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Discussion on: Welcome Thread - v14

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

What tools/technologies do you like to use?

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mfoman profile image
mfoman

My development environment is a mix/match of VSCode w/ vim and docker(compose).
I learn/use whatever is expected of me, or when new tech comes out(right now a laravel/react stack).
I create a list of what i'd like to explore like "kotlin" and "reason".

What takes up most of my time now is reading about domain-driven design and microservices.
And I do like to read theory/patterns more than I like new libraries and other tech hype(because there's something new everyday).

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

Nice! I played around with Laravel and built a web app with it. It was kind of cool. I just went with Vue to keep things simple. I prefer React and I’m learning Node and Express and then I want to rebuild the app using that stack.

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mfoman profile image
mfoman

Laravel intergrates well with Vue as well, so no wonder!
At some point I will try to make something in Vue, but feel I like i don't have the time for it at the moment.

Also a part of the reason is I've yet to try frameworks such as GatsbyJS/Next.js which was developed with reactjs/nodejs in mind.
They focus more on server-rendered and isomorphic components in which I find interesting/confusing.

And I'm about to get in the mindset of Reasonml, the new language also built with React in mind.

Btw, if there's anything I can help with don't shy away from asking - I feel I learn the most by interacting with people other coders.

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

I built my portfolio site using Gatsby and the NetlifyCMS. It's pretty cool. Gatsby actually doesn't interact with a database. It just creates static files on the HTML build and those sit on the server, so I liked it a lot when I was starting with React. It essentially allowed me to build a React app with "dynamic" information but no back-end. If you want to check out out, I put the links to the site and the code below.

I liked the idea behind laravel, but I prefer Javascript to PHP so I want to get into Sailsjs or something like that. It just creates an MVC architecture for the Nodejs app. Sailsjs is built on top of Expressjs.

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mfoman profile image
mfoman

Sounds great, thanks for clarification.

Regarding persistence: You might be interested in tech like, I think it's called cosmicjs, a kinda headless cms.

I don't really like the php syntax either, but I do like the "flexibility" even though many "real devs" would disagree.

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

Yeah, my initial complaint was the "halt the site comes to" when it loads because it uses a single-threaded setup. Then it was just kind of a pain to have to change gears between php, html, css, and js all the time. Setting things up initially and then just using Sass and JS makes things much more enjoyable to me.

I've spent time looking at headless CMSs(?) but surprisingly haven't come across CosmicJS. I'll give that a look. So far I like NetlifyCMS, and I've played around with Wordpress, Cockpit, Directus, Strapi, and a few others.

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mfoman profile image
mfoman

I think it's relatively new too.
You mentioned Strapi, maybe sanity.io/?
Look promising, but never tried it personally.

I wanted to get started(properly) with something based on firebase.

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

Part of the challenge is finding one of these that will work well for clients. If I need to update something, none of these would be a problem. I feel that the layout and maybe some of the terminology could be problematic for a client who isn't super tech-savvy. That is one big benefit to Wordpress is predefined fields. On my to-do list is trying Wordpress as a headless CMS using the rest api they offer.

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mfoman profile image
mfoman

Just remembered I had something else contentful.com/.
I'll leave it to you to figure them out, it's a little too much for me :p

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iam_timsmith profile image
Tim Smith

I've looked at it but haven't played around with it yet. Mostly I'm just looking for non-techie CMS which allows me to build a front-end using javascript using an api. I mean, I guess either I'll find one I like or I'll just build it eventually lol.