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What's your 2021 tech stack for web apps?
by
Sukh
2022 is here! How's your stack lookin'?
What's your 2021 tech stack for web apps?
Node.js
Typescript
React
Angular
PHP
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
Ruby on Rails
Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS
Django
Flask
MySQL/SQLite
Java
Elixir
.NET
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Elixir - just build a simple majestic monolith.
Avoid anything related to hot JS projects as much as possible 🤣
I'm under the impression that Elixir has a high learning curve, hard to get community support and not many jobs in the market?
I've been using Elixir for some time now and I absolutely love it. It's a functional language which makes it a little bit different from OOP languages so yes, there is a learning curve but for me it was worth it. Community is great, there is elixirforum.com, people are very welcoming and happy to help. Whenever I had a problem with something, there was someone to help me out. Job market is not that big simply because it's a new language but there are more and more jobs every day so things are improving.
If you're coming from Ruby or Python, a functional language, or are skilled at functional-style JS, the learning curve is pretty small for the data structures and syntax. The distributed OTP stuff has a higher curve but all that is optional.
The community is awesome, better than most. Jobs might be a little more difficult to find, but they're out there (I've had them). But this is indie hackers, we're building business here, not looking for jobs.
It has one of the best support there is. Helpful people. I always got responses in the matter of minutes even, and that includes Jose, the author of Elixir.
Elixir is actually a simple language, just FP needs adjusting, and OTP framework needs some learning. But as a language, Elixir is actually quite minimal.
I wrote about using Elixir here, you might find it useful.
It has the same learning curve as every other mature platform.
The language, tooling, and vms don't really change all that much in comparison to other ecosystems. So investing time into learning elixir has a much longer knowledge value decay. Also, if you are fuzzy with distributed systems then it can serve as an amazing introduction to how they fail in practice ;)
The community will practically solve any and every hard distributed systems problem for you so that you can focus on building your app. Plus they like to actually document their libraries... I know it's crazy.
I’ve been writing about deploying Elixir and Phoenix applications at https://staknine.com/. I’m planning to release a deployment guide to help people deploy quickly. It does seem like there are fewer libraries, but the ones that are out there are usually well documented. Plus, as others have mentioned, the community is very helpful.
I wanted to try it for a while. If you tried Rails, what are the main advantages in Elixir + Phoenix setup? Apart from functional programming pros.
What are the hot JS projects rn?
I love elixir + phoenix. However the learning curve is steep and getting up and running with a payments processor (e.g. Stripe) is not trivial with very minimal-to-non-existent guides/documentation on it.
I implemented this at work. There is a very good library called Stripity Stripe.
Have you by any chance got Stripe Checkout working with it?
Yes, I did only Checkout as it's easier to leave more things on the Stripe side. Is there any particular part you struggle with? I think some people did blog about some of the implementation already.
I'm most of the way to getting Stripe Checkout working now.
Would you be willing to share how your implementation "flows"? I've got a very simple context (amount, payment intent id, user id's etc) that gets created on a successful webhook response, curious if that should be created on the initial Checkout trigger instead.
I still need to figure out a better way to manage Stripe prices (maybe via a GenServer? ETS?). I currently retrieve the price directly from Stripe every time a Checkout is triggered.
I started making a reference Phoenix + Stripe Checkout implementation on GitHub yesterday which will have 3 commits once it's complete, covering:
EDIT: Oh and testing, do you have any tests covering your Checkout implementation?
I do a standard Checkout flow, then save the new subscription and invoice from a webhook. I kept managing prices in Stripe (to truly keep this minimal).
I have tests for the backend only as the front-end (in React) is someone elses responsibility.
Do you hard code the price IDs etc that you use to trigger the checkout?
No, I take the price from the subscription object.
I’m building a boilerplate project and component lib to try make things easier https://petal.build
Any resource on implementing Strip with Elixir/Phoenix?
I have pieced my solution together using 2 guides so far... but it's not working yet.
https://fullstackphoenix.com/tutorials/setup-stripe-with-phoenix-liveview shows roughly what to do (it sets up Stripe Elements)
https://connerfritz.com/blog/stripe-webhooks-in-phoenix-with-elixir-pattern-matching
Yes! all my projects are built in Elixir. An Elixir monolith will take you very far before you have split stuff up (if you even need to) and you won't need a massively expensive machine to serve lots of traffic. Also it's got a great developer UX.
