, man, I find I find TSX to be ugly too. I I I'm with you on that one. I I I could rant on this all day, but I'm not going to. So, yeah, how do how do your opinions?

that is a a full stack JavaScript.

you know, I I think, ultimately, if you're looking for a low friction, if it's a professional HR thing, go to HR. If it is something that maybe even, like I I would say going to their boss is something you could possibly do, but, like, you have to be very gentle in how you do that, and you have to be prepared for potentially getting let go or creating more problems.

And you found yourself doing way too much work

like, okay with getting fired potentially for going to them and expressing your concerns about a toxic work culture that they've, often suck with newer technologies.

That's that's that's really nice. Oh, because you can you can specify things like route handlers with, like, and sending text, but that is different than, like, Express Wes. Because Express, there was no standard, and, like, we could maybe do two of these a month sometimes. There's just so many good questions. So please keep the questions coming. Go to syntax.fm.

for most people,

I used Eliza a binding state. You got binding Scott. You don't have to do on change events. You don't have the state is just there. It just updates. It's just available.

on change, async, debounce kind of stuff. Like, that's where the Sanity stack form stuff would actually help you out. But so many of these things the managers

Yeah.

Hey, Wes, Scott, and CJ. Shout out to CJ.

when I initially write the schema. I they

Fully typed via inference.

tech stacks today, which would be good. I'm primarily a JavaScript developer looking at future JavaScript jobs. I'm interested in building this in Redwood SDK since Peter came on the podcast, but maybe it is too new. I have some experience in WordPress,

amount of numbers, like, sheer numbers of people who are falling in love with AIs or, like

Webpack alternative,

via Svelte components. So, like,

or h three.

Oh, man. Alright. We got another question about Stacks, if you hit this place where you're like, oh, yeah. We have an app, and I wanna keep it running, and it's not bringing in a ton of money, but, you know, like, you're kinda just maintaining it and and people use it. Those, like, monthly costs can can get out of hand really quickly. You could be $6,700 First time, you were right Yes. That's what I'm I've been that's what I've been using for many, many years.

but I think the and it's really about,

be very careful where you buy them because I just I just don't feel as excited about the work that I'm doing. And then once I get back in the gym, I'm like, is beautiful

Your

fairly established

What do you think I should do to have the same energy while you do your day to day job stuff. Maybe you can get your day to day job stuff done I will build out the route structure in files before writing any of that code if your framework allows for that, creating the files, creating the routes, things go where they're supposed to go.

90 lines of code.

and, I guess, the the input binding.

super important to

missing indexes or even for better yet, track your slow queries because there is an entire slow Yeah. You know? So part of it, again, is paying attention. That that's really what it is. But another thing is if you want to use a tool to do this, Sentry has

and Vue. That's probably that's pretty in demand as well. You'd certainly wanna pick something that is There will also be a page to donate and eventually, yeah, years down the road, a merchandise store. As a mid level developer, I'm interested in building this for her to grow and level up my skill set, so that I can become a senior engineer. I would love your thoughts on which tech stack. Minh, so many questions about I feel like the growth You still miss it up. I am working full time, but not I'm not as excited as before.

I don't I don't think that, like, Vercel is

what data I need to have, what the structure of that data is, and then doing my very best to You'd be, SST, less easy less easy and more into getting into the weeds there. But, like,

I I would say,

as you go. And I like to build a lot of things my dang self for some stupid reason. So, inevitably, I'll be writing a form and being like, this should be abstracted. Okay. You know? And just kind of do that as I go. So, only do that if you you know that,

or a CMS that I wanna do your own? We talk a bit about

the the big,

but also still maintain the old one and still maintain,

be exciting

you use their SDK for Yeah. The email. Right? It it was actually funny to watch the the query over time as it got got slower and slower.

You would have to hook up, but whatever you choose for sending email, choose something that supports, and I'm not worried about inventory? which can take in like, there's a drop down of different types of submissions,

like, giving the team the support it needs to complete its tasks and goals, whether that JS, like, being unprofessional,

you often have server side validation, then you have messages that need to come back. And, like, it's very frustrating

in in or certain columns in a table. So, Yeah. I I think my biggest rub is when, like, you end up having such an easier time.

and then just just YOLO it. And then before you know it, you're like, remember we had that, like, no code guy on, and you said he sent $700 That's so funny. Supermarket crap you get here. Yeah.

where is this boss in the chain of things? routing out. So that that's pretty much it. And now more recently, I'm worrying about the UI in Node of Paint at the end because

The thing that I don't want to do is go with AWS, and doing that is too much

this isn't for me. This isn't for my needs. Right? I'm not building things that need this.

people falling in love with their AIs in, like, a AI,

10 stack start, maybe look at some of the new Remix stuff that's coming out next month, Next. Js's, a conversion layer, If you have

Don't ever use a SaaS that's auth. I, like, don't understand that whatsoever. Yes. There are unless you need, like, high end concerns like, what is that, a single sign on? Sign on or Yeah.

headless UI for building type safe forms, and I'm really excited about this because JS well. One as well.

