Comment by notoverthere 10 months ago
I tend to agree with this. Why re-invent the wheel by spending engineering effort building a CRUD backend?
If you're trying to bring value to market, focus on your core differentiator and use existing tooling for your boilerplate stuff.
I'm not disagreeing about the severity of the security vulnerability that has been uncovered – to be clear, it's an absolute shocker of a bug. It's really disappointing to see.
But I still disagree that the use of Firebase, in and of itself, is a bad engineering decision. It's just a tool, and it's up to you how you use it.
Firebase gives you all features needed to secure your backend. But if you configure it incorrectly, then _that's_ where the poor engineering comes into play. It should have been tested more comprehensively.
Sure. You could build your own backend rather than using a Backend-as-a-Service platform. But for what gain? If you don't test it properly, you'll still be at risk of security holes.
> a “tinder but for cats” startup idea
Needs a name. Meowr? Hissr?
It’s the “chrome replacement we have been waiting for”, but (if I read this right), my data is still sent to Firebase? Also it’s a browser, not a “tinder but for cats” startup idea I’m writing for my cousin for a beer.
It’s not only not a smart engineering decision, it’s also a terrible product, reputation and marketing decision.