EarlyBrd Alerts You of New Job Board Postings So You Can Bid Faster

Dec 5, 2019

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In this episode of Running in Production, Stetson Blake goes over how he built EarlyBrd using Flask which is a web framework written in Python. This SAAS app focuses on sending out emails and it also happens to use Stripe for subscriptions. It’s been up since March 2019.

Stetson’s motto has been to keep moving forward by writing code and making decisions instead of getting hung up in endless research loops. His set up is optimized for simplicity and to solve the problems he’s run into so far as a solo developer working on the project.

Topics Include

1:44 – Running the latest stable build of Flask and Python 3.7.x
2:24 – Motivation for using Flask and Python
2:57 – Grappling with Django vs Flask
3:38 – Double edge sword, batteries included vs very few opinions
3:55 – Community support was a big factor in choosing Flask
5:32 – Stetson would choose Flask again if he re-wrote his app today
6:01 – The site uses server side templates with Jinja and no JavaScript
6:55 – Using what was built into Flask was a big factor in going with server side templates
7:30 – The app’s core functionality is emailing users when new jobs are available
7:56 – Starting to use Celery to send emails through MailGun
8:46 – The web front-end is basically a way to configure what emails you receive
9:38 – Sticking to a content delivery strategy that works for your app
11:01 – Earlybrd is mostly a monolithic application
11:23 – Being a solo developer is a nice match for having a monolithic app
11:52 – gunicorn is Stetson’s Python web server of choice
12:13 – PostgreSQL is being used as a database and everything runs in Docker
12:38 – A separate Python service does a bit of work outside of Celery
13:18 – There’s no admin dashboard, DB interaction is done with TablePlus (a GUI app)
14:44 – Finding a balance between making admin features vs user features
15:08 – Redis is being used as a back-end for Celery
15:22 – Everything is running in Docker containers through Docker Compose
16:18 – gunicorn is exposed to the internet directly
17:14 – AWS was chosen due to prior experience and loving it in general
18:00 – Everything runs on a single t2.micro EC2 instance
18:40 – Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is being used as the operating system
19:25 – Prometheus and Grafana are being used for monitoring and they run in a home lab
21:31 – Using a Python script, Dead Man’s Snitch and Uptime Robot for down time alerts
22:29 – What does Dead Man’s Snitch do?
23:45 – Using Sentry’s free tier for getting notified of app errors
24:25 – Using Slack to get notified of certain errors and alerts
24:50 – Stripe is being used to handle subscriptions after the free trial ends
25:55 – So many things for developers to learn and being surprised that anything works
26:24 – Walking through a code deploy from Stetson’s dev box into production
27:37 – Building your Docker images on your server vs using a Docker registry
28:22 – A little bit of down time between Docker Compose restarts
29:34 – No automated tests before git pushing the code, just linting
29:47 – The lack of tests mainly comes down to a lack of time
30:07 – To test or not to test, that is the question
31:00 – Daily sql dumps of the database to an S3 bucket managed by a cron job
31:38 – Choosing between cron jobs and Celery periodic tasks on a set interval
32:48 – Will everything come up if you forcefully reboot your server? Yep!
33:21 – Applying the 80 / 20 rule when it comes to disaster recovery
34:21 – Database migrations get run manually when necessary
35:02 – The main app is roughly 1,000 to 1,500 lines of Flask / Python code
35:28 – SQLAlchemy isn’t being used because there was a lot on the plate already
36:52 – Doing it the wrong way initially helps you understand why it might be wrong
38:01 – Best tips? Just get moving to the best of your ability
38:54 – Users not receiving alerts due to lack of monitoring was one mistake (but it’s fixed)
40:16 – End users (especially developers) tend to be forgiving with bugs if you’re honest
40:41 – Some developers enjoy hunting bugs and alerting someone if they found something
41:53 – You can find Stetson @stets_10 on Twitter and on LinkedIn, also check out EarlyBrd

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This episode does not have a sponsor and this podcast is a labor of love. If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to purchase one of my courses or suggest one to a friend.

Dive into Docker is a video course that takes you from not knowing what Docker is to being able to confidently use Docker and Docker Compose for your own apps. Long gone are the days of "but it works on my machine!". A bunch of follow along labs are included.

Build a SAAS App with Flask is a video course where we build a real world SAAS app that accepts payments, has a custom admin, includes high test coverage and goes over how to implement and apply 50+ common web app features. There's over 20+ hours of video.

EarlyBrd Alerts You of New Job Board Postings So You Can Bid Faster

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