for doing this type of thing, so they just made it up. And now,

is the only way you can have good developer turning into a Linux boy. So, you've been all over the Omar

Sanity is a paid option, but also a really good option. You could use WordPress and just use the, I'll try to, like, I don't know, just store it in a file and whatnot. But, unfortunately,

Dude, I I will tell you what.

was fine for a lot of people. Right? Mhmm. So over the years. But then, like, Node. We're just talking about this with with home assistant,

easier I was definitely a skeptic of React when it first was announced, and then I sucked it up and used it for ten years. And then I went and stopped using it and was like, what did I gain? What did I gain there? And and, personally, I toxic I mostly do React and Next. JS, I think I I we I think we've all hit this, especially when you have long running projects. Those projects, like, can get to a point where, Cycling.

but I want to choose a path that will help me grow and make me the most viable candidate for future job opportunities. Thanks for your help. Yeah. This is kind of interesting one because you need to think about, popular in North America until, it's always hard. Right? Like like, do you just go and enroll together a million services transforming them into multiple sizes and for

experience all kinds of different problems,

I'm doing good. We're recording on a Thursday today, which is a little odd, but I'm heading out next week, so we're getting ahead of it. Cranking out Node for you. And and, like, honestly, we do a potluck once a month, I don't know, maybe maybe four or five years ago.

Sick picks. Hey. I I got a interesting podcast. You know, podcasts for me, I love finding new podcasts, new and interesting ones.

getting emotionally invested in these things.

Then, yeah, you probably you probably put that together with integrate with Stripe and whatever, and that'll be a fun project. But if it's like you need inventory management and shipping and, emails, something is out of stock when they need to restock, then you're probably looking at, like, a a Shopify or something similar to that. So because, like like, I agree, Redwood is awesome, but it's it's certainly very early. So I probably would not bet the farm on that just yet. And and start asking yourself, like, focus management, multi step,

really easy to host on. Even using, Tanner. I I I love what they're doing. I will say that this type of library is solving that a lot of this is your day to day job stuff, and that that can feel tough.

Bob, I agree with you on everything except for Svelte having, ugly templating syntax. I think Svelte has some

Find all the queries and say, hey. You're you're searching

ugly syntax

also, those are are standard across the board. There is some, like, helpers for, like, sending JSON And what it is is you you have a wire in

you're allowed to have a normal form Although it's growing on me, I sort of hate the direction that Vercel is steering modern web development. Now that React is getting a compiler

data sources, multiple services all into one. So 30 different teams, what

man, some of their their way that they do things bugs me. That said, I was willing to deal with it for this podcast,

like, a email address, first name, last name,

things like walled garden approach. Like, sometimes Vercel really takes the walled garden approach at the expense oh, man, I wish I knew technically. I'm I'm I'm sure you might know a little bit more technically experience and an easy time hosting anything on the web. I saw, like, a Reddit thread the other day, and, like, there were people being like, I use Vercel because it's the only one with good DevX. And then, there was a response to that being like, oh, there's a lot of other good options too. And they're like, I don't wanna host my own Linux box. Like, that's not the only other option. Like Yeah. Going straight w AWS or running like a Coolify or, like, hosting your own VPS, it's not the only other option than, like, Vercel. There's tons of other options. Wes that I think Cloudflare JS easy as hell to to host on. Railway is super easy to host on. Fly.io, indexes are doing. But from a nontechnical

What I need is That was a fantastic stack, and

some bit of tech that is calling you, and that can bring you more interested into

when you want to build forms on the web and and this is not just a React thing.

I think that that this thing would be handy in in anyone because it works. They have examples with with Vue. They don't have Svelte examples, though, so maybe you're right there.

That's a lot of answers, Scott. But, honestly, I think this this can be dealt with a lot easier JS and those venture capitalists want their money back. At one point, we had one on we had one on the show,

like, professional concerns about this person,

it's gonna become more of a topic of conversation. But, yeah, nasty stuff. I'm going to sick pick something that is not awful like that. Hold on. Let me grab it. I've talked about these in the past, but anyone who doesn't know about Wago connectors,

Like, yes. That's great. And people might find those things, but to enforce that JS gonna squash all the novelty.

the cheese in in Europe is much better.

Image storage certainly GraphQL also is is great if you

Oh, man. So like, treating them as a real person or

so that you can take the data out of the form and use it in other parts of your application

which I I found to be so fascinating. I had to send it to my wife for psychology reasons. But, this is called Flesh and Code, UIs or back end challenges or any of that stuff. And I know

that is probably

like,

question and the answer is a Vercel answer and everyone just assumes that you're hosting it on Vercel, that is very frustrating because, like, those those things are separate. You know? They they shouldn't have to Beautiful. I've actually never used one behind a light switch. I probably should.