It is not super hard to learn to be productive in but it's hard to master specially when you get out of the Phoenix world go a lot more into OTP.
React, firebase, and vercel with next.js. Throw a CDN on top and that's good enough to handle 1/2 million visitors/month.
Same! Vercel is such a breeze to work with and integrates with everything I need it to (sentry.io, slack). I'll throw in Plausible for analytics and tailwindcss for styling as personal favorites.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Next.js + TypeScript.
Depending on data needs, Prisma with Postgres is my default but I’d consider Hasura, Fauna, others.
UI: Chakra UI.
If I need more than a basic API, I’ll use Apollo Server within Next.js.
Hosting: Vercel & Render. Both have generous free plans.
Most of this is bundled within Bison, so I’ll often generate the scaffold with Bison.
Chakra UI ftw!
YES. It's fantastic.
Protip: https://chakra-templates.dev/ is a real time-saver too.
wow, these are clean 💯
Yeah! I built much of cutintothejamstack.com on them! Code needs a little cleanup, but for quick and dirty starts you can copy and paste beautiful UI so easily.
@mikecavaliere I want to host next.js on vercel but they have non-commercial free tier.
like is it free before the first sale or it isn't enforced on vercell
Good question. I don't think it's enforced for small stuff. I'm not sure they'd waste time restricting you unless you're incurring some heavy traffic.
Alternatively, Netlify and Render have great free plans as well:
https://www.netlify.com/pricing
https://render.com/pricing
thanks for the reply
I'm using a custom stack based on SvelteKit that I'll be releasing soon as a boilerplate: Svelte Saas Starter Kit
Svelte / SvelteKit is amazing. Svelte components run super fast (no virtual DOM), have tiny build sizes, stellar documentation, and the developer experience is 🔥. Svelte was just voted the #1 most loved web framework in the 2021 Stack Overflow developer survey (it beat out React, Rails, Django, Spring, Laravel, etc 🤯).
I've also really been loving SvelteKit which isn't even out of beta yet. It's kind of like Next or Nuxt but uses Svelte instead of React.
Things I like about SvelteKit:
Oh man, some day I want to try Svelte(Kit). I'm all about shipping so I stick to what I know best, for now... I'm sure the time comes when I can try out something new.
Nice! If you want to learn a little about why Svelte is great, you might enjoy these videos by its creator Rich Harris: Rethinking Reactivity and The Return of 'Write Less, Do More'.
Can't agree more about Svelte/SvelteKit (and Svelte Native!). Finding Svelte has been a game-changer for me. Combined with TailwindCSS, frontend dev is sooo much quicker.
Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase
Same as for last decade - Rails ;)
Same, Majestic Monolith! 🙌
Just discovering Rails recently after years of putting off exploring it. The first time I encounted RoR it seemed to "magical" 😂
Fully agree. Rails is such an underrated framework.
TALL Stack -- Tailwind, AlpineJS, Laravel, Livewire
I've been coding PHP since around 1997 or so. Laravel since V3. More JS tools than many of you have likely heard of. Yeah, I'm old. 😎
👉 Svelte 👈
Switching from PHP for backend to NodeJS + Express because it's easier to focus on one programming language then keeping up to date on two.
I want to do that in 2022, any advices. Used PHP for 6 years
I’m just starting out so probably not the best person to give advice. 😅
Phoenix Framework (Elixir) + Phoenix Live View.
Any resource on implementing Strip with Elixir/Phoenix?
The most used dependency is https://github.com/code-corps/stripity_stripe (even if it has some minor issues).
Or you have to wrap API in your own genserver (or better an application): https://stripe.com/docs/api
HTMX, Alpine.js, Tailwind CSS for front end
Go for server
PostgreSQL for DB
Redis for caching
Kubernetes for deployment
DigitalOcean for hosting
what server in GO you are using for web request ? or just plain GO?
Just plain Go
net/httpserver with various open source middleware.Very intreting , did you build it just becouse you love GO
Or did you do some preformenece testing between stacks ?
Im thinking about moving to GO ,
Did you use some Go web sites that teach how to build web servers in GO
Or you just know it form work or trail and error .
