WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:06.014 --> 00:00:12.314 Hey folks, and welcome to The Small Tech Podcast by Ephemere Creative. 00:00:12.344 --> 00:00:14.264 I am your host Raph. 00:00:14.924 --> 00:00:20.984 And today we're going to be talking about frameworks and specifically, we're going 00:00:20.984 --> 00:00:26.024 to be talking about web development, mobile app development frameworks. 00:00:26.524 --> 00:00:30.274 I haven't been pushing this stuff yet, but if you enjoy our 00:00:30.274 --> 00:00:32.404 content, please, please, please. 00:00:32.704 --> 00:00:34.864 Like, and subscribe on YouTube. 00:00:34.894 --> 00:00:38.734 Go give us a rating of five star rating hopefully. 00:00:38.804 --> 00:00:42.104 On apple podcasts or wherever you listened to your podcasts. 00:00:42.404 --> 00:00:44.414 It's really, really helpful for us. 00:00:44.694 --> 00:00:49.104 We're a small team, hence small tech, and we would be so 00:00:49.104 --> 00:00:51.354 grateful for any help we can get. 00:00:51.854 --> 00:00:55.094 Also, if you have anything that you would like to talk about. 00:00:55.544 --> 00:00:58.034 And you want to hop on the podcast with me. 00:00:58.124 --> 00:00:59.624 That would be awesome too. 00:00:59.674 --> 00:01:03.634 You can reach out at raphael@ephemerecreative.ca. 00:01:03.994 --> 00:01:07.774 I'll put my email in the show notes and I'd love to have you on. 00:01:08.274 --> 00:01:08.754 Okay. 00:01:08.784 --> 00:01:14.484 So before we dive into it, I think we really need to define what is a framework. 00:01:14.964 --> 00:01:18.714 And again, specifically software development, web mobile app 00:01:18.714 --> 00:01:21.534 development frameworks, and there's a few different things that 00:01:21.534 --> 00:01:23.844 kind of fit into this category. 00:01:24.654 --> 00:01:32.694 But basically, we're talking about code that provides a base for 00:01:32.694 --> 00:01:37.944 a variety of functionality that you can generally expect to need 00:01:37.944 --> 00:01:40.974 in a web or mobile application. 00:01:41.474 --> 00:01:48.164 This often means stuff like authentication a way to generate an API. 00:01:48.504 --> 00:01:53.454 Maybe a way to generate a frontend and usually like a workflow for 00:01:53.544 --> 00:01:58.164 making all of those things happen and figuring out how they work together. 00:01:58.664 --> 00:02:01.784 Often, these are split into different little sections and they 00:02:01.784 --> 00:02:06.614 might actually be cobbled together from existing open source tools. 00:02:07.094 --> 00:02:12.274 They just give you a nice way of working with them altogether. 00:02:12.774 --> 00:02:15.054 So why would you use a framework? 00:02:15.494 --> 00:02:18.584 It seems obvious to those of us who have done this before. 00:02:19.054 --> 00:02:24.694 But for a lot of new developers, they don't know that frameworks exist and 00:02:24.694 --> 00:02:29.254 they dive right into just building all kinds of stuff from scratch. 00:02:29.754 --> 00:02:33.864 So why should they use a framework or why should any of us use a framework? 00:02:34.254 --> 00:02:37.974 The first thing that comes to mind for me is speed. 00:02:38.604 --> 00:02:43.114 If you have a bunch of tools that are already pieced together, and there's nice 00:02:43.114 --> 00:02:45.574 documentation on how to use them together. 00:02:46.054 --> 00:02:47.914 Then you're going to save a lot of time. 00:02:48.094 --> 00:02:49.324 That stuff is already built. 00:02:49.324 --> 00:02:50.194 It's organized. 00:02:50.194 --> 00:02:51.664 You just use it. 00:02:52.024 --> 00:02:53.164 So speed. 00:02:53.434 --> 00:02:54.364 Speed is a big one. 00:02:54.864 --> 00:02:59.154 Another thing that I find is when you're using a framework, you're 00:02:59.154 --> 00:03:03.834 forced to be more consistent and that's helpful on a team. 00:03:04.424 --> 00:03:07.484 If you don't use a framework, it's easier for different people 00:03:07.484 --> 00:03:09.134 to write code in their own way. 00:03:09.184 --> 00:03:13.024 A lot of frameworks will sort of force you to write things the way 00:03:13.024 --> 00:03:15.484 that they expect things to be written. 00:03:15.964 --> 00:03:21.454 And so it makes it easier for different developers on your team to move between 00:03:21.454 --> 00:03:25.234 different modules, different components that they're working on and understand 00:03:25.234 --> 00:03:27.634 what other team members are, are writing. 00:03:28.134 --> 00:03:31.254 The last thing that really sticks out to me is support. 00:03:31.374 --> 00:03:34.134 And sometimes that might mean paid support. 