Noel Broda

I don't even know if there is an alternative to Postman. Postman is one of the "de facto" standars that I don't even waste my time thinking in another option.

In the last version, Postman got a bit more complicated, complex, than the previous versions. I really miss the simplicity of the previous version, but well... still a super nice UI.

Due to we are using G Suite for emails, Google Drive comes out of the box.

In Google Drive we keep save just some basic marketing files. We used it as a single repository to share files between designers and developers. Nothing more than that. In some moment we had some backups there, but just for security reasons, we removed it

No that much to say about JavaScript. The only real full-cross-platform language. You can do scripting, frontend, backend, mobile, Raspberry, etc, etc. The only technology that must be present for every project (considering a project that involves a website).

A developer with good knowledge in JavaScript, can work in the backend, frontend, in IoT device, mobile development, etc. Super flexible. Helps the company to focus on only hiring 1 kind of expert: "JS dev"

Firebase is the most powerful platform that I saw to support an MVP stage of a project that implies a website + mobile applications.

Be careful with what I say there: "to support an MVP". Firebase is awesome for early stages, but it has some huge technical problems.

Let's talk now about the PROS:

• With a few clicks, you have a full platform, with an AWESOME free tier, ready to be used. Serverless support for static files (your website in JS, probably), backend support for realtime DB, or even Google Cloud Functions made simple (Firebase Functions).
• Probably one of the most important things: You can integrate Analytics, and Push Notifications to your Android and iOS app with a few clicks.
• NoSQL DB (this may also be consider as a CONS. Careful here.
• With Firebase Functions, it's super simple to have global vars in memory, to speed up the backend responses
• Awesome support with Expo (awesome technology for mobile MVPs)
• Super simple local testing. Just run firebase init and then npm run serve and you'll have your backend running in your local env.
• Huge Authorization+Authentication integrated flows: Login with Facebook, Gmail, and all the other options, with just a couple of minutes of configurations and barely few lines of code.

Now, some CONS:

• In Firebase Firestore DB (the DB you'll probably use): Compound queries are not allowed. For example, you can NOT do this: .where("state", ">=", "CA").where("population", ">", 100000). You can't combine different attributes of the object in the where query. Read more about that limitation in https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/query-data/queries#compound_queries

• In Firebase Functions: OR querys (like where user_status = 2 OR user_status = 3 in SQL) are not allowed. Yes... This is HUGE. Not be able to do an OR query is a huge blocker in performance. Luckily in the last months Firebase added an "IN" query, where you can do .where('country', 'in', ['USA', 'Japan']) but it's limited to only 10 values in the in array. Good enough, but still some limitations there. Check more about that limitation in https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/query-data/queries#in_not-in_and_array-contains-any

Feel free to ask any question, and I'll share some details here

The point here is that I never decided for Google Cloud Platform. The win here comes from the Firebase side.

For every single MVP, Firebase is the way to go. Always. And Firebase is made over Google Cloud Platform.

So, I could say that we are using Google Cloud Platform but just with a nicer UI, called Firebase.

For some things, like Cloud Scheduling, Billing, Advance Configurations, etc, I have to use Google Cloud Platform, but usually with Firebase is enough.

G Suite is probably the "de facto" first option that comes up in an MVP. The UI is super friendly, but the configuration is absolutely ugly. It takes a lot of time to implement an admin/root account (to manage the whole company emails), and a single simple email account (to send emails).

You have to pay for easy single user. 6 dollars per month. It will be a reeeeally good idea if G Suite would include at least 3 emails accounts in the first level. As far as I know, Microsoft 360 do it better regarding pricing, but the UX is the worst.

1 code deploys for both: Android and iOS. There is a huge community behind React Native. And one of the best things is Expo. Expo uses React Native to make everything even more and more simple. Awesome technologies. Some other important thing is that while using React Native, you are reusing all JavaScript knowledge you have in your team. You can move easily a frontend dev to develop mobile applications.

A huge PRO of Expo, is that it includes a full building process. You run 1 line in the terminal, and 10 minutes after you have 2 builds done. Double check EAS Expo.

"Should I just learn Swift first due to the pros of the native apps?". React Native builds Native Apps. Technologies like ionic does NOT build native apps, but React Native does it.

Learning Swift seems to be a really bad idea from my point of view. Learning JavaScript is all what you need. Why? Because then Frontend, Backend, and Mobile Dev, is simple, because it's all JavaScript.

I remember when I started measuring usage in the app, that it was not simple at all to decide between the FEW options that we had for mobile analytics tracking.

Due to NoFilter is 100% developed over by Expo, the decision was easy: I checked the integrations available with Expo, and at that time the only one we had, was Amplitude. Not even Firebase Analytics was implemented at that time.

So, the decision was simple.

The UI is super simple, a really faster that Google Analytics (or Google Play Developers Platform).

Nice free tier.

Nothing new to say regarding Node.js.

The main idea of NoFilter was to implement a whole platform using JavaScript (or Ecma... but... you got my point).

NodeJS is working with Express in the backend (supported by Firebase Functions). Everything is working super smooth, after 3 years with no issues at all. A classic way to go.