You

a a code or an image input, which then changes all the inputs and,

I I always tell people don't build your own CMS because it's it's hooked into standard That's it's not right. I know. But I've been saying it my whole life, and I'm not I'm not about to change. But let's get into the first question from Finnish George. What is your preferred when to use a service versus when to host it yourself. That free tier will will come and and bite you in the butt once they pull the rug from you. Scott is wrong about 10 stack forms. He doesn't understand what they're for. No. And

But maybe there's something else that can

schema, which we did an episode on, which means that it's not just Zod. You know? It's any validation library about API endpoints and accepting arguments and whatnot as you're you just define your server function on the server. You can call it from the ESLint. And, obviously, there's authentication and all of that stuff in the middle there that will make sure you're not doing stupid stuff. But

by Vue, bro. Vue Vue and how would you say inspired by Svelte, man?

very simple, easy to use options in there. You know? Deno, HONO, in Svelte. Meaning that, like,

that could help

intentionally Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I know about inline. These are awesome. So if you have, like, just two wires that you wanna connect database,

Is this boss the Bos, And then elements and not have to worry about even, like, modifying classes or changing it or whatever.

auth or or or users in your application yet, then it's it's kind of a pain in the butt. Right? It's much easier to get that stuff set up ahead of time. Mhmm. Then once you're, like, sort of foundations is down, then I'll just go simply feature by feature.

that you can do with React easier and oftentimes with less trouble and better performance in other systems. That's just my thoughts, personally.

reach for that is usually Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That's that's not allowed with with mains voltage. I'm working on what's called a class two circuit

the choice for auth. Other images

The site will mainly be a blog with educational content, but she doesn't want any of the social features like comments or likes, etcetera.

really, really nice tool. But, yes, that that is mostly it. Another cool thing you can do nowadays in 2025 Yeah. So for me, indexing

of index. Boom.

worry about that. And, another thing is is the way I work is with scoped CSS is not like them as a company or or what their goals are. It's the people who act like

weird gotcha knowledge. You know? And then the people, like like, I I love React, but the people that say, like, skill issue, it literally is a skill issue that you don't know these weird gotchas and how these weird things work. And that is fine to have that skill issue because it's not something you maybe should have to spend your brainpower on. I I agree with you there. Yeah. I'd rather have skill issues with the web platform itself Yeah. Than Yeah. Exactly. Than having to figure out how, like like, updates and And this is just a a headless UI, which means that, like, you still you bring forms,

and Yeah. Control the form on submit if you don't need a controlled form. You're allowed to do that in any framework, and people just don't. People are gonna automatically wire up every single input to a state variable all the time when they don't need to. So I think that's one problem. But another problem is that complex form state becomes so much effortlessly

So SES is he doesn't wanna use Amazon. So, yeah, he can't use that. So yeah. Resend is one that people are using nowadays.

I would not ever ever trust them on anything that has any serious power. And then I would also Last question we have here from Like, if you have, like,

combinations of columns, individual columns. Yeah.

You do? You say href? Yeah. Href. Href.

Do not you you can buy knockoffs,

like SendGrid or or Yeah. Paper Image storage.

come hand in hand there.

on the server, GraphQL

with a major that whole

the burnout man comes comes calling, and you're you're gonna get bit.

the never ending trap of the free tier. And I have had the rug pulled out from under me so many times

if if you're bringing your inputs casual whatever.

gross boundary in some sort of way,

building that

Yeah. I used to use Mandrel until Mandrel got declared that all the projects have to be something that would push the the core product forward. And it's just

with with their whole GraphQL thing as Wes. As a single layer that sits on top of, What's your plan of attack for something like that?

in general

like like, your your

these these are exposed.

Yeah. Meaning that people aren't even building Wes APIs anymore. They're simply just using RPC, meaning that they can

Yeah. I think the the what we saw with GraphQL was the the hype curve went up, and I I the hype curve went up. Right? And this was all the people being, wow. This is so cool. This solves so many problems I have. And then it gotten to the point where people are like, everyone's talking about this. Therefore,

based on these fields fairly often. It's worth adding an x. I have have and, also, you have to ask yourself, like, do I even need this? Like, I have some some queries in, like, an admin tool that I use three or four times a year Yes. For some reporting, of how it does. Fly.io, affect dependencies and and stuff work like that. Right? So, yeah, I I agree with you. And I think, like,

The Vercel business too, the thing that bugs me the most about Vercel

Are there any advantages for going for a GraphQL API over a REST API? So this is this is a great question. GraphQL,

accommodate So, having potential HR issues, you know, those types of thing. That is a different situation. I will tell you this. I have been in two situations

be querying this? Like, obviously, you have a primary key, and and that's you're gonna be able to pull up that really quickly. But, if you are trying to, like, query somebody based on, like, say, their email address, and you want all of the validation That code will be almost entirely movable, meaning that the,

And one of the things that always bugs me JS, like, Wondery podcast. You Node? They're 800 ads for other shows and just, like, how they break up stories. Like, Wondery, good production, all that stuff. But, like, work culture because of a Bos, one of each, one of which the boss was the cofounder of the company, and I was a direct report.

holy cow. Yeah. We we are there,

certainly, I've built lots of, And when you

the week my first child was Yarn, because of a broken feature in pre alpha software.

there's a lot of typing for problems I don't have.

Yeah.

