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61 Comments

What tech stack do you feel most productive with?

Hey, I'm Stuart! I'm a full-stack software engineer based out of the UK.

What tech stack do you find help you be more productive? For me, it's Laravel to build a backend/api, and VueJS on the front end. Laravel 8 ships with Jetstream, which is an application scaffolding tool and one of it's options is InertiaJS, which is an awesome tool that lets you build SPAs without an API. Love it!

https://ssm.dev

  1. 9

    For me it's Rails + Bootstrap / vanilla JS. I'm just insanely productive with it and going from idea to MVP often happens within a matter of days.

    I've also developed a number of apps with React etc. but although it's a joy to develop with, it often takes me longer set up certain things properly/securely, e.g. user authentication, routing, etc.

    I guess there's a place for everything but especially for a quick prototype / early stage apps, Rails is hard to beat.

  2. 7

    I've been a full stack JavaScript developer for many years (React/Vue, Express). For my latest start up I thought I'd try Django, it was nothing more than just being curious about the framework. Even though I'm learning the framework as I go I feel much more productive.

    1. 4

      I had a similar experience after working full-time with Node+(jQuery | Backbone | React) for years and then after just two weeks with Ruby on Rails, realizing I was already more productive with it.

      Django seems similar to Rails. It copied what it could given Python's limitations around DSLs. It has similar generators and similar issues WRT the global interpreter lock. I get why a larger company would use Node over either due to performance and scaling concerns but it blows my mind how many indies are needlessly slowing themselves down using Node/Express on the back-end.

      1. 1

        Some pretty massive companies use rails for their products GitHub, shopify, Basecamp, Airbnb come to mind. performance is not an issue for them it just needs to be coded up properly.

        1. 1

          Github also wrote quite a bit of C in critical paths. This is fairly common to do in very large apps as C interop is very well supported in Ruby (like most languages).

          1. 1

            I would hope that it is well supported since Ruby its self is also written in C lol. Cool stuff :)

      2. 1

        As a Rails how of 12 years now, I'm always surprised at how many people don't get until they try it. It's just so fast to code in.

  3. 5

    I've kinda just stuck with what I already knew, which happens to be Rails.

    With Rails I find that I'm able to quickly develop new features, and there's often exisiting gems for important base features (such as accounts, API interactions, and email).

    For the front end, I've recently started using TailwindCSS and absolutely love it. I find it a lot more flexible than using Bootstrap + custom classes.

    1. 2

      That's great, always best to stick with what you know! I think the creator of Laravel came from a Rails background and took a lot of inspiration from the Rails methodology, so I can see why you like it!

      Also love Tailwind!

  4. 3

    Rails / React / TailwindCSS.
    Hosted on Heroku.
    Best fit for small-to-medium projects.

    1. 1

      I use a very similar tech stack, but with vanilla JS until something else is necessary.

      What projects are you currently working on?

      1. 1

        I'm building this: https://www.plainee.com (Currently MVP)
        Also I forgot to mention that I use https://ant.design for UI components

  5. 3

    FastAPI for backend. It’s a simple and lightweight typed API framework for Python. Easy to pickup, uses OpenAPI standards, has auto generated, interactive docs. Great great great developer experience.

    React, Typescript, and tailwind for front end.

    Backend postgresql. Fire base cloud store if needing a document db.

    1. 2

      Sounds great! I've never really gotten into typescript, always felt like it seems like a slog for the first part of learning/using it but then you reap the rewards after the first time you actually need it (type mistake or something)!

      1. 1

        Yeah it definitely is an investment up front that compounds and you reap the benefit from it for the entirety of your project.

        I love using it after seeing how many mistakes and errors it can prevent.

  6. 2

    Flask, MongoDB & VanillaJS/Jquery baby

  7. 2
    • For me it is PHP/Laravel for my API layer.
    • NodeJS for micro-services.
    • VueJS for front-end.
      -TailwindCSS for styles.
  8. 2

    Ruby on Rails, Tailwind, JavaScript, and Heroku 🙂

  9. 1

    15 years in dev. Having experience with plenty of tech, I'd choose

    • Frontend: React
    • Backend: Kotlin with Springboot or NodeJS with Express for API
  10. 1

    Ruby/Rails or Elixir/Phoenix. Minimum JavaScript.

