Ask IH: Why do you think the most profitable makers are not using the latest tech stacks?
It seems that the biggest makers are always using old trusted tools and its frameworks like PHP + Laravel or Ruby + Rails and a sprinkle of jQuery.
Why do you think that the indie hackers that are the most profitable are not building things with stuff like React? Seems like everyone who is making bank with new technologies is because they are teaching them but not actually using them for their platform
I have fairly strong opinions on this. I cringe a little bit when engineers excitedly tell me about their over engineered, niche and brand new tech stacks.
You need to consider the longer term BUSINESS implications of your tech stack. There are many technologies that come and go, if you choose a technology that is the hype at the moment, but no one cares for in three years, it creates a legacy problem because developers will be expensive and hard to come by, and if the tech is not supported you’ll inevitably have to move off.
That’s why it’s good to make relatively safe and dependable choices.
PHP and it’s common frameworks dependable, well tested, and developers are cheap and plentiful. It’s very easy to MVP an app, and scale into a bigger system if necessary. Plus PHP will still be here in 10 years time, because the majority of the web is actually using PHP based systems like Wordpress.
Having said that, there are some newer stacks that I think will continue to grow and are still safe choices - React and Node for example because they are becoming the defaults for particular problem sets.
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I have a few thoughts on this. I think the best way to go is to launch quickly. Putting too much time into something before you know if it will work is a waste. Much better to quickly test and discard failed business ideas. Double and triple down on the successful experiments.
Old, trusted tools speed up development time. Highly recommended.
Probably because they do not NEED them
because it doesnt matter.
github just stopped using jquery in favor of vanilla dom api. and they were acquired by microsoft for how much?
https://twitter.com/mislav/status/1022058279000842240
i've been using elm, not because it's new and shiny, but because it's intellectually stimulating. and the development/refactoring experience is top notch. it makes me a better programmer.
most indie hacker's type apps are small enough that they can fit in one person's head. simple api requests, and dom manipulation aren't hard with php/js.
when you grow into a codebase that is over 100k LOC, then a framework is pretty helpful
just our elm code is 137,598 LOC total.
i'm using elm to lay a solid foundation. so far it's been a blast. and i'm much more confident in my code.
The amount of additional value to a customer from using the hottest new framework is insignificant in the context of the whole solution they are paying for.
I suspect the founders you are thinking of realise this and choose to focus on making the best use of their time on activities that do make a difference.
Because they focus on customer pain, not playing with tech.
Tech stacks come and go.... pains customers are willing to throw money at to have solved is the recipe of success. Use the tools you can trust to get the job done.
In most cases those are tools they know and already use.