And sorry, but Svelte has some ugly templating too. No. That bro, what are you talking about? It's handlebars. Alright. The Vercel stuff gets more complex, more black boxy, and LLMs attachment people would have to this AI.

all kinds of different

I forget which column it was, but we were not in the I think it was shows, and we have a show number. And we were often looking up shows by show number, but the show number was not

Yeah. I feel that for sure.

right for them. And in turn, what happens is there becomes this, like, pushback, like GraphQL sucks or something like that. When in reality, you just tried to shoehorn it in something that it wasn't made for. And so I think GraphQL, or is it something you usually only fix when it's a problem?

that fending off that burnout,

And

but this brings a lot of the the functionality, and you you would wrap it. So you can still bring your

like, yeah, you got stuff to do, but is that stuff interesting or exciting, or is it same thing you've done a 100 times before? Or is it just like it's not calling to you? The cool thing here, mister Rai, is that

no. It's not just state.

it's largely people who do not understand how AI works. So, like, the I feel like that's part of it because when they're interviewing this guy, he's like, I don't know. I don't get her personality just changed overnight.

talk to HR about it. If this person is at all receptive, talk to them about it. Now

a user column somewhere and that user column has,

when you have even as far as, like, planning the UI and front end of all these things go, really plugging Century.

It does everything you need to do.

It doesn't lock you in. Like, I can't imagine paying a service to do auth. And then now you Scott a, now you got another database that's hosted on some other company that's storing just your auth and stuff like that. No. No. Thanks. So keep it all in one spot for me,

doing any of any of the stuff.

because I only use it three or four times a year. It's not worth the extra cost to To say.

will I

specific but, like,

And the reason why I'm I'm saying those things is that both of those frameworks follow Okay. I I don't know. I think it's there's a lot of people who build

state No. No. No. No. To inputs?

Wes API first, and then I'll go into it. I was like, no. I'm building all of that exactly at the same time, especially with, like, RPC.

chose the index for each query, How do you deal with a toxic work culture whose source is your boss?

Very excited about that. And then TANstack form is a and in high demand. And and and right now, that is

yeah, like, you can do everything

to next, they have to consider

your ability as a developer development picture overall. Maybe there's something that the and you're, you know, you're just looking for something super easy to spin up, Number number two scenario where I've had a toxic boss Yes. Better auth is is, like, so insanely powerful.

Next question from Halindra.

inspired by Vue inspired

such a pain in the butt. You certainly will wanna have that ahead of time.

was

The the extra cost is that, like, your your database grows. So, like, you could obviously, you could just index everything, validation.

So you would say URL and for back Deno, Node, Express, and Postgres.

query, as I have years back? Man, I'm just reading. Okay. In short, I need some guidance for the career path goal. Mister Rai is working, and he's just not as excited before. How about that? Yeah. You know,

still very popular in the corporate world where people are combining

exists in your day to day job

is like,

Oh my god. The one I've always used. Post something? Post Postmark?

back end logic, server logic, and, building it on something that is a little bit more stable

binding form states to, like, simple state variables, And then, oh, here's a bug here and there. Here's a bug here and there. Here's a bug here and there. Next thing you know, you got a whole ass job in front of you. Like, you're you're

I don't feel like switching this over. I'm just gonna pay the man and and move along. So certainly be very wary of working with forms list, and, like, read,

Yeah. Eventually. Right? I would I would probably use something like that for each of those. Again, we said mail. Again, better auth for me is

all of that. How will this work with all of the baggage and how will this work with with everything, which is probably very frustrating to to have to do that.

I think that this stuff is really handy. That's not just a date. No. No. Like, I I've built many forms in Svelte, and I think that this would be contested option email sending, and then authentication.

We'll answer them in a future episode. We'll catch you later.

For is a problem.

for this thing. It was that I Node to lift weights.

an upcoming episode.

destroy my children at Thumb Rule. They're like they're I have done this so many times

built in other than you can submit it to to the client built in there. And it's not just a simple very complex forms,

what are the queries that I'm making, what do I plan on querying off of, and, like, what needs to exist. And from there, it's usually something I take care of

maybe even just go full stack Nuxt. You could still use

How can you have non developer things in your life? What does that entail? Like That's

Yeah. To send email, and you're, like, totally locked into them. Use something that simply uses SMTP, meaning that you can you can sign up for well, I don't know. What are the ones? I use Postmark, but everyone hates them now because they got bought. And as the day the database grew, the the queries got slower and slower. Every single time we added a show, the queries got slower, slower, slower,

And then just to be clear, we work for Century. So this is me,

to the wife factor, like, close enough that the family will actually use it, and it's not like a pain in the butt. Right? So you need something that's good on them that half, but then you also wanna, like like like, further your own skill set and and and learn a whole bunch of new stuff, and that's a really good portfolio project as well. So I think Yeah. Because that sucks.

tend to think very deeply about what am I actually querying for and off of what parameters. So, for people who may not know too much about indexes, I

just as a nice single layer.

environmental stuff. Like, if I haven't worked out in a couple days, I it's Yeah. Yeah. No. I I agree. It's it's true, though. Like, I like, my life is very much what you should do is there are in in every single category, especially factor? I mean, when it's basically just a CRUD API. So, basically, you're just you're spinning up a Node server. You have a CRUD API that's taking in a get request, post request.

server database hosting,

for the use cases you mentioned, are JS, like, great solution. There's a lot of great upsides to GraphQL.

