Hacker News Reader

> Behind the scenes, Firepad uses the Firebase Realtime Database for cloud data storage and synchronization.

I have no judgement for folks who choose to use Firebase, but I would never add it as even an indirect dependency in something I’m building.

View on HN

Hmm I’m just about to, it seems perfect for my use case and very cheap. Why wouldn’t you general l recommend it?

1. Security — I much prefer to hand write APIs rather than using security rules (see recent Arc browser exploit, among many others). Firebase pro’s will call those skill issues, but idk if that really makes it less of an issue. 2. Lock-in - I’m fine with S3 and SQS where the lock in is pretty limited, but Firebase is a floor to ceiling commitment to Google Cloud. 3. Cost - if your app succeeds, you will find yourself investing lots of time moving cost sensitive workloads off of Firebase, though this only matters if you are worried about ‘good’ problems.

Also, if you're going to use firebase (don't, you don't need the scale for your 10 MAUs), you should secure it: https://env.fail/posts/firewreck-1/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com