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by asdev 71 days ago
I wonder if people really need this. How many people are really building multiplayer apps like Figma, Linear etc? I'm guessing 99% are CRUD and I doubt that will change. Even if so, would you want to vendor lock into some proprietary technology rather than build with tried and tested open source components?
3 comments
stopachka 71 days ago
> really building multiplayer apps like Figma, Linear

I think there's two surprises about this:

1. If it was easier to make apps multiplayer, I bet more apps would be. For example, I don't see why Linear has to be multiplayer, but other CRUD apps don't.

2. When the abstraction is right, building apps with sync engines is easier than building traditional CRUD apps. The Linear team mentioned this themselves here: https://x.com/artman/status/1558081796914483201

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nezaj 71 days ago
For what it's worth, Instant is 100% open source!

https://github.com/instantdb/instant

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risyachka 71 days ago
Yeah I kinda agree. Considering llms write most of the code today, the need for fancy tech is lower than ever. A good old crud app looks like a perfect fit for ai - its simple, repetitive and ai is great at sql. Go binary for backend and react for frontend - covers 99.9% use cases with basically zero resource usage. 5 usd node will handle 100k mau without breaking a sweat.
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stopachka 71 days ago
> 5 usd node will handle 100k mau without breaking a sweat.

One problem you may encounter with the 5 usd node: how do you handle multiple projects? You could put them all in one VM, but that set up can get esoteric, and as you look for more isolation, the processes won't fit on such a small machine.

With Instant, you can make unlimited projects. Your app also gets a sync engine, which is both good for your users, and at least in our experiments, the AIs prefer building with it.

And if you ever want to get off Instant, the whole system is open source.

I still resonate with a good Hetzner box though, and it can make sense to self-host or to use more tried-and-true tech.

For what it's worth, with Instant you would get a lot more support for easy projects. At least in our benchmarks, AI

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