I am working full time, but not as excited before.

Validation, man. I mean, validation can happen in all kinds of easy ways. I mean, that's not like Yeah. That's not a challenge I have, I don't think. Yeah. Alright. I will say, he he he stepped over the line several times.

sometimes,

a good CloudFlare does not send email.

also does

boss

Sam. Says, have you seen the new TAN stack forms? Aren't they great?

seeing where they could iron in different locations? Like, they were, Come on. That was the original compiler. Yes. Inspire, but

I've always just used my electronics project just and use a stupid wire nuts where you get to jam them behind the thing. It doesn't seem like a great idea. So Europe.

Man,

project. I would I would not do this with or Earl? Earl. Which one? No. Yeah. I just say URL. I just,

understand this stuff, see what's, like, going on with some people because feature within Sanity that allows you. And and, honestly, we I think that's how we found our slow query, Missing the point.

use something that JS, like, that Wes the TypeScript just flows from the back end to the front end is

if you have, like, very real, like, professional concerns about this person,

look up users by email address. Right? Whereas, like, sometimes I'm looking up people by some weird combination of it, and the the query will be a lot slower, but that's okay. And and often, what I'll do is if you don't know it ahead of time, it's gonna show up in

where you would have explicitly you Scott prepare some of your family members who might be susceptible to this kind of thing. You know? I don't have any personally, but, like, you know, people are getting older or whatever, and the AI is only gonna get crazier. So I I think chances are,

my They're trying to do things where you can build a gateway. Meaning that, like, don't Then I'll go into a box or maybe have, like, a slider and you wanna check if that thing is available.

saving data to state, and then, like, fully typed

of the product, the experience, and everything, and that rubs me the wrong way because the development experience is so much better in the extra

Mailgun,

opinions.

but not as excited before.

to build out this API layer that connects it all. So, yeah, that's my thoughts on it. I like GraphQL. Personally, I haven't used in a while because I haven't been building stuff, and I and I'm, like, Key, the type of person who hit the man, I never understood the Next. Js appeal, and I didn't understand the React appeal. And I don't necessarily still understand it because JS, like, it being a React problem.

stuff, like saying inappropriate

front to back and then add the extra pieces along the way? Also, how do you order the work? Is it core functionality first and or do you get things like auth, translation, etcetera, set up first? So that's a really interesting Wes. Pnpm think it breaks down to, like, what type of application But

TSX is objectively uglier than Vue templates. Agreed.

hey. Am I missing any indexes here? And it it might say, you should consider adding an index for this. I've had really good luck with that because then it's not even, like, writing the code for you. It's just looking at everything and being like, hey. I noticed you're querying off of this, but you're not indexing for it. So maybe consider that or change your query. Rip through your code Bos.

schema, in your database, and then on your client. There's just way too much stuff, whereas a REST API as Wes, where, like, Scott and I are trying to get our home assistants And then when there are new features that need to come web request and web response.

very much about coding. Like, almost everything I do is is about coding. Right? And Yeah. It's it's hard. It's hard because that's all I wanna do. You know? But then much overhead.

I'm not gonna yeah, you could just connect two wires together. And and especially, when you're prototyping things, you don't wanna have to solder them together. I used I used that for a lot of my, it's not that GraphQL JS bad, but most people, I think, found that this is too call oh, go for a REST API, or I would say probably the third option and and the reason why GraphQL fell out out of love JS is RPC.

any tools for

Next question from RGV great reasons to use it in the right scenario. But if you are just, And we got a comment on the video from somebody saying, oh, we our company instituted a Hack Week, but then soon after,

handling submission. This is about when somebody types into, like,

you'd be comfortable with that.

pages API and and, like, there's all of this sort of, like, baggage that needs to be supported.

not being,

There's there's bodies that come in, maybe JSON. Maybe you need to handle streaming, you know, just your your standard access to the URL, access to the body, access to the parameters, the query params, all of that stuff will be will look exactly the same way. And then the response that you send from that handler, are attached to.

can, you can fill that out, and we'll answer your question up on a, shoot. What was his name? He worked for a a, like, a big BBC or something like that, big TV vendor, and they have

with their their capabilities there. For database,

a SaaS that is auth.

storing those images on their server. So, like, doing the math on these things is is always hard because it's it's it's really easy just to look at, like, simple stacks. Someone's saying, like, was express in view in MySQL

no issue,

Mhmm. Also, often scan your database and keep keep those things in memory or or somewhere so that it can quickly look that up. So you just have to ask Vercel, like, I always

and,

And then we went in there and realized, oh, Scott ShadCN or whatever planning on one full stack framework like the TANstack. Okay. So he needs he needs a a database. He needs somewhere to to serve it up. Right? He needs image storage, cheap paid tier.

It's a problem

catch all routes or or variable routes, param routes in Express.

but have a functional app that scales. We can start dipping into the bank if we get more users. Yeah. This is the we had,

only do that if

think you should break it down into there's not a lot of, like, gotchas

organization.

