This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Just for a moment, forget all of the technical pros and cons, the static typing, just-in-time compilation, operator overloading, object orientation to the max...

Is there a programming language that you've just found to be... fun?

Is there one that you'd pick above all else for personal or company projects, if you had your druthers, because you would simply be so excited to use it?

And then, is there something missing in that "fun" language that's preventing it from actually becoming a reality (i.e. small community, lack of libraries, maintenance ended in the 80s, etc.)?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Have any of you tried out fossil as an alternative to git? I have been using it for about a week, and I think I am in love. I have used git for years, since having some sort of source control is absolutely essential in programming. But I never liked git or felt comfortable using it. Within a week of messing with fossil, I feel like I understand it and can use it without a guide or external tools. It also has an issue tracker, forums, and a wiki built in.

Fossil Versus Git

I recommend reading all of that, especially section 2.5. Their description of cathedral style development lines up much more closely to everything I have worked on than git's bazaar style. Another thing I love is the ability to have the same repo open in multiple different folders at the same time. Basically everything about fossil lines up much more closely with what I think a source control program should be, at least for my use.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm looking to get a new laptop for when I want to go work at a coffee shop or something.

I have seen the Framework laptops and like the idea of a modular computer you can upgrade or repair.

I'm a little hesitant though. The last laptop I tried was to buy a Pinebook a year or two ago. I got it, turned it on once and it worked fine, but then after that it would just get a black screen when I powered it on. Some posts online indicated that it might be because the memory card wasn't seated properly and it might fix the problem to reseat it. But the tiny screws on the bottom were really tight and I ended up stripping one of them while trying to open it up, so now I just have a laptop I've used once collecting dust.

I want to make sure I have an easier experience with my next computer. Can anyone attest to the reliability of the Framework 13?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

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Hey all, I'm interested in going down the rabbit hole with Ubiquiti equipment or other manufacturers, more specifically with access points, routers, and a switch. I want to ween off my ISP-supplied all-in-one equipment as their newer hardware limits basic features such as port forwarding, and I'm interested in re-enabling my self-hosted software. Wi-Fi standards have been moving pretty quickly, as have hardware. What setups do you have established in your homes?

I don't really have a budget in mind, and have a 2.5GbE port I'd like to utilize for media consumption over LAN.

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Between "enshittification" and my general admiration for hobbyist websites, I have felt more and more pressed to learn how to make the websites I want to see and offer it at low cost. At the same time, people usually have to maintain their day jobs and development expenses. I am curious how easy or difficult it is for people to do. (Also, I guess please share your small website if you'd like)

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I am a pretty big fan of the PCMR Battle station posts where everyone shares their computers and desk setups. I have never seen one here so I figured I would start one!

Here is my desk, three 32" monitors (two facing the desk, one facing my living room on the back ). I primarily use my lower monitor and have background stuff on the upper (spotify, torrent client, youtube, podcasts, winamp, twitch, discord, etc etc). I have a bunch of old Xbox360 controllers and enjoy playing PC games on the couch on my rear monitor (as well as streaming obviously). The rear monitor also has a firestick and my only source of sound (other than my headset) is an Amazon Echo (which also controls my living room lights). The PC is a prebuilt from iBUYPOWER, it was my first time buying a prebuilt (I was hesitant to do so) and the only reason I did was because I was wanting to build a new rig right as crypto mining was driving up the cost of everything and I was able to get a great deal on this one. So far it has performed great. I still have two RAM slots open so I think that is the next thing I am gonna do.

I built my last computer in 2008 so I was way overdue for a new one and my S.O. has informed me I went a little overboard =)

9200 i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz | Liquid Cooled | Z370 Motherboard| GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB DDR4| 1TB HDD | 240GB SSD |

Lets see what you guys have!

EDIT: sorry for the low picture quality, my cell phone is garbage.

EDIT2: forgot to include a screenshot

It's the same background on all three, but the taskbar is basic on the two secondary (and icons are only on the main). And if anyone was confused about the random monitor hanging off of the back of my desk this kinda shows it better.

I'm a little late on this, admittedly. $dayjob is requiring us all to set up a pair of YubiKeys, and I'm using them for the first time and my mind is a little blown.

I was seeing articles about "passkeys" all summer, not really grokking what they were talking about, clinging to my usernames and passwords and 2FA codes coming out of 1Password, etc.

I just set it up on a few accounts today, initially as an additional 2FA source, but when I set them on GitHub, I saw for the first time how exactly they are used instead of the username and password and 2FA combo to log in, and it seems incredible to me!