Im asking becouse web server is complex . more then just using the http interface in any language..
I chose Go because I was using it at work and I’m not very familiar with JS, Python, or Ruby. My background is in highly scalable web services so I’m pretty comfortable with it.
Golang + Postgres + React. Going to try running some personal things on k8s this year, probably on Linode or Digital Ocean since they have free managed options.
Really surprised to see so little datastore usage!
I'm also using Go + Postgres. I use managed Postgres and Kubernetes on DigitalOcean which seems to work pretty well so far. If you want to give DO a try I can give you a referral link that will give you $100 credit for free.
Nice! I'm still a ways off before I launch my current project, but I may hit you up again later this year about the DO referral if its still available at that time!
I've heard if you work at DO for some period, you get to use the platform for free for life (even after leaving)! Makes me want to try and land a gig their in the future to support my bootstrapping indefinitely!
I'm slowly changing my opinion about no-code tools. They've gotten much more useful since they first hit the scene years ago. Bubble is a huge deal especially and I am going to spend more time learning it this year.
I think Rails is still the best choice for a full-stack app that is too complicated for no-code. It's mature and still maintained and does not require the level of wheel-reinvention that many "loosely coupled" frameworks and tools need. Many tools have attempted to emulate the Rails architecture, but if you need to build a complex app that must have a backend, Rails is still the quickest way to market because of its opinionated, batteries included philosophy.
Rails has saved us so much time. Not having to reinvent the wheel -> priceless.
If you're looking to build an app with any real-time capabilities, take a look at the new capabilities of Rails 7 + Hotwire. It's a great experience and makes building complex features much easier.
Rails has come such a long way. Love it.
I thought I was the only IndieHacker using .NET, so glad to see I'm not alone after all!
I was about to make the same comment then noticed .NET has 10% of the votes. LOL I thought we were the only ones 🤣
Same :) What you guys use for front-end and DB? I use reactJs with MongoDB(maybe will be move to Postgre). Also what hosting do you use, currently I am looking some good and not to expensed like azure?
Well, we have gone full MS stack as that's where all our skills are. Blazor front end as we want to try and use MAUI from native mobile apps and tight integration into MS Teams. Then using Azure Serverless Functions, Azure Service Bus, and Cosmos DB for the backend.
Costs are not an issue at the moment as mostly on their FREE tier. That will change at some point but we found it so easy to get up and running with it all.
My go-to JS framework in 2021 is Svelte! It's simple and fast without all the boilerplate like Angular or React/Redux. And the backend is Go with old-school PostgreSQL.
This... where is Svelte? And why are databases single-select together with web development frameworks, they come together as a package usually?
Ya, I think the poll should better have multiple choices.
It's a frankenstack consisting of Go on the backend, Vue on the front, and plain old MySQL for the DB.
I swear I'm not intentionally trying to be contrarian. Aside from simply liking Go and Vue, a big reason why I'm sticking with them is because I perceive them as being easier to work with for junior devs. Go especially. Sure, it's different, but because it's so pedantic about style my theory is that you can quickly train a junior engineer to have a writing style consistent with a more experienced engineer. They may not have the ability to operate as autonomously as a more experienced engineer, but at least their code will be solid.
I used to be a teacher, so I have perhaps a bit more faith than the norm in talent that is otherwise overlooked for lack of experience. I have time yet to figure out whether or not this faith is warranted.
Where can you learn to build production grade Go backends? Tutorials online are so basic.
everything here: https://init.tips/ (not my website)
It doesn't seem to offer any advice on the backend. What are you using for that?
Next.js and Vercel! This page has good recommendations for various backend pieces https://init.tips/other
Oh wow. I didn't know this site but agree 100% with the stack they suggest. It's exactly what I use on most of my projects, even down to the small libraries they mention.
Nice and simple, can't go wrong with TS and Next
Okay i voted for Php but dont forget WordPress next time haha.
Yes you can build Saas with WordPress, great for MVP.
If you have any questions let me know (yes all my applications are on wordpress)
Old school : php/mysql.
Still perfect in term of speed/seo/solid/easy to debug
Probably will build some things with Gatsby/TypeScript, Django/TypeScript, React Native, Elixir, Unity. Postgres for most databases.