00:03:34.164 --> 00:03:38.994 There are frameworks out there that will give you help in exchange for money. 00:03:39.534 --> 00:03:44.244 But the other thing is a lot of really great frameworks have really 00:03:44.244 --> 00:03:46.314 big communities built up around them. 00:03:46.674 --> 00:03:51.204 And so you can just go onto a forum or a discord and ask a question 00:03:51.264 --> 00:03:54.864 and somebody who is part of that community will be happy to help. 00:03:55.194 --> 00:03:59.124 But the other side of that too, is when you have big communities, there's 00:03:59.124 --> 00:04:03.054 lots of people writing stuff about these frameworks and how to do things 00:04:03.054 --> 00:04:04.644 and they've encountered the bugs. 00:04:05.004 --> 00:04:09.294 And so if there is an issue, you can be almost certain that someone else 00:04:09.294 --> 00:04:13.464 has already had it and it's already documented and they've explained how 00:04:13.464 --> 00:04:15.474 to fix it or how to work around it. 00:04:15.974 --> 00:04:18.854 Let's talk about some examples of frameworks. 00:04:19.474 --> 00:04:23.134 Some of the ones that are really popular out there that you may have heard of, 00:04:23.194 --> 00:04:28.174 even if you're not a developer are Ruby on rails Django, and Laravel. 00:04:29.194 --> 00:04:31.924 Rails is a Ruby framework. 00:04:32.094 --> 00:04:35.934 It has been around for a really long time and got really popular. 00:04:36.144 --> 00:04:42.424 I feel like in the sort of late two thousands, which is also when Django 00:04:42.424 --> 00:04:44.854 started to become quite popular. 00:04:45.124 --> 00:04:47.194 I think Django's a little bit newer. 00:04:47.194 --> 00:04:49.054 Django is a Python framework. 00:04:49.654 --> 00:04:52.944 And, Laravel is a PHP framework. 00:04:53.564 --> 00:04:55.454 They each have their own way of doing things. 00:04:55.454 --> 00:04:59.654 I wouldn't say that one is particularly better than the other. 00:05:00.124 --> 00:05:03.844 They all provide very similar functionality in the end. 00:05:04.344 --> 00:05:08.964 One of the considerations might be what other things you want to do outside 00:05:08.964 --> 00:05:15.014 of the framework context that might be easier to do in Python, Ruby, or PHP? 00:05:15.544 --> 00:05:19.804 Python, for example, is commonly used for machine learning and AI. 00:05:20.134 --> 00:05:24.814 So if you're going to build a web app that also relies on AI stuff. 00:05:25.234 --> 00:05:28.144 Then it might be practical to use a framework like Django. 00:05:28.644 --> 00:05:32.154 Okay, next, I'm going to talk about things that aren't exactly 00:05:32.154 --> 00:05:36.444 frameworks, but provide a lot of the functionality of a framework. 00:05:37.014 --> 00:05:39.864 These are backends as a service. 00:05:40.314 --> 00:05:45.414 So when we think about frameworks like rails, Django, and Laravel, they allow 00:05:45.414 --> 00:05:50.714 you to do a few different things, that are quite common in app development, which 00:05:50.714 --> 00:05:53.534 is they help you manage authentication. 00:05:54.464 --> 00:05:57.074 Reading and writing data from a database. 00:05:57.974 --> 00:06:03.134 And creating the user interface on top of that data. 00:06:03.634 --> 00:06:09.154 Now backends as a service, do most of that without the UI. 00:06:09.214 --> 00:06:10.774 So they just give you. 00:06:11.684 --> 00:06:15.574 A way to interact with data as an authenticated user. 00:06:16.204 --> 00:06:16.954 And that's it. 00:06:17.314 --> 00:06:22.144 So you usually need another framework or another tool. 00:06:22.364 --> 00:06:25.544 To build your user interface separately from them. 00:06:26.264 --> 00:06:29.054 So the backends that I am. 00:06:29.534 --> 00:06:33.614 Not necessarily super familiar with, but at least somewhat 00:06:33.614 --> 00:06:39.584 familiar with our Supabase, Pocketbase, AppWrite and Firebase. 00:06:40.154 --> 00:06:46.334 Now I have only used Supabase and Firebase personally, and they're 00:06:46.334 --> 00:06:48.974 pretty similar products in many ways. 00:06:49.004 --> 00:06:54.944 The main difference is that Supabase is open source and you can host it on your 00:06:54.944 --> 00:07:02.084 own machines whereas Firebase is a closed source SaaS product offered by Google. 00:07:02.554 --> 00:07:05.824 So, if you're going to use the backend as a service, you're going to need some 00:07:05.854 --> 00:07:08.134 separate way to build your front end. 00:07:08.464 --> 00:07:10.564 And that's where front end frameworks come in. 00:07:11.064 --> 00:07:16.944 Some of the ones that I'm familiar with are Angular, Next, and Expo. 00:07:17.604 --> 00:07:23.934 Expo is for building mobile apps, Angular and Next are for building web apps. 00:07:24.264 --> 00:07:26.514 They give you a lot of stuff out of the box. 00:07:26.624 --> 00:07:27.944 Primarily around. 