NoFilter
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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10 upvotes·3 comments·10.6K views
Dániel Apjok
Dániel Apjok
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June 17th 2021 at 6:17PM

While I'm also a big fan of Postman, after one of the bigger updates it began to start up really slow. For this reason i tried Insomnia. The former is more versatile in my opinion but if you miss the simplicity of it, maybe you should give the latter a go.

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Isaiah Garcia
Isaiah Garcia
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June 19th 2021 at 5:51PM

Had never heard of Insomnia, but will give it a try! Thank you!

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Brandon Miller
Brandon Miller
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August 29th 2021 at 7:01PM

I kind of liked it a lot better before it became a huge, all-in-one program. When they added collections, that was a good move. A lot of the rest I never really use and consider to be bloated plugins. I guess making mocks might be a plus, but tbh it just adds extra time to development. I love(d) postman, but I have to unfortunately say the recommendation of Insomnia isn't a bad one these days.

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Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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

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8 upvotes·16.8K views
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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"

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7 upvotes·1 comment·8.9K views
Steven Huffman
Steven Huffman
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June 14th 2021 at 11:08AM

Yeah, i agree!

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Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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

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6 upvotes·1 comment·12.9K views
Richard Barella
Richard Barella
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June 24th 2020 at 10:49PM

you can also test your app locally (which removes almost all the free tier limits)

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Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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6 upvotes·4.1K views
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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6 upvotes·1.6K views
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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5 upvotes·1 comment·229.3K views
Lal Krishna
Lal Krishna
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June 30th 2020 at 4:45PM

I'd rather use Flutter., in case of cross plat form mobile application development.

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Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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4 upvotes·8.7K views
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

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.

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4 upvotes·6.2K views
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter·

Well... Google Maps is te 50% of out app. NoFilter is basically a map, where we show the best photo spots around the world. Useful for photographers.

As you may imagine, Google Maps cover the Map necessity. Super nice performance. Easy to implement in mobile, and webs. Huge free layer. Clearly the option to go for an MVP

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4 upvotes·2.8K views