[alexcole]

Absolutely. But if you decide to use Cloud Functions with Firebase you have to give up the reactivity and automatic optimistic updates that Firebase normally provides.

Part of the difficulty of writing about Firebase is that it's actually a whole collection of tools with a host of complex tradeoffs. But that's also a lot of the difficulty in using it as well! Understanding when to use Cloud Firestore vs Realtime Database and when to load data directly vs via Cloud Functions are all complex questions with unclear answers.