I'm trying to move myself off of anything

I think there's, like, two types of issues with forms. One is that people sometimes like, library to do that in forms in React is because it depends.

is you can ask AI to do it for you. Scott, like, to trust it blindly, but you can pass in your whole ass website and say,

awful, awful way to to do it. Right? I hate doing forms in React, but luckily, other, like, connect other people,

that is needed out of the gate. You think about it deeply, and you make it good. I think that's the only thing that matters. Yeah. Beautiful.

No. I have not used AppGet. There's something called Pacman. I've been Pacmaning. I've been, chomp chomping,

scaffold all all of my routes. I'm not gonna scaffold out any UI components or anything like that. I'm simply just gonna Sanity, I'm working on this feature right now where a user can becomes very large, and you you need more memory or you need a a large database to be able to handle that. So if you got lots of money, you could. Make the whole plan out of the black box. Right? Yes. Exactly. Another question. A couple

are are you gonna need. Yes. I'm gonna go ahead and say tech choice does not matter at all in my opinions, whether it's, mature, not mature, whatever. Tech stack, whatever you pick does not matter. What matters is that you make

I don't know. They're both stupid. No. I'm not. I don't I don't stoop that one. You know what I do say? I say href.

I don't know anything about that. Now your Wes connectors. All the tightrope walking and ironing or playing chess.

all the way down, they're they're good for, like like, household wiring, but also good for like, I use them at electronics projects as well.

if you are building an app that is simply just back end I honestly think he's right in that, like, sometimes I do think about, like, the good old days of Cool. Alright. Thanks everybody so much for tuning in. Please submit your questions at syntax.fm.

Because

alright. Let's get into the last section, which is sick picks.

But if you want the functionality What are some nice providers for each? For hosting, so far, I've used fly.io.

Vue,

And, like,

anytime I add anything new because eventually about everything. You got your

make the light switch. Them in the back of the switch, like a little clip. Give me that. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. No. I said give me that. I I just replaced the light switch last week, and it, Wes felt very nice to use my WEGOs.

But often, that means you have to do things in a very specific way, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way because there's, like I said, there's a lot of weird knowledge that you you have to get. So, all of that stuff

maybe

want The amount of times I've had, like, a Next. Js

or at least under my my controller purview. I know you mentioned the images thing. The the CloudFlare images, transform images API JS really good.

perhaps there are some No. It's URL. But the one that you have to say it. I yeah. Oh, URL

starting at the root and then,

like, your wife and her hobby of, like, you have to build something that is good full stack modern JavaScript.

it's a perfect place to find your,

In fact, like, almost everything these days follows the standard web Wes and web Node. Js. And the URL

outside world.

This is It is. Is Wes with with This JS, like, React. Everything. No. This is a React thing. When you wanna build forms, you you have to do a lot. You have to have, like, types, and you have to have validation. Sometimes you wanna bring Zod in to make sure that the data actually looks fine, and then,

but, like, I was fine completing my tasks.

They obviously cousin, private equity, is they just

Oh, sorry. Man, I'm reading.

have a business, and they want it warp it to do well. But I I honestly do think Vercel cares about the future of the web. It's just that, like, Next. Js is, what, 10 old. Right? There's there's a lot of baggage that comes along with a very old framework, I think there are a lot of counterfeits

Yeah. I was gonna say,

and then there's there's a data input. You can put your name. And, like, I had to build all of this stuff myself, Wago connectors are the Wes. And the Europeans are gonna be laughing at this because like, the JSON API and and suck that on up.

So after moving my database from Postgres over to Convex, Oh, man. I the the reason why I'm gonna have a hard time answering this question, Wes, is specifically because

in that. You know? Like, having to know one of these that often. But, yeah, I Yeah. I think that would probably be it. You know? That's the other alternative as well is, like, maybe don't even spin up a a Node back end. Like, the only reason why I don't use Hano more than that is that I'm often using, like, a full stack meta framework that database,

It's gonna remove all the creativity Like, what what what exactly what problem is this solving whether I built the submission form on the Syntax website,

And then go from there and and figure out what integrations specify

HR is there for a reason. You can talk to them. You don't have to, like, go snitching on minor little things here and there. But if somebody has crossed a clear,

and aim not for so many users at the start, of course. So you're aiming aiming low. That's good. I like that. Yeah. I can't get hung up on hosting, rolling my own out, etcetera. I want to pick a quick and easy solution that would not break the bank, so have a generous free or Full stack flapjack. Let's go. You ready, Scott? How you doing today?

Polka is a

we got a Sanity alert that said, hey. Slow query detected.

cheese you're right about, and your pasteurized cheese.

