I have learned that 95% of the effort of making a webapp is not fun, and consists of reading the docs for things that you don’t care about and then groaning as you learn that those docs require you to read more docs for more things that you don’t care about

things that I have been forced to learn despite not giving a shit and just wanting other people to be able to use my cool webapp:

• authbind
• gunicorn
• NGINX which apparently has its own declarative programming language thing?? I’m still learning this one. it’s a lot. I hate that gunicorn is making me learn this one

also later I’m going to have to learn about systemd services and probably even more

5% of the effort: writing the code that Does Things (fun)

70% of the effort: writing the UI code that makes the HTML and CSS (not fun)

25%(?) of the effort: configuring Linux services that require Linux services that require Linux services, and then trying to figure out why they won’t work (extremely not fun)

my second least favorite Linux Experience is reading the docs for some tool I don’t care about, trying to configure it, and then having it Not Work in an extremely hard-to-diagnose fashion. because then I get to go on a Multiple Choice Adventure:

• reread the docs and try to figure out if I just misunderstood something somewhere
• try to figure out if there’s a logfile hidden somewhere in Linux’s labyrinthine directory structure that has the actual error message
• try to google for my very nondescript problem and get a bunch of results that don’t help

my actual least favorite Linux Experience is going through this process for something extremely basic that my computer needs in order to function like a desktop environment or the ability to hear sound

@kasdeya feel your pain tho I gotta say, nginx and systemd are both pretty cool

gatekeeper! let me through! I have bested your trials and my webapp is ready!

“ahh, you have indeed defeated the mighty HTML and the dreaded CSS. you have slain the beast of JS and its many footguns. but there lies one more trial before ye. before your webapp may know the touch of a user, you must face… the Dread Penguin Linux!”

*a distant lightning flash briefly illuminates a massive black figure on the horizon with a bright yellow beak*

@kaylee that’s definitely fair lol. I think if I were in a different mindset I might be able to appreciate those two things a lot more. like trying to get NGINX and systemd to work for me on a pretty complex project, when I’m not really interested in the details of how it runs on my VPS at all, is probably a very bad way to approach them

@kasdeya I think learning these things because you have to is the only way people learn them 😬

But yeah I just stood a single server with three services on three subdomains routed with nginx, and systemd takes care of starting everything on boot, renewing the https certs and then reloading the services. Like if I didn’t know these things I would’ve had to pay for three servers 🥲

@kasdeya @kaylee what does it say when I enjoy setting up stuff as well as developing stuff to run on the stack but I just don't want to touch JavaScript.

@shijikori @kasdeya I’d say it shows rationality lol

JavaScript has given frontend dev a bad name 😬

@kasdeya there would be ominous music playing over the scene but pulseaudio is having issues