For long-time YubiKey users: what are some cool things in the ecosystem that you would recommend looking at?

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I have been going over services for which I pay monthly in my business. I have 17 clients where I do unattended cloud backups as well as doing a backup that I hold onto myself. Overall I backup around 4TB of data. I'm looking at possibly changing cloud services as the one I currently use has progressively increased their fees. I understand the need to pay for a good, reliable service as it reflects upon myself , my business and the service I provide but feel there are more competitive companies out there.

None of this is for personal use and many cloud services are just that, personal use. These are all server (Windows and Linux) use cases.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I suspect many don’t write anything down and do this largely by intuition/experience but I want to tease out some ideas.

when it comes to describing and designing a system from a blank piece of paper, what are the parameters you think of?

I’m thinking napkin sketch level of software design.

So things like:
Number of users, are they concurrent users, what load dimensions there are (disk IO, network IO etc.), target platform (everything is a web app these days), how do you design/visualise the data model?

Any decisions or constraints that impact what and how you build a proof of concept / MVP? How do you document this? How do you test it against the finished software?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Self-hosting has been a rabbit hole of wonder that I've explored and delved into over these past few months. I'm curious to hear what others use it for, what apps they love, and their rationale for doing so?

I'll go first.

First, in terms of rationale, this is a wonderful article that I think is worth checking out that encapsulates much my of ethos about pursuing self-hosting.

https://kylechayka.substack.com/p/essay-the-digital-death-of-collecting

The TL;DR is that we no longer have control over the things that we 'own' digitally for these massive cloud companies. For instance the songs / artists you listen to on Spotify may suddenly and unexpectedly become unavailable, certain things (most recently podcasts) may be forced upon you in unpleasant ways. Having complete control of your digital data is a very liberating feeling.

In terms of apps:

Hyperbackup - I use a synology NAS, so hyperbackup has been wonderful and use both external HD's and a cloud interface to create encrypted backups of everything which gives me peace of mind.

Plex - One of my most used apps, being able to stream anything remotely has been a dream. Plexamp has given me back control of my music library in a way I never thought I would have.

Tautulli - Great for more informatics on my plex usage

Calibre / Calibreweb - Phenomenal for keeping track of my book collections

PiHole - Ads be gone!

*Arr apps - Specifically Sonarr/Prowlarr/Radarr, really like Overseerr for an interface tying everything together

Daily Notes - A clean interface for keeping regular notes

Some things that I'm not currently self-hosting but would love to hear if others are using alternatives...

Instapaper - I know there are a few similar FOSS apps out there but haven't found one as convenient and well laid out

TickTick - To do app, but similarly haven't found a FOSS alternative that was as robust and nice to use

OneNote

You could use any SQL database to create a few tables, insert some data, and do queries, while ignoring anything vendor-specific. But Postgres has a lot of other features and many extensions. What do you recommend checking out beyond the basics?

I've used a lot of databases, but it's been many years, so I assume things have changed quite a bit. I skimmed a few PostgreSQL release notes and learned that there's now a MERGE statement that looks pretty handy. (It's standard SQL.) And from Neon's list of supported extensions, the plv8 extension caught my eye. It would let me write stored procedures in JavaScript. Does anyone use that? Do you use stored procedures at all?

I wonder what Tildes uses?

(To keep discussion organized, please write about one feature per top-level comment.)

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Hoping we can get some discussion on self hosting setups throughout the community and help anyone who may be interested with common setups and finding interesting software.

Hardware
Currently running everything on a Dell 7050 SFF (intel i5-7500 and 16GB RAM) which suits my needs perfectly. Had used an older SFF before (i forget which) and a cheap older model mac mini (2012 I think) for self hosting before, but those were not the right choice as I didn't properly understand what hardware encoding was at the time. The i5-7500 handles all the media I have when transcoding is needed. Only thing it can't do is AV1, but my setup avoids those anyway.

Operating System
Distro Hopping habits are hard to break and that "itch" unfortunately carry over to the server. Currently running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for a few months now, but feeling like a change is needed soon. I've used Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora for servers before and they each have their own little problems that make me eventually switch. I am considering maybe doing a Proxmox setup so I can spin up a VM whenever that itch comes, but not sure if they added complexity is worth it in the long run.

