Unless you live under a rock, I’m sure you’ve heard Parse.com, which was purchased by omnipresent Facebook, is being shut down.

This is a “sad” moment for me because Parse is one of the products that helped ease me into the journey of programming. I was able to focus on learning iOS development, and not have to learn EVERYTHING to make my app work, like a complex back end. I spoke from mountain tops of how great it was, I used it for all my needs, and it was cheap. And that may be where part of the breakdown was, as detailed in this article by Pauli Olavi Ojala…

Yes, (Facebook says) the current incarnation of Parse will be active until Jan 2017. Yes, (Facebook says) they will offer a solution to port Parse to your own servers where you can keep your data going. And this day has come! To a degree. At the time of this writing, I have created an AWS, and a Heroku Parse server, based on the tutorials. I must say, they went pretty smoothly. I have yet to protect the MongoDB instance with an SSL, which if they actually go live will be important.

One HUGE drawback of migrating to the new Parse server, there is no way to run jobs. Jobs are scheduled tasks performed in the background. For every “app” i have created so far, this is a requirement. There is also no snazzy, easy to use interface. There is a bit of a way to go, and hopefully these items will be rectified before the beginning of the year. Parse is not the only option out there, but I enjoyed it, for as long as it existed.

Before deciding on Parse, I had looked into other available options, but none looked as inviting. It may be time to start looking again, but I just don’t want to!