00:07:28.664 --> 00:07:33.524 Routing, so figuring out which URL go like we'll show which page. 00:07:33.614 --> 00:07:36.344 Uh, expo we'll do that with mobile app screens. 00:07:36.994 --> 00:07:42.364 They'll do a lot of other stuff around caching and data management and how 00:07:42.364 --> 00:07:47.944 you interact with your backend as a service or your API or whatever. 00:07:48.654 --> 00:07:53.124 I think it's kind of up to you to just choose one that feels right for 00:07:53.124 --> 00:07:57.714 you because in the end, most of them can do pretty much the same thing. 00:07:58.214 --> 00:07:58.574 Okay. 00:07:58.604 --> 00:08:01.154 Finally, I am going to talk about. 00:08:01.514 --> 00:08:07.064 What we are calling a deep stack framework and that's because it's 00:08:07.064 --> 00:08:09.224 our own product, the Chewy Stack. 00:08:09.614 --> 00:08:16.934 The thing that's different about the Chewy Stack is that if you want to deploy a 00:08:16.964 --> 00:08:26.304 Django app or a Supabase app or an Next.js app, those all need to be configured for 00:08:26.304 --> 00:08:28.284 the place that you're going to host them. 00:08:28.554 --> 00:08:32.664 So if you're going to host Django, you'll need to make sure you know, how to 00:08:32.664 --> 00:08:39.834 deploy to AWS or DigitalOcean or Heroku or Fly or any other solution out there. 00:08:40.114 --> 00:08:45.334 You'll have to do the same for Supabase or with Next or Angular. 00:08:46.294 --> 00:08:50.614 Each of these things requires a lot of work to sort of configure to 00:08:50.614 --> 00:08:54.904 make them play nice with different parts of your digital product. 00:08:55.504 --> 00:08:57.424 The thing that we think is special. 00:08:57.454 --> 00:09:02.594 And the reason we build Chewy is it's, kind of like a framework of frameworks. 00:09:02.834 --> 00:09:07.244 So it ties together backend tooling to build, on top of your 00:09:07.244 --> 00:09:09.374 database and manage authentication. 00:09:09.704 --> 00:09:13.034 So we've got different components for that, that are open source tools. 00:09:13.034 --> 00:09:14.254 One is called Hasura. 00:09:14.474 --> 00:09:16.064 The other one is called Ory. 00:09:16.514 --> 00:09:21.234 And, Uh, front end, built on Next.js and Expo. 00:09:21.984 --> 00:09:27.204 But the secret sauce behind Chewy is that we make it dead simple to connect 00:09:27.204 --> 00:09:31.944 all of those things and to get them up and running in a developer's machine. 00:09:32.424 --> 00:09:36.444 And then more importantly, get all of them up and running on 00:09:36.444 --> 00:09:38.184 different types of infrastructure. 00:09:38.184 --> 00:09:42.924 So you don't need to think about, well, which sort of database should I provision? 00:09:42.924 --> 00:09:46.464 How do I make sure that the database is properly networked? 00:09:46.464 --> 00:09:49.524 So it can connect to my API servers. 00:09:49.824 --> 00:09:55.254 And is my front end, actually going to be able to connect to my API and 00:09:55.494 --> 00:09:59.094 how do I make Auth play nice with all of those different components. 00:09:59.394 --> 00:10:01.284 We just take care of that for you. 00:10:01.314 --> 00:10:07.284 So you can say Chewy deploy to staging, and we'll provision a staging environment 00:10:07.284 --> 00:10:12.624 for you or Chewy deploy to production, and we'll deploy to production and manage 00:10:12.624 --> 00:10:15.024 those servers and configurations for you. 00:10:15.474 --> 00:10:20.694 So that's the promise that we are trying to deliver on with the Chewy Stack. 00:10:20.964 --> 00:10:25.614 We want to make it easier for people to build scalable complex products 00:10:25.764 --> 00:10:30.054 without having to put in a ton of work, just to configure things 00:10:30.054 --> 00:10:31.824 and get servers up and running. 00:10:32.324 --> 00:10:32.804 Alrighty. 00:10:32.804 --> 00:10:35.294 Well, thanks for listening folks. 00:10:35.324 --> 00:10:37.454 If you enjoy this stuff. 00:10:37.764 --> 00:10:40.374 Please like subscribe on YouTube. 00:10:40.374 --> 00:10:43.794 Subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app. 00:10:44.294 --> 00:10:45.554 Leave us a review. 00:10:45.584 --> 00:10:49.244 We'd love to hear what you think and we'd love to have you on the podcast. 00:10:49.244 --> 00:10:51.734 If you are interested in talking about this stuff. 00:10:52.234 --> 00:10:55.864 Also make sure to sign up 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