@pierrebaz
DevOps JS
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In a recent project, I use the realtime firebase DB to watch timestamps of updated objects; like a frontside "pub/sub". Simply put: every time the backend updates an object it updates a timestamp in Firebase, and then the connected clients who are watching it know they should trigger an HTTP roundtrip.
Meteor is a good tool for prototyping or writing very small apps quickly. But has a lot of downsides that I explained here: https://medium.com/@pierrebaz/why-i-won-t-recommend-meteor-anymore-fcec4e478d78 Firebase is composed of many building blocks: the free HTTPS hosting & deployment is awesome the JS file uploader to Cloud Storage is incredible the authentication layer with custom JWT is a must have the cloud functions with custom endpoints are the new PaaS the realtime database is maybe not what you are looking for: you can't apply complex filters on your queries, thus you have to denormalize your dataset to be able to query it in an efficient way. I would personnaly recommend to use the realtime database for simple use cases (chat...) & to trigger HTTP roundtrips to your real DB for your complex queries.
GraphQL allows third-party developers to tailor their requests, which is great for saving roundtrips, but leaves the hard work to the backend developers writing resolvers. Resolvers create dynamic DB queries, which introduces a lot of edge cases / bugs / security issues and bottlenecks. Unless you are a B2C giant like Twitter or Facebook, GraphQL is 100% BAD for your stack. Regarding Meteor, I share your opinion.
Learning the basics of Jekyll takes 1 hour, and it's a one way ticket! Hosting a static website is free with Firebase (SSL included). Adding an online editor on top of Jekyll (that will commit the changes in the repo) is also possible with a third-party SaaS. And it's 100% secure... because it's static.
Avoid full-stack frameworks (= frameworks that handles front+back). I started programming with PHP Symfony because it was "cool", but frameworks will limit your creativity and soon you will have to start your projects again. It's good to write your DB queries yourself, to implement authentication yourself (as long as you understand JWT and Bcrypt), it's good to not use ORM's, to design your architecture, to setup your servers etc... Don't be afraid to write code, you will improve and learn from your mistakes.
@kthomas88 yes there is some black magic involved, particularly at the "authentication" level and the transport layer. The big issue is you can't provide a clean Rest API to your customers with a Meteor app and Meteor does not shutdown gracefully. I explained some details at https://medium.com/@pierrebaz/why-i-won-t-recommend-meteor-anymore-fcec4e478d78
Since our team moved from AWS to Google Compute Engine, we have free access to Stackdriver monitoring and deep monitoring using their collectd agent (mongodb, nginx...). Stackdriver with GCE also provides uptime checks with free SMS worldwide!! it's a Pingdom killer... We also use Sentry to monitor app errors and get alerts with Slack, email, SMS...