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282 points bundie | 1 comments | | HN request time: 2.159s | source
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jtms ◴[] No.44383929[source]
"Better Auth’s pitch is simple: Let developers implement everything from simple authentication flows to enterprise-grade systems directly on their databases and embed it all on the back end."

Its absolutely bonkers to me that web development has gotten to a point where this is a novel pitch. Up until not that long ago ALL auth was done directly in your own database and embeded in your own backend. Am I missing something?

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rafram ◴[] No.44384028[source]
Yeah and it was terrible. Your password would be stored as an unsalted MD5 hash if you were lucky.

Enterprise customers did the math on what a security breach lawsuit could cost and started demanding verifiably decent security, which meant some off-the-shelf off-premises solution.

That’s basically where we are now, and it’s the reason that most of Better Auth’s users are early-stage startups — they need to scale quickly, and they don’t have many pesky enterprise/governmental customers who might want to see a certification.

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echelon ◴[] No.44384080[source]
> Yeah and it was terrible. Your password would be stored as an unsalted MD5 hash if you were lucky.

That's so 2001.

Bcrypt was in the default PHP libraries in 2013. It's been available in Python even longer.

This pattern of outsourcing the most basic of application responsibilities is lazy and exposes you to needless fragility and cost burdens.

There are a million and one libraries and frameworks that will handle all of this for you, meeting industry standards, without having to pay to be coupled at the hip to some SaaS vendor that will undoubtedly raise prices on you when they hit growth pains.

You're being rented a partial solution to something that has long been solved. And this - your customer relationship - is such a core function to your business that you shouldn't outsource it.

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1. xorokongo ◴[] No.44385048[source]
Yeah. Same thing with AI.