Software
Yay, the best part! My self hosting stack has changed a ton over the years. Everything in my stack is in a docker container through a set of badly written compose files (planning on redoing things, cleaning things up, making things consistent, etc.). I'll just do a rundown of everything with a brief description of what it is:

• Plex Gives me a Netflix like streaming experience at home. Currently working on shifting things over to JellyFin as Plex is starting to grow increasingly buggy for me.
• Sonarr Automatically tracks and downloads all my shows. I have two instances of this running, one for normal tv shows and another for anime
• Radarr Automatically tracks and downloads all my movies.
• Prowlarr Sowers the high seas for what Sonarr and Radarr are looking for and gives them the "linux iso".
• rdt-client Probably different to most peoples setups. I use a debrid service (not sure why people call them that), to download my "linux iso's" for me and I do a direct download from them. Much quicker and no torrenting traffic on my end. Also it's also cheaper than paying for a VPN usually.
• File Browser A good web ui for managing files
• Nginx Proxy Manager Is a reverse proxy for all of my services and gives me HTTPS for everything. Gets rid of the annoying browser warnings.
• Tailscale The most recent addition to my setup. Allows me to access my network anywhere. Similar to a VPN (I know it uses wireguard under the hood), but does a lot of magic for you and just makes everything work and connect together, its really cool.
• Adguard Home Gives me a local DNS server that does DNS level ad blocking. Never given me problems and it works well, but I am thinking of reducing the complexity of my setup and removing it. There tons of DNS servers out there that can do the same thing and I don't mind trusting a few of them (like quad9 or mullvad dns).
• Watchtower It monitors all my docker containers and keeps them up-to-date. If a new version is out, it will automatically download the latest version and restart the container and delete the old container version. I know its not the best idea, but its only cause a break 1 time with 1 container in the couple years I've run this setup.
• Homepage Literally the homepage for all my services. I've tried a lot of different ones and Homepage is easily the best. Simple, but powerful to configure.

Keen eyes may have noticed the lack of backup software. I'll get around to that, eventually.

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I know quite a controversial and opinionated question, one that might easily get blasted with downvotes on a site like StackOverflow or even Reddit! Nevertheless, one which I believe is still relevant to ask and useful one even in 2023.

The problem with backend web technologies is that we are overwhelmed with choices. Whilst getting spoilt with choices seems like a useful thing sometimes, it might easily be an impediment in decision making too. Based on my experience, there are a bunch of useful stacks and I will work on any of them if you pay me to work as a freelance coder. Each has its own pros and cons but I'm yet to find the ideal one which according to me is something that should be easy to code and deploy while also better performing at the same time.

• ASP.NET: C# is the language I started coding web apps with in my last company and ASP.NET web forms was quite the rage back then. PHP was also gaining traction in the open source world and the webdev was mostly divided between the Enterprisey .NET aristocrats of Microsoft world and the poor PHP peasants of the FOSS world! One good thing about ASP.NET was performance. Since MS controlled the whole stack, they also put great efforts at making it work faster. The bad thing, of course, was dependence on a closed tech stack and a closed black box that generated JS functionality on its own.
• PHP: When I resigned from that company and started freelancing, I came to know about open source, linux, XAMPP, etc. That was when I realized that my own attitudes and thinking was more attuned to the FOSS peasant mindset than the wealthy aristocrat's! I didn't earn quite as much in freelancing with WP, Drupal, SuiteCRM, CodeIgniter, etc. but I found great happiness and contentment in being part of the open source process. Till date, PHP remains my favorite language for backend development and most of my web projects involve CodeIgniter or even pure PHP.
• Python: Flask is what got me interested in Python web development. The sheer minimalism and flexibility of that framework is what I found quite remarkable and quite a rarity in the frameworks world. And jinja2 template system was just fantastic. The other framework called django is more popular I think and I've worked on that too but Flask still remains my favorite. Flask is good in performance dept. too but I think it gets tricky once you start scaling with too many users.
• Java: I've never really bothered with Java web development except a few tutorial experiments on the Apache TomEE server. The multi-layered approach that Java takes not only has very steep learning curve but unless you're a very gifted programmer, it's practically impossible to beat the performance of interpreted PHP/Flask!
• NodeJS: Again, not much work here except brief hobby projects like http-live-simulator. The npm packaging system really turned me off initially with so many packages and issues with that system in the earlier days. Nowadays, I've heard that it's much usable but I've never gotten into it.

And now, we also have the evolving languages like Golang, Rust, etc. taking their baby steps towards web development too! Are any of them worth giving a try? If someone were to ask you for a backend tech stack recommendation while giving equal weightage to performance, developer productivity and ease of deployment, which one will you suggest?