  11. 1

    Frontend - Next Js (React) + Apollo GraphQL
    Backend - Hasura + Custom graphQL API through Apollo stack
    Database - Postgres or MongoDB
    Styling - CSS, CSS in JS using Emotion library, Chakra UI, tailwind ()
    Search - Postgres full-text search or ElasticSearch
    Asynchronous tasks (Queues) - Redis (bull), RabbitMQ (for large projects)
    Event sourcing - Kafka (not for small projects)
    Caching - Node Mcache, Redis (for larger needs)
    Email Newsletters - https://buttondown.email/
    Authentication - https://next-auth.js.org/
    Authorization - Hasura style authorization is my favorite even if I build custom API with roles and permissions. I develop it like how Hasura manages it.
    API docs - Postman documentation / Likes to create with JS docs though

    Hope this helps. Please share if you find any other tools useful other than my list or better than my tools 🥳

  12. 1

    Frontend: Angular 10
    Backend: .NET Core 3.1

    Using NSwag for generating Angular Service Clients in Typescript has been a life saver.

  13. 1

    Yes! This is the same tech stack I feel most productive with. I've been playing with inertia JS but before I knew about inertia I was trying out my own version that looked like this: https://soppy.app/docs/

    They seem like very similar approaches to the same problem, but I will probably use inertia here on out because it's backed by a community and doing regular updates.

    I've also been toying with the idea of what I want to call, the "So LIT" stack... Statamic laravel inertia tailwind... It basically mixes statamic's CMS with how inertia renders stuff. You can check that out here if you're interested. https://github.com/truefrontier/so-lit-stack It basically makes statamic more or less headless with inertia helping render it in vue.

    I have both of these working on live sites. I feel like they are both in alpha stage and could be improved significantly.

    But definitely check out tailwind if you haven't already.

  14. 1

    I have been building apps for 12 years soon and hands down the most productive stack for me is:

    • React
    • TailwindCSS
    • Apollo
    • Hasura (GraphQL)
    • PostgreSQL
    • Nhost (hosting)
  15. 1

    Yii2 Framework <3

  16. 1

    Python/Django, Tailwind CSS, Vue+DRF for heavy SPA or Turbolinks/Stimulus for SSR+light JS functionality. PostgreSQL for database unless very good reason not to, Redis for queues/caching. Pg full text search for simple search requirements, ElasticSearch if more complicated. Docker for local dev. Deployment: AWS/S3/Cloudfront, Heroku or Digital Ocean depending on complexity and budget. Mailgun for emails. Ansible for deploying anything more complicated than a short bash script. Everything else depends on project and scope.

  17. 1

    It's probably JavaScript on both ends.

    I recently landed a Django project which is also very good.

  18. 1

    Laravel.

    For frontend I tend to edge towards just jQuery (honestly it has a bad rep but when you need something quick, simple, and you know is going to work its great). I use VueJS too for some things where required

    I've been playing with Livewire the past couple of weeks and have honestly fallen in love with it. Haven't tried Intertia yet (I too have been playing with Jetstream but using the livewire stack instead) but I plan to in the not too distant future

    I feel like there has been a rocket in the Laravel community this past year or two and my god there are some really amazing things

  19. 1

    Recently I have tried GRAND stack, which stands for Graphql, React, Apollo and Neo4j database. Building a business logic layer with Apollo server powered by neo4j graph was the most productive thing I did since LAMP stack. And apollo client is the best data management solution for React compared to redux with sagas, as it takes away maintaining and testing common remote-data synchronization logic away from you.
    I wrote a series about building a product with it here

  20. 1

    Cloudflare Workers + FaunaDB

  21. 1

    You will probably want to burn me in a fire, but I feel I am more productive when I have a real strongly-typed compiled language to work (currently, java).

    I have actually built my own stack around proven and stable technology. This is the Open Lowcode project.

  22. 1

    I'm a full stack developer with experience in React, Angular, Knockout, Dotnet, Ruby on Rails, and Node.

    My most productive stack is:

    • Next.js front-end (w/ React)
    • TailwindCSS w/ TailwindUI
    • AWS Amplify Data Store
    • Hosted on Vercel

    Next.js + Amplify eliminates of soo much of the boilerplate.

  23. 1

    I was just stressing about something. A job opportunity didn't move forward because I had too much mobile experience. In 2020, there is no mobile or web, it's React--unless you're making games or something. I spent the better part of last year and into this on proving over and over to people that I could make React work on web, iOS and Android. And just as I'm thinking, hmm can I use this to make a native macOS app? They shut me down. I made 6 apps, 2 on each platform, and a UI library, and people who saw it working told me it wasn't feasible. A year I spent testing the limits of that and never facing an insurmountable problem--except people who inexplicably reject what's in front of them. Chances are it was just a toxic environment, but that's what they hired me to do.

