Recap
Technology can be your greatest ally or your greatest threat.
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Serious about your dream to start a company? Don't rush it.
Cutting edge vs. familiar tech. stacks
Let's go through an exercise.
One decision you could make for your startup is adopting serverless technology (e.g. Cloud Functions). There are cost, performance and time saving benefits. Yet, nearly everything you can achieve serverless can still be done in traditional, hosted applications that you're likely used to.
So the question is, do you spend your time learning a whole new technology or stick to what you're good at?
For this series we're going to go with the answer of:
For writing applications, stick to what you know. For your infrastructure however, choose a leading Cloud Service Provider. At time of writing that is a top 3 of AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP. These providers, combined with other edge technologies (DNS, API gateways, etc.) are constantly evolving and have steep learning curves. The payoff of having a resilient, scalable system that promotes fail-fast business is entirely what this series will focus on.
Tip: If you're working on excelling in your day job in parallel, consider going with a provider that will make you more valuable to that team as well.
Disclaimer: The learning curve for a cloud provider giant is steep. Give yourself and your team several months to learn the technology and build a sample app if it is your first go at it.
Our tech. stack for the rest of this series
Below is the tech. stack we will piece together throughout this series along with a pricing estimate for each.
Edge / DNS provider
Service: Cloudflare
Products: Tunnel, Advanced Certificate Manager
Price: $10.00 USD / month
API gateway
Service: Kong
Products: Routing, Authentication, Dev Portal
Price: $0 - $250 / month
Cloud Service Provider
Service: Google Cloud Platform
Products: IAM, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, Kubernetes Engine
Price: Usage based
Version Control System
Service: Gitlab
Products: Version control
Price: Free
CI/CD
Service: Gitlab
Products: Gitlab CI, Advanced VCS
Price: $228 USD / year
Containerization
Service: Docker
Products: Images, Containers, Compose
Price: Free
Development
Language: Go
Editor: GoLand
Editor price: $150 - $250 USD / year
Free alternative: VS Code
Context: APIs
Language: JavaScript, Node.js
Editor: VS Code
Editor price: Free
Context: Web apps, mobile apps
Total cost estimate
~$348 USD / year + usage based fees (GCP)
The figure above is assuming we use the most probable plan for all the mentioned services and excludes paid editors. While starting out there's a good chance the free plan for Kong will suffice. Nonetheless it's best to be prepared for the paid tiers and explore competitors as generally business will lead you in that direction as requirements or limitations arise.
A note on saving costs
You can find substitute services or choose not to use some services. This depends on the problems you're concerned about solving and your budget. For example, manually implementing authentication, rate limiting, etc. and dodging the API gateway - Or managing your own SSL certificates and dodging Cloudflare's Total TLS. I would only caution that these services exist for your ultimate convenience, security and beyond. The more you choose to do on your own, the less you can focus on the innovative ideas and development that will allow you to grow.
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Sources
https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/top-10-cloud-service-providers/
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