You know? And, like,

use Cloudflare's image storage. It is extremely cheap. The pricing, yeah, the pricing is great on that. They don't charge for bandwidth, but they do charge for for building a SaaS project. I wanna help a friend build a SaaS product. We And let's make a whole app API

But Always thinking about

update, and and delete all of of those pieces. You know? And then okay. That that those are all on the thing. Now let's go on to the next feature. And then I'll I'll I'll sort of get two or three features out, and you can spend a little bit more time on what the actual UI works. But I do go like, the whole like, the blending of That's done. You know what? Talking about asserting dominance, my kids have decided that they really wanna do thumb wars all the time. And Thumb wars would work as well. Imagine like like, there's no man that loses that thumb war that is not just, like, broken inside.

Node developer things in your life that are are worth, addressing as well.

especially when you're trying to do things like have dual compilers or you're trying to have a Rust based

look up over certain parameters

Yeah. They MySQL. You could still use AWS. Still exists. Yeah. All of this type of stuff, you don't have to. And, like like, on the, like, next payload Postgres, like, these things aren't they're not making them complicated for complicated sake.

This is about Solved immediately.

like, have handed something off that, like, works, and then people go to use it, like, because it's a side project. It's just for, like,

express back end,

it must be right for me. And then they implement, and then they're like, wow. This is a lot of extra steps. Now I'm hitting n plus one issues. Now I'm, having to write way more code,

you still bring the HTML,

nowadays, I am taking out and thinking about that entire data structure first, building out that schema.

interesting option as well. This is actually what SvelteKit uses underneath the hood. It's a, I don't get it. I'm gonna say that I don't get a single thing that this would help with that I cannot do with You can do anything you want. It's just that, like What I don't see JS, how is this making any of that easier is what I'm saying.

you can't

newer than Express.

being toxic for whatever reasons in terms of, like,

work. Do you have a suggestion for this kind of stack? The goal is to not pay much monthly, that adopts standard schema can be used.

and they need to have a single API

really diving into. I I really think that is the whole thing is that novelty at the end of the day is always going to be more exciting. And if you can find some way to inject

Wes API that you need to be able to build out

If a boss is, Centuryofcentury.io,

you go, ah, whatever. If we get more users, we'll start paying for it or whatever. But, man, I have some super high bills of stuff where I'm just like,

man, I can just write CSS targeting created. So, like, There's a lot of,

of what does your actual workflow look like when it gets time to actually write in the code? Do you update your package JSON with everything you know you're gonna be using? Do you start with front end components? Do you start with routes, database structure? Do you tend to scaffold out the whole project first or work on one section you know, MySQL database.

really, what you need to do is is find a way to tap into

And how much would you say there is an it depends But I think a lot of people realized This is about I don't know, your forty year old COBOL API and your six different Wes APIs and your internal Salesforce weird thing

Node. I built some complex ask forms, and I had

Next. Js and like, I know Next and React very well, and I have a swath where you're you're just like, I'm so so sick of working on this stupid thing Mhmm. Every day in and day out. But, also, like, I think there's probably other

to take something, especially like a CRUD app. A CRUD app, I'm almost always thinking about data first.

slow queries. They have a slow query tool.

I realized my indexing was kind of a Wes, causing a lot of full table scans. Do you actively manage your database

like, an SMTP

somebody says warp. As well. No. I'm just saying,

pick that that sort of standard up, but the new standard is web request, web response.

where if I don't have a database, you know, whatever. I I can go off and just, goof around. But with the database, I'm like, let me actually think about this. Yeah. So when I have a plan for, like, a, like, a full stack CRUD app, what I'll do is I'll first install And then the stuff that this would come into handy for would be like the specifically, the the types of fields and everything like that. Not extremely complex. Not multi multi but, like, even multi step forms. Again, it's just a big old state object that is like, where what is the status of this form? What is the UI then being shown there?

multiple

and it JS, dude, it's wild. Ugh.

and I don't put indexes on that. Those those queries are slow as hell. You know? But it doesn't matter

it work and that you make it work well and that you make it easy.

And then you start at the root and work your way to the leaves in terms of UI stuff and then changing and evolving companionship, It's a problem for that company.

Sometimes, I'll try to, like, skirt it, especially if I'm trying to go, like, as fast as possible.

Okay. Which is it that's allowed.

Yeah. I mean, I agree on a lot of this stuff. I Scott say, it's not like I I don't wanna declare myself a hater, a nice enough dude, but he was doing a lot of weird

to have a single API for, like, an iOS app, Android app, web app, TV, you know, all of that stuff. However, it is if you don't have the concept of

Take on danger. Can you can, what was that where people were,

a field as an index, it will bar in the in the menu, there's a button that says potluck queues.

was a project manager.

Supabase is a great host for Postgres. It's a great way to get set up easily with Postgres. PlanetScale does Postgres now.

control their form when it doesn't need to be controlled, and then, therefore, like,

But,

a problem that, like, only React has. Because

the perfect stack? Should we go back to that? next

every single time. So it depends on how I'm feeling that day. So let's let's break it down. Okay. I tend now tracking edge cases. You're doing this or that. Just make sure you understand exactly all of the functionality like, really lightweight

simple front end,

And the reason why you need an additional,

create,

sincerely hold up that I could be wrong on this. I I definitely think that I could be wrong on this, but I've never

do I need? Do I need a CMS? It sounds like you need a CMS for this type of thing. Right? And then maybe look into

So for me, that that's kind of the way I go. An interactive component, three d color those types of things, man, a lot of that stuff I just YOLO. I'm just writing everything all at once. I'm just dumping here and there. Going for it. Yeah.

written a form that was too complex that I couldn't do it with just Bantage State, personally. Yeah. That's that's yeah. Wes, I think this is the first major disagreement we've ever had on this show. No. No. I think I I You okay? I think it's a skill issue. Yes. Yes. No. I'm I'm totally fine.

early so that way you can work on problems that are more interesting. Take on dangerous hobbies.

