If you're working on a startup, you're probably don't have lots of money or time. You have to release a prototype as quickly as possible and show your prospects what you got.
We'll look at the best frameworks to build your minimum viable product currently.
Front End Frameworks
You can build a minimum viable product with a decent interactive front end with some frameworks and libraries.
React
React is very popular as a front end library because we can build a lot with it in a short time. It lets us build a rich UI with the libraries that are available for it.
It's often used with React Router for routing and Redux as its state management solution.
There're also lots of UI libraries made for it. Bootstrap, Material design, etc., are all available for React without creating them from scratch.
With those issues out of the way, we can build the UI in no time.
Vue
Vue is up-and-coming and provides a more complete solution for building front ends. It comes with Vuex for state management and Vue Router for routing as options.
We can use it to build a UI quickly with all the libraries that are available.
Back End Frameworks
To make your app useful, you have to make it store data. We have to do this on the back end.
To make building back ends easy, we can use frameworks to do this.
Rails
Rails are the back end framework that many other back-end frameworks take their inspiration from.
You can use it to create an app that makes a database and save data to it with a few commands.
Debugging is also quick and easy with the Rails console. It's a great way to add data and test it without doing the same thing from the front end.
Also, it has lots of libraries made for it to do things like file upload. Sending emails is a feature that's built-in.
It has a big community so you can get help fast.
Express
Expres is a back end microframework for Node.js. It lets us build simple apps without much effort. It also has lots of libraries to extend its functionality to do what we want.
You have to add your own database manipulation solution and it doesn't come with any way to debug things easily on its own, so it's good for simple apps, which a minimum viable product should be.
Conclusion
To create a minimum viable product, we've to use frameworks to build a prototype fast. It's good to stick with the popular frameworks that let us build things fast.
For front end, this would be React and Vue, for back end Rails and Express does the job.
Top comments (7)
Not really knowing about it I have some reservations about Rails and Vue.js, I've noticed that Rails and Ruby in general has lost a lot of steam; I used to see Rails everywhere, posts all over the place, tutorials, videos, etc. You googled "web framework" and there was Rails, but not anymore, is just my perception or it is a bit like that?
And about Vue, years ago Vue was the underdog, the little guy, built by just one guy and without a big supporter against Google and Facebook; everyone talked about how great it was and how it was gonna grow to be a serious contender, well, years has pased and seems to me that is still not a huge contender, still developed by one guy, and not visible support from a big dog. For some reason it seems like it got stuck or is just me?, even here in dev.to I don't see it as much as React and even Angular. It's battle cry was it was smaller and easier but since then we got Stencil, Svelte and others much smaller, even some renaissance of vanilla. Seems to me that from the market perspective React is a better choice and for minimal/light Svelte or Stencil.
I'm more of a backend guy with some short incursions to the front, I'm worked mostly with Django and embedded devices and now with Rust, just because is awesome and I wanted to go lower (I use some C in embedded, not my favorite). So about Vue and Rails is just my perception and I'm aware that is else strongly affected by the local markets.
The only thing I like about Rails is the Rails console. If somebody can replicate that for other frameworks, then I think that'll make fiddling with data and debugging much easier.
Vue had a smaller ecosystem but now more and more people are using it and making libraries for it.
I'm actually happy with most frameworks. Except that Angular is less expressive than the other ones.
Good to know Vue is still here and healthy, it always looked interesting and at one point my choice was between Django and Rails an Django won for me just because of Python and how much you can do with it, but it was a close fight (I always envied the Rails for Zombies course).
Interesting I thought bootstrap might be the choice instead of just a full-fledged front-end framework for it.
The only problem are that you have to write code to handle inputs, toggle classes, etc. yourself.
That's time better spent on selling your prototype/
@john maybe you should consider donejs.com a more mature framework with a lot of more issues that it solves like testing and deploy and so on.
Are there lots of libraries made for it?