Ben Halpern

Posted on Feb 9, 2022

What would your tech stack of choice be for a new web dev project?

#discuss #webdev #javascript

Let's say you are hired to create a web app for a company that describes itself as "Etsy for dogs" (whatever that means).

You'll be the only developer on the project for a while so you get to make all your own choices, but if the project succeeds, it will need to live on indefinitely.

What is your tech stack of choice?

Top comments (131)

Brian Heidrich • Feb 10 '22

Frontend: Svelte + Tailwind
Backend/Auth: NHost (Hasura/Postgres)

Giorgi Kharshiladze • Feb 9 '22

TailwindCSS + Next JS (with Typescript) + Prisma (with Postresql) - very simple setup, easy to deploy, nice dev experience. You could go with custom node js server alongside with nextjs if you want to, but for the most small/mid size projects NextJS builtin API routes feature should be good enough.

Mike Dabydeen • Feb 12 '22

I have been using the same with Supabase (PostgreSQL). Easiest stack to work with and reason about

Chris Ochsenreither • Feb 9 '22

Database: DynamoDB
API: AWS Gateway API w/ Lambdas (any language)
Auth: AWS IAM
Frontend: NextJS on Vercel
CSS: Ask my web designer

All of this will scale automatically, requires no dedicated servers and is served from edge locations.

DevFranPR • Feb 10 '22

Love the "Ask my web designer" part :')

menottiRicardo • Feb 13 '22

Can you give a little more detail on the Api? I've wanted to try that combo but I'm not sure about the cold start

Chris Ochsenreither • Feb 16 '22 • Edited

Cold starts can be long for interpreted languages like Python, Node.js and Ruby. Here's a comparison of 20 lambda executions from cold start where a user is created:

Create User

Payload:

{
    "email_address": "jonathon.doe@hotmail.com",
    "first_name": "Jonathon",
    "last_name": "Doe",
    "password": "vaFR6z2D8xstaao4EyvP"
}

Metric	Duration (ms)	Duration (ms)	Memory Used (MB)	Memory Used (MB)
Trial	Node.js 14.x	Python 3.7	Node.js 14.x	Python 3.7
1	753	203	80	69
2	408	17	82	69
3	9	35	82	69
4	39	30	82	69
5	22	34	82	69
6	18	28	82	60
7	21	36	82	69
8	8	35	82	69
9	28	43	82	69
10	10	31	82	70
11	9	21	82	70
12	7	38	82	70
13	23	36	82	70
14	8	33	82	70
15	8	21	82	70
16	17	43	82	70
17	22	27	82	70
18	22	43	82	70
19	8	68	82	70
20	8	12	82	70
Sum	148	834	1638	1391
Average	72.4	41.7	81.9	70
Median	17.5	34.5	82	70

menottiRicardo • Feb 16 '22

thanks a lot for that info, are you using Express or Nest for Nodejs?

Chris Ochsenreither • Feb 16 '22 • Edited

I'm not using a framework for these functions. API Gateway provides the url REST endpoints and those endpoints are linked to event handler functions. The functions are stand-alone and just import the packages required within the function.

Bobby Iliev • Feb 9 '22

The TALL stack 🙌

Tony Lea • Feb 9 '22

I second that! It's essentially the Rails/Hotwire version for PHP, Larave/Livewire. In fact Livewire was created before Hotwire.

The TALL stack makes building reactive apps so simple and fun 😊

peerreynders • Feb 9 '22 • Edited

FYI: PETAL Stack in Elixir

First, the base foundation of Elixir + Phoenix + LiveView is powerful. It has been the inspiration for other projects like Laravel LiveWire and Rails Hotwire.

Caleb Porzio

@calebporzio

Got inspired by Phoenix LiveView, decided to hack on a prototype for Laravel, and holy crap. I feel like this is the kind of thing that will change the game for me.

Will post a demo soon

03:21 AM - 16 Jan 2019

2018-09-07

Rails Hotwire was introduced 2020-06-24 as NEW MAGIC.

Meanwhile tallstack.dev was public 4 months before PETAL.

Sometimes chain reactions are just inevitable.

Ben Halpern • Feb 9 '22

TL;DR?

Bobby Iliev • Feb 9 '22

Tailwind, Alpine.js, Laravel, and Livewire. A full-stack development solution, built by Laravel community members.

Posandu • Feb 10 '22

Yay finally PHP is becoming a thing

DevFranPR • Feb 9 '22

Wow I didn't know this was a thing. Now I'm interested.

Dĵ ΝιΓΞΗΛψΚ • Feb 11 '22

I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way than following:
Frontend: Svelte
Css: Tailwind
REST Api: FastEndpoints (.Net 6)
Data Access: MongoDB.Entities
Architecture: Vertical Slices with REPR pattern for endpoints.

Warren Buckley • Mar 3 '22 • Edited

Huh, I had never heard of Fast Endpoints until recently (Nick Chapsas did a video about it). Need to write a little toy project to try it out.

Watermelol • Feb 10 '22

Frontend: Vuejs + Tailwind
Backend: Django with Restful Framework, MySQL

Daniel Albuschat • Feb 9 '22

Definitely FastAPI (Python) backend and Svelte with TypeScript frontend. Blazingly fast. ⚡

Put in PostgreSQL as the DB, which can be SQL, MongoDB and Redis at the same time. It's just so overpowered. 💪

Ivan Jeremic • Feb 10 '22

I'm confused, how is it mongo.

Daniel Albuschat • Feb 10 '22 • Edited

Very good question 😊
Postgres has native JSON support and allows you to access json fields (even unlimited nested ones) in SQL statements. This gives you the schemaless flexibility of MongoDB if you for example build a simple table with "key varchar" and "data json" fields. But at the same time you can build very complex queries, write DB-procedures, triggers and all the other goodies of powerful RDBMs.

webbureaucrat • Feb 10 '22

It's not a perfect analogy, but Postgres is object-relational. You can have columns that are typed as objects instead of just regular built-in types, so you can get some of the benefits of object storage without fully committing to the document db model.

Isaac Lyman • Feb 10 '22 • Edited

My go-to is Vue 3 + Typescript + SCSS on the front end, Node + Express + Postgres on the back end, and Heroku. I can have a webapp up and running in no time at all with this stack. For me it's all about familiarity and speed-to-value. If you're more comfortable with something else, use that.

Sherry Day • Feb 9 '22

Tempted to go with Rails/Hotwire. Seems sort of tough to sprinkle in, but if I get to start from scratch I feel like I could be productive committing to that approach.