Varsity Audio: Why I avoided MongoDB

🎧 The Varsity Audio Project

The Varsity Audio tool was built to make financial education more accessible by converting text-based content into audio, chapter by chapter.

This post explains why I chose not to use MongoDB, even though it’s a popular default in many full-stack setups.

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💭 My Initial Considerations

• MongoDB is popular with modern MERN stacks
• JSON-like structure seemed ideal for chapter content
• Mongoose simplifies schema validation
• Many tutorials start with MongoDB by default

But I paused and asked myself:

Do I really need a full-fledged database for this tool?

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🛠 What My Project Actually Needed

• Store chapters (title, text, tags, audio URL)
• Fast read access for frontend
• Occasional updates or edits
• Low complexity, quick deploy
• Version control for chapter data

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❌ MongoDB: Reasons I Skipped It

1. Unnecessary Complexity
   Using MongoDB for storing static or semi-static chapters felt like overkill.

2. Lock-in Risk
   Schemas might evolve, but I didn’t want to commit to one DB tool early.

3. Extra Setup
   Required provisioning a database, managing connection logic, credentials, backups, etc.

4. Not Git-Friendly
   I wanted version control over my content — MongoDB doesn’t play well with Git.

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✅ What I Used Instead

Plain .json or .txt Files

• Easy to edit
• Committed in Git
• Simple fs.readFile() or fetch() usage
• Perfect for Render or any static/flat-file backend

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🚀 Future-Proofing Options

• Migrate to MongoDB or SQLite only when needed
• Add indexing or caching layers later
• Optional CMS or admin panel to manage .json entries

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📝 Takeaway

Build for now, scale for later.

Avoiding MongoDB helped me stay lean and ship fast.
For content-first apps like Varsity Audio, simplicity wins.

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Stay tuned — I’ll publish the code and deployment guide in the next post!