Intro

Full-stack development has become increasingly complex over the years, with the rise of frameworks and "backend as a service" offerings like Vercel and Supabase. This fragmentation has made it harder for developers to stay on top of the latest tools and best practices, leading to increased complexity, reduced agility, and developer frustration.

Recently, I've stumbled across SST ION. It is is an open-source framework that provides a unified approach to building modern web applications. It combines the power of serverless computing on AWS or Cloudflare with the flexibility of component-based architecture powered by Pulumi and Terraform. SST ION is still in development at time of writing, but I consider it ready for production use, since it just relies on Pulumi and terraform beneath the hood.

Why SST ION?

SST ION offers several compelling reasons to consider it for full-stack development in 2024:

• Independence from proprietary services: SST ION allows developers to avoid vendor lock-in with services like Vercel and Supabase. By leveraging AWS or Cloudflare, it provides a clear and transparent pricing model.

• Enhanced security: By default, all components reside within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), limiting access to authorized personnel only. This architecture significantly reduces the attack surface.

• Full ownership of data and infrastructure: Developers maintain complete control over their data and infrastructure, unlike with other "backend as a service" offerings. This promotes sovereignty and flexibility.

• Built-in serverless capabilities: SST ION includes native support for serverless computing, such as queues, cron jobs, and pub-sub messaging. This aligns well with the trend towards lightweight, event-driven architectures.

• Strong open source community: The framework benefits from an active and knowledgeable community, with key contributors like thdxr and Sam Goodwin on Twitter.

The downsides of SST ION:

• Developing offline is challenging: SST ION aims for a production-like environment during development, which requires spinning up resources in the cloud. This can be slow and expensive.
• Upfront costs: There is an initial investment to set up the development environment, spinning up AWS or Cloudflare resources. However, the long-term costs of running in production are likely lower than with other services.
• Longer wait times: Resource provisioning and teardown can introduce delays. Misconfigurations can also lead to the need to destroy and recreate the entire development environment.
• Potential for obscure errors: Developers may encounter AWS-specific errors or issues related to database setup. These can be difficult to diagnose without experience with AWS.
• Limited documentation and support: As a relatively new project, SST ION lacks extensive documentation and may have limited community support compared to more established offerings like Vercel or Supabase.

Conclusion

SST ION offers a powerful, cloud-native approach to full-stack development. It has an initial learning curve, but the benefits – including security, infrastructure control, and a strong community – make it a strong choice for building production-ready apps.

Stay tuned for my upcoming posts where I'll guide you through getting started with SST ION and building a Next.js full-stack app.

If you have any questions or want to discuss this further, feel out to reach out. I'm available on Twitter or you can email me at ryanleecode@gmail.com.