GeoCities
Ahhh memories!
The base for everything is React with Next.js and Typescript.
Regarding the data layer it depends on my needs. Usually one of those: Prisma, Supabase, Fauna or Blits.js.
For more complex backends I will go back to Nest.js (not to be confused with Next.js).
UI: TailwindCSS or ChakraUI
Hosting: Vercel, Render, Planetscale. They all have generous free tiers.
Essential React libraries: React Query for data fetching and Zustand for state management
Auth: Next Auth or Auth0
Monitoring: Plausible Analytics
Email: Mailgun
However, I constantly have to suppress the urge to try out cool new tools. There are so many interesting tools:
Svelte + Postgres ❤️
Currently: TypeScript, Node.js, React. Though lately I've had the temptation to mess around with Vue to see what it's all about!
Still a big fan of Node.js and Vue - I recently upgraded my SaaS starter kit (https://nodewood.com/) to Vue 3, and I'm loving it. Using Javascript on the back-end and front-end means you can share a lot of code between the two and really reduce the amount of validation/business logic/etc you have to write twice!
😢 Where are Svelte, Vue, etc in your list? (Big Vue fan here!)
Definitely JamStack. Go cloudless. Once Vercel and Netlify offer pub/sub and chrono triggers on their functions, I'll be very happy. To get things off the ground quickly, and cheaply...
I'm a big fan of nuxt/next too, and obviously Astro and Remix boost SSG and SSR, respectively.
Created my flask boilerplate here: https://github.com/nuvic/flask_for_startups
This is very useful. Thank you for sharing! You should add a quick demo video walking through the project and the advantages of starting from there vs. scratch.
I love Nestjs with Vue/Angular. But recently drawn to Adonisjs full stack.
AdonisJs will certainly be my go to when I want to write out a full stack app quickly. For API heavy projects, I will stick to NestJs because I have several boiler plates in place already.
For me, it varies based on the project I am working on. Previously, I used to use vanilla PHP (and a mini framework I made) for projects, but the last year I have been really enjoying the javascript (node and Vue/Nuxt) ecosystem.
For example, my boomerang.link bookmark manager is built with Vue/Nuxt on the front end, with a PHP backend. I do plan on switching to Node as the backend when I make v2 though.
For the foreseeable future, the other products I am building this year will use this same Nuxt/Node stack.
My tech stack depends on the context, but generally:
Go (golang)
Go Templates for server-side rendering or Vue for SPA
Postgres for most database needs, but also Redis for caching, ClickHouse for time-series (like for Pirsch)
Traefik for networking
Hetzner and the HashiStack (Nomad) for hosting
I recently also learned about unpoly for a client project, which enhances server-side rendered websites :)
My next project will be: Django, TailwindCSS, HTMX, AlpineJS.
My current project is: Django, Bootstrap4, JQuery.
I've been using Tailwind, HTMX, and Alpine.js for my project. My only complaint so far is that HTMX's requests are primarily form based. There is a JSON encoder plugin but all the values are strings and there's no way to make something a number for instance.
My dream stack for 2022 is : Supabase + vuejs (typescript) + ionic6
I'm using Ruby on Rails for the core application with PostgreSQL and Redis and Angular for the Browser Extension for Testkit
Classic combination :)
a mix of golang, php, react, mysql, sqlite, vanilla html/css/js
My Goto Stack Would Be
Multiple options really, you missed Vue/Svelte, but i figure that may have been intentional.
Mine is Serverless functions so i guess you could say node + Vue + Mongo Atlas
Originally I've always been using a mixture of React/React Router (FE) with DRF (BE) for getting MVPs up and running for projects but recently I've switched to Next JS (FE) with Supabase (BE) and what took me 3 months I was able to build in 3 days!
As the project grows I'll probably fall back to my original stack but trying to embrace a few more no-code tools this year!
App: Crystal, SQLite, Tailwind CSS, Stimulus JS.
OS: FreeBSD + Caddy, or Alpine Linux Docker container.
Platform: DigitalOcean or Fly.io
Wow not many Crystal users, so that's interesting. Which framework are you using, and how has your experience been? What made you choose Crystal over more mainstream alternatives?
