Vapor & Nodes - Using Vapor in production (ServerSide.swift)

Nodes loves Vapor. We are using Vapor since day one and want to share our experiences with our clients and partners but also a little bit of our history with Vapor.

This talk was held by Casper Rasmussen and Christian Weinberger at ServerSide.swift conference 2018.

https://www.nodesagency.com/
https://www.nodesagency.de/
https://engineering.nodesagency.com/

Transcript

1. VAPOR & NODES How to convince the client 1 1
2. Casper Rasmussen London / Copenhagen MSc. Eng, Digital Media CTO & Partner Nodes Agency First app 2009 Android since 1.5 PHP Cake / Laravel Server side Swift - Vapor Github: casperhr
3. 3 Nodes Leading european app agency
4. 250+ apps (631 in Hockey App) 4 Nodes
5. Christian Weinberger Berlin Technical Director Nodes Agency First app 2008 iOS since 2.2 Server-side Swift - Vapor Github: cweinberger Twitter: _cweinberger Joined Nodes
6. 6 Nodes Germany
7. Berlin Office Founded April 2018 In the center of the city Co-working space (rent24) 7 Nodes Germany
8. Digital Innovation Event Community Lounge 8 Nodes Germany
9. Apple Keynote 12.09.18 Cinema 9 Nodes Germany
10. 10 Martin, Managing Director Christian, Technical Director Martin, Vapor Developer Nora, Marketing Android Developer iOS Developer Digital Consultant iOS / Vapor Developer joining Nov '18 joining Dec '18 joining soon YOU?
11. 11 Vapor at Nodes
12. 12 HOW DID IT START?
13. 13 COMPLEXITY GREW 2012 Lead Mobile -> CTO 2012-2013 PHP with CakePHP 2.X 2014 CakePHP -> Laravel 2014-2016 Laravel 4 -> 5 & PHP 5.5 -> 7 2015-2016 Scouting for new web framework / language Project lifetime Project complexity 2000+ hrs 30 hrs 5+ years 1 month 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2014 2015 2016
14. 14 WHAT IS NEEDED?
15. 15 WHAT IS NEEDED? • Slick & strictly typed language & compile time • Modern MVC / ORM • Open Source framework with great community • Running on Linux technologies • Ideally synergy with other teams (iOS/ Android) - Billable % / margins • High performance • It should attract talent • Fit the projects/clients we work for
16. 16 WE'VE RESEARCHED SEVERAL CANDIDATES ... • PHP, Laravel / Symphony • Ruby, Ruby on Rails • Node.js, Express / Meteor • Java, Spring boot • C#, .NET • Python, Django • Go lang
17. Pros • Extremely slick / modern language • High quality source code • Synergy with iOS team • Really good community • Linux • Fast (often performing top 3) • Powered by Apple Cons • “Young” language / framework 17 … AND ENDED UP WITH SWIFT & VAPOR.
18. Feb 2016 Found Vapor on Github and contacted Tanner Mar 2016 Meet with Tanner in Copenhagen May 2016 Invested into Vapor Rest of 2016 Playing around with beta and Vapor 1 Jan 2017 Starting in production … Sep 2018 25+ projects completed/in development in Vapor 30+ open source packages 8 Vapor developers (4 can iOS) 18 THE JOURNEY.
19. Open source packages
20. 30+ Vapor packages https://github.com/nodes-vapor (…)
21. 22 AND IT'S ALSO GOOD FOR RECRUITMENT • Cool stack • Being part of something bigger ◦ Open source ◦ Tech blogs ◦ Meetups • Awesome colleagues • Project(s) / Salary Amazing channel Developers are looking for ... • High skilled (seniors) • Big talent (young developers) • 50% has iOS knowledge • Willing to relocate to work with Vapor • 100% Increased unsolicited applications
22. 23 LEARNINGS
23. • Rich language (Swift) covered a lot of Laravel’s features (String helpers, Collections & filters) • Less unit testing needed. We could skip a lot, since the language is so strict. • Availability of threading allowed us to skip using beanstalkd / Gearman and other services. • Hosting costs for Swift / Vapor projects are a lot lower than PHP / Laravel (since they can run on <30mb memory) • PHP extensions. Nothing like this (gladly) • Synergy between iOS / Vapor teams is good, better than first expected • Less bugs, our Vapor projects have way less bugs in production 24 SOME LEARNINGS.
24. 25 MORE LEARNINGS. • Foundation is lacking Linux support for some classes/methods, try to avoid it or add this to your bookmarks: https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-foundation/blob/master/Docs/Status.md • Missing libraries. PDF / Excel export, ... • No Swift package manager for iOS
25. 26 HOW TO CONVINCE A CLIENT?
26. 27 Client arguments for classic (read: legacy) stack • Legacy, old code base • Synergy (in house teams) • CTO opinionated by blog / conferences / old habits • Cost savings / Hybrid solutions -> We push hard for native • Find a weakness / problem with their stack and provide a solution with your stack.
27. 28 SYNERGIES WITH iOS.
28. 29 YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A TEAM OF SWIFT DEVELOPERS.
29. 30 LESS BUGS IN PRODUCTION.
30. 31 LIGHTNING FAST.
31. 32 SCALES ALSO TEAM SIZE WISE
32. 33 LOW MEMORY FOOTPRINT = CHEAPER TO HOST.
33. 34 1.3 BLN iOS DEVICES, MANY OF THEM RUNNING SWIFT POWERED APPS.
34. 35 APPLE PUSHING THE LANGUAGE. PLAYGROUNDS.
35. 36 MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE TO EMBRACE NEW TECHNOLOGIES BIT BY BIT.
36. 37 FIND THE RIGHT CONTACT WHO IS OPEN FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
37. 38 START SMALL, GROW BIG.
38. 39 Thanks! https://monstar-lab.com/ https://nodesagency.com/ https://github.com/nodes-vapor https://engineering.nodesagency.com/
39. 40 SPECIAL THANKS TO