    Yes I'd prefer to use Node full stack, but frankly if I can use ONE React codebase to make 3+ native apps... do whatever you want on the back-end, I'll live with it.

    And I think the biggest mistake React team made at Facebook was naming it "React Native". If they'd only called it "React", "React 2.0" or "React Universal", I would not face these job interview questions like "Do you know React" followed immediately by "what about React Native?" I'm sorry but I'm tired lol.

  24. 1

    Well, if it's all about feelings, I feel most productive with anything low-level with a decent IDE that speeds up churning out reams of code. Stacks that pull in an absurd number of dependencies, even for simple tasks, also give that feeling.

    It may not actually be that productive but seeing lots of files with lots of code in them that I've created feels productive.

  25. 1
    • Node.js backend
    • lit-element on the frontend (a lightweight wrapper around WebComponents)
    • 11ty.js for the landing page and blog (a static site generator, but it's so good)
  26. 1

    Frontend:

    • Single page app via a custom JS library
    • Bootstrap

    Backend:

    • NodeJS (For SSR, etc)
    • Firebase for hosting, functions and database.

    I’m also experimenting with an “almost” completely backend less stack that runs on Firebase hosting, for my content sites. It’s not exactly a static site but a “blog-aware” frontend SPA framework.

  27. 1

    https://storycreatorapp.com is all React.js inside a Next.js paradim with vercel as the manager.

    Backend is a bit tricky, but all built using Node.js and some serverless.

  28. 1

    I actually built an app starter kit/boilerplate around the tech stack I've come to love: Nodewood.

    Node.js on the backend using PostgreSQL and MassiveJS as the data mapper, and Vue on the front-end. Using JavaScript for the front-end and back-end allows me to write validators/libraries/models/etc once and use them for the server and the browser, which saves time writing them and maintaining them both.

    Plus, I've wrapped in all my favourite little libraries and add-ons in there, like my preferred modal dialog library, and Tailwind to make CSS styling easy and fun!

    1. 1

      I've never come across that but sounds really interesting!

      Totally agree JS on both front and back makes it a more seamless dev experience! I just love how Laravel makes working with the Database/validation/relationships/testing and many more, such a joy and all in 1 package - just never found anything remotely similar in the node world! Have you?

      Also LOVE Tailwind 😊👌

      1. 1

        Well, I'm trying to build something similar. Nodewood, at its core, is a framework for building web applications easier than just picking and choosing from all the various libraries out there. I found that I always tended to build web apps the same way and hook up the same libraries with the same configurations, so that's one big part of what Nodewood is about.

        Then, on top of that, there's a web application skeleton to get you started with user authentication, subscription payments, etc. I don't have the same amount of time invested into it as Taylor does in Laravel, but I'm working on it! =)

  29. 1

    I use Deno on the backend with lit-html and vaadin-router as the "big" front end libraries. It helps to keep the app lean, mean and clean. Better performance etc. No framework bs that adds megabytes of javascript. I am probably more productive with Mongo as the db but I like MySQL better because of performance etc.

    I have been looking at Elixir/Phoenix as well but I am good at and invested in javascript so I have not that of a great reason to switch. However I am very interesting in liveview and what that could mean for me on solo projects in terms of productivity.

    1. 1

      I'm on the same boat. Have been thinking a lot about trying Elixir/Phoenix but struggling with paying the costs of switching.

      1. 2

        Hehe I actually made the jump a few weeks ago, bought an elixir course and got started. Liveview is really fantastic and works great for 95% or more of the stuff I work on my spare time.

        It really is much faster to develop in, since you don't have to walk through so much unnecessary cruft as you have to do when you're building a SPA. Almost everything I build benefits greatly from good SEO and this is the main reason why I had issues with the SPA way. But also simply building things is much faster now and for the stuff that doesn't make sense to make a roundtrip to the server for we have alpine.js which also is great.

        Actually, LiveView is such a game changer that I actually believe it's a big competitive advantage over something like React. Pages are just so much smaller, they load insanely quick, great SEO out of the box and much more.

        There is so many bad SPA apps out there with bad SEO and that's for a reason and it is because it's fucking hard to write a great SPA. And it also feel completely worthless to write everything in libraries like React when you often only need very small parts to be reactive. With Phoenix one have the time over to focus on other stuff which also is important.