For me it's:
Backend: Django
Frontend: Torn between React and Svelte
Infra: DigitalOcean
The TALL stack is really nice to work with 🤩
Boring stuff as possible: Docker, Java, SQL, gRPC and HTML/CSS. Portable monoliths are so nice to work with as an IndieHacker.
React, firebase, and vercel with next.js. Throw a CDN on top and that's good enough to handle 1/2 million visitors/month.
Our tech stack is described here: https://orgpad.com/s/Km0u0AVhMww
For Rulebox.io, we use:
clojure
Previously just a bunch of JS frameworks but I discovered Bubble last year and it blew my mind
Both my co-founder and I are from a tech background but bubble just kills it
My current tech stack is:
You can find more information inside my detailed article: https://creativedesignsguru.com/saas-tech-stack/
C# on the backend, Vue on the Front, and a mobile native app. It's a really fun stack, I really have enjoyed working with Vue.
I seem to be a bit more old school, still prefer the power of Django over React...
If it is not broken, don't touch :)
We at FusionHQ (https://github.com/fusion-hq/fusion) are using
ReactJS + React Query (API Calls) + RematchJS (state management)
ExpressJS (can shift to nestjs soon)
Django
Docker + Kubernetes
PostgreSQL
Redis (queuing + caching)
BullMQ (queue)
Design - Antd
Hi @dubesar, Could you tell me where to host redis server? I mean what will be the best way to host Redis? thanks
React, Typescript, Nextjs, styled-components, and jotai on front-end. Nextjs APIs, Postgres, and Prisma on backend
On 2021 my web stack was Typescript, React, Nextjs, Supabase for exploring and launching new ideas. Learning Svelte + Svelte Kit, it’s an awesome alternative to React as well
I would loved to have checkboxes instead of radio buttons so you can pick the multiples technologies for the stack.
For Page2API (a Web Scraping API which I started to build in 2021) I'm using:
Hi @nyku,
I am working on a project where i need to scrape the lead data.
I want to scrape the data fast.
Could you tell me what can be used for concurrent requests?
Hi there!
You can use Page2API for that.
It will take care of the proxies, so you will not get blocked while scraping.
You can sign up and try to scrape the website you need with the default concurrency, and then if everything will go smooth - I can temporarily increase the concurrency - so you can test it out.
Let me know if you are interested!
Thank you for replying.
Unfortunately, I am not looking for a paid version now, just want to know how to handle concurrency from technical perspective? I truly appreciate your response on this :)
I believe the multithreading instruments from the programming language you are using will work perfectly for that since each thread needs to initiate an HTTP request, read the data from the website and get back parsing it.
There is the other side, in case you need a real browser for that.
In this case, you will probably need to use something like puppeteer - that will launch a browser instance, open the website, load the javascript, and then scrape the content you need.
If you think that your local resources will not be enough - you can deploy the puppeteer as a lambda/cloud function and launch it remotely like in this example.
Now regarding Page2API, you have a 1$ Free Trial budget on sign-up, that you can use to understand if you need a real browser or not and to understand if you need free/datacenter/premium proxies for your scraping.
If you are facing a particular technical question regarding scraping - feel free to ping me ;)
@nyku thank you so much for putting efforts into answering my question.
I will try these solutions at my end otherwise I will go with your product.
My best wishes for your product as well :)
Thank you!
It is my pleasure to help you!
I have been using react or next.js as the frontend then for my backend needs I use different aws serverless components
My default is often React, Firebase, and if I want a backend server, Spring Boot. Kind of a weird mashup of things, so I want to branch out. Maybe will try NextJS soon! Heard many great things.
This poll can't accept two or more answers, .NET alone isn't really tech stack 😅 and so with the others on the list like MySql, etc.
My 2022 tech stack:
NextJS for the frontend, NestJs for the backend, and postgresql for the db 😉
Using the same stack too, nice. Are you using TypeORM or Prisma for the backend?
I just started using Prisma for backend as well. Just like @dnlytras mentioned, migrations are so incredibly easy. Plus the autogenerated types and Prisma Studio are a dream.
TypeORM. I actually never heard of Prisma, will have to check it 😄
Adds better type-safety if you're using Typescript across the stack. That said TypeORM has more resources when it comes to Nestjