Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years before releasing v1

Posted by florentmsl on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @12:36PM
from the show-hn dept.

I’ve been building for 5 years.

I rewrote it 4 times (Blazor Server -> Blazor WASM + Asp backend -> React + Node -> Ruby on Rails - Ruby and Rails are both awesome btw.) and kept telling myself I was “improving the architecture” when I was really avoiding release. I also spun up a few side projects in that period and shipped none of them.

This is the first one I finally pushed live.

It’s Upzone, an inventory app for ecommerce warehouse teams: receiving, bin locations, pick/pack/ship workflows, and Shopify/Amazon/... sync. Built on Rails 8, which has been genuinely great to work with. A QuickBooks integration is also coming

If you run ops or warehouse workflows, I’d love literally any kind of feedback:

https://upzonehq.com

( 4 comments | 3 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years ... by Dexter74 on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @01:46PM (#47236857)

Why didn’t you release the first versions? Was the tech really that bad?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years ... by florentmsl on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @02:09PM (#47237210)

To be honest, in retrospect I should have released the first version. But as an engineer, I got stuck fixing things and adding features because I thought, “otherwise no one will use it.” While adding features, I realized I needed to change the tech stack in order to move faster and add more functionality more efficiently. In the end, I’m happy with Rails, but I should have released years ago.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years ... by tankmohit11 on Friday March 06, 2026 @12:35AM (#47271270)

Can you please share what kind of issues you have faced with each tech stack choice and how the next one resolved it?

The reason I am asking because recently after getting tired of plumbing different npm packages I decided to use blazor server with dotnet 10 to leverage high quality first party packages (e.g. efcore, identity etc) to build a product. I am halfway there, sometimes I miss React & Typescript due to enterprisey nature of dotnet but AI helps me to overcome it. So far doing well with it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: I rewrote an inventory app 4 times over 5 years ... by florentmsl on Friday March 06, 2026 @03:02AM (#47272275)

I think nowadays they are perfectly fine. Blazor Server had lots of disconnects because our customers typically don't have a stable Wi-Fi connection. Blazor WASM had next to no tooling. It was dotnet 5 or 6, so still very early on the WASM journey of dotnet, not much or no documentation and no AI to overcome initial hurdles.

tbh I sometimes miss React & TS too, for the frontend React is just straightforward, and TS is no bad language at all

[ Parent | on HN ]