        One example is authentication. When I've done it with deno/node I've always used JWT and some token auth but simply making a complete secure login, with emails forgot password functionality and so forth takes like at least a week. With Phoenix (and other similar frameworks) you can simply generate that shit in a minute and it's production ready.

        Also Elixir in general provides a solution to a problem I've met many times in a production node development and that it's so much more unstable and hard to predict bottlenecks. I've have had several applications that crashes due to different performance issues, where one request accidentally takes up too much CPU. Sure you can solve it with worker threads but that shit is sometimes hard to figure out in advance and it simply don't happen in Elixir. It's just so much more stable in every way. It's also way easier to utilize all cores when you really need it. It's not good for CPU intensive tasks, but I just feel safer when using Elixir and I trust my code more so far.

    2. 1

      Interesting, I always though Deno was a bit of a beta right now and not stable - how about you found using it?!

      1. 1

        It's stable imo, but it's moving too fast so it's hard to keep up. Libraries that you may depend on breaks often due to different reasons. It's hard to stay up to date even if you may not always need to.

        Since my last post, Deno has gone from like 1.2 to 1.6 with a lot of changes along the way. But I recommend it anyway, I prefer it over node. But I have started to build stuff in Elixir and Phoenix.

  30. 1

    Backend: NestJS, MongoDB and Redis following a monorepo/microservice architecture.
    Frontend: Next.js
    And of course every service with its own Docker container talking through a private network.

    1. 1

      Never heard of NestJS but it looks really cool! Also never really got into Docker 🤷🏻‍♂️ How you liking it?

      1. 1

        NestJS is amazing, it takes a few weeks to get use to, but it allows to grow an app and keep it well tested and organised. Also you can start with a single service and grow into a micro-service architecture as you need it. It's quickly becoming one of the most used node frameworks.
        About Docker, you can just start with a Dockerfile and go for there. It takes a few minutes to set it up. On one hand you can make sure your app will work the same in your dev environment as it does in production, on the other hand you can define all your services and dependencies in docker (using docker-compose or integrating with a tool like Kubernetes).

  31. 1

    Firebase Auth, Firestore DB, React/Next.js, Stripe, Node serverless functions, Material UI (scaffolded with divjoy.com)

    1. 2

      What a great tool! Congrats Gabe!

    2. 1

      Hey, I love your website. Why do you choose Firebase Auth in your template as opposed to Auth0? I use Auth0 on my current website and it makes it so much easier to manage users.

      1. 1

        Thanks! You can click the authentication dropdown and select Auth0 instead of Firebase. Let me know if that wasn't obvious.. I could probably do a better job at making it clear those options can be changed. I have Firebase as the default because I personally like it and it seems to be in the most demand. I'd be curious to hear why you prefer Auth0 though.

        1. 1

          Can you elaborate on that a bit? I took over a project using Auth0 and found that integrating with it was a bit more of a pain than just rolling my own solution, using the standard patterns.

          Having to dish off everything involving user auth to a separate service seemed like a pain to me, especially if you want to build a referral service or any kind of attribution metrics for new signups.

          1. 1

            Sorry, which part did you want me to elaborate on? I think generally you’d store user data in your database as well so that it can be easily queried. It simply handles the authentication process and validating whether the current users token is valid.

            1. 1

              my bad... I'd intended to reply to someone who said Auth0 sped up their process, but I don't see that comment here. I must have replied to the wrong one.

        2. 1

          I didn't notice the caret next to FirebaseAuth or any of the other stacks. Maybe a "(Choose)" would help to show people skimming through that there are multiple choices.

          As for why I prefer Auth0, I'm a fullstack engineer but I hate doing anything related to frontend. Auth0 provides the login page, password resets, management system, etc so I don't have to deal with any of that. It also includes RBAC out of the box so no need to create my own implementation. It's free up to 1000 users and basically includes everything you would ever need in the free plan.

          I haven't used Firebase in any web apps, only mobile apps, so I might be a little biased.

          1. 1

            Good to know! I'll work on making that more obvious. And I appreciate the insight about Auth0. Divjoy currently gives you a custom auth UI regardless of your chosen auth provider, but I'm going to be changing it to utilize Auth0's hosted auth pages instead.

  32. 0

    React, or for that matter, anything Javascript 👏

    1. 1

      Love React! Loved it even more when I found React Native and Expo!

      1. 1

        React native is awesome too!

  33. 1

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  34. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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