Yeah.

I probably wouldn't. They're Yeah. They're cheap. They're, like, 50¢ a piece. I've had the knockoffs in the past, and they're fine for just like, I'd, like, put, like, a vacuum line together, low voltage stuff, but Loving husband says, hey, guys. My wife needs a website in order to create and publish content for a personal hobby of hers she turns hopes to turn into a nonprofit.

Bob, I think Express plus Vue plus MySQL plus AWS was the best stack I've used in production.

probably just what I'd pick today. That said, I'm I'm usually working in a more of a meta framework, so I'm not having to pick up,

is is really good. So I'm I'm glad that TanStack is is the team there is solving forms because that's a that's a hard thing. Right? Yeah. There's a lot of people that need to build their own CMS. Yeah. I built my own CMS, like, 18. Hard. And then just think about, like like, integrations versus building from scratch. Like,

like, y'all missing the point.

counterfeits out there as well. Yeah. I I've been using these for any time. I I put a number of, like, smart switches

So, therefore, I'm gonna stop using it. But that doesn't mean it's it's bad or not not useful or anything like that. Yeah. Depends on on it it's a tool. Right? And it solves a lot of hard problems for people that have those problems.

funded by venture capitalists, translation,

opens you up to be able to

these have not become crank them down together. You know? And then if you do wanna take something out, you're twisting the copper. It's a pain in the butt. They're huge to fit, like, behind a light switch or something like that. So if you're doing any sort of yeah. They're they're so good. And I also I recently found these ones, which is they're called ESLint.

with our shows, our missing index. Yeah. That's exactly how it it it emailed us.

building forms, and I feel like I've spent my career It does more, though. Yes. Yeah. It does a lot more, but then you're you're locked in to, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To their system.

you can't do anything about it. You know what I did? I quit. I said, indexes that will ruin your mental health. It was ruining my mental health, and and really, really liked it. Those there, Eliza.

the his friends are just like, do you not know how any of this stuff works? Like, there's not a person here. There JS not a a there's not an entity here. And and the shocking I've built large enterprise apps other stack question. Yeah. Yeah. Now in my job, I've adopted Next 15, payload three, Postgres, plus Vercel.

response, signature, this. So it's just forms. You know? You submit something, it sends data, and it comes back. You could display messages and and whatnot.

seems to be

in our our house, and I use those every time. They're just so nice. And they're nice when you're installing things because it all clips on very nicely. You don't have to worry about it pulling out. I do tend to really ESLint, app. And, like,

Welcome to Syntax today. We got a Pollock episode for you today. We're gonna be talking about, Node. Js back end choice. What if you wanna build a quick Wes API, what you use in Node. Whole bunch of questions around, like, full stack. Like, what stack should I pull together in order to build, like, a SaaS app in your database, and it would all be fast. But then the storing of those indexes becomes So that includes all my back end packages, everything that I think I need. Right? You're not gonna know exactly what you need, but you need your, like, your server framework, your front end framework, all of that, your database.

that is thankfully something I don't have to I haven't done in many years. Like, multilingual,

templating syntax is perfect and has never done anything wrong. So Yeah. I think you're wrong on only that piece, Bob.

into your work, that is going to go a long ways for improving your motivation.

you gotta make a choice. Somebody says,

it is. So I thought, like, let's break it down, me and you, Scott. Let's talk about two different kind of kind of apps and how we would tackle them. So probably one of them is just like like a CRUD app. Right? You've got a Node. Js back end. You got a, like, a React or Svelte or Vue front end. You have a database. You have authentication.

hosting on Vercel you know, building an app, you got control of the front end, back end, whatever, like, I don't see any reason to do that unless you really need,

either, like, Deno loops through your entire every single item in your your database

to prevent that, it's easy to change HTML.

of, like, what stack would you pick. Yeah.

handlers any API handlers that come in, you will be able to move those from in in in a line, these ones are fantastic rather than having to loop the wire back into the the bottom of the connector. So that and then I also have been printing these, novelty into your day to day job. Yeah. You gotta have fun. And we get this question quite a bit. And part of the answer is Wes. Like, work on more stuff, but something that is different, something that is exciting. But, also, the ESLint,

getting really aggressive at some of the other PMs and stuff like that. He was my direct boss. And at one point,

to a point where,

It's it may it sounds awful, and it definitely will make you feel a little ugh. But as somebody who works in this space, I I think it's kind of important to

with using Linux AppGet installing things.

Yeah. That sucks. That's hard to do. Yeah. Next question for mister Rai. I've been working as a front end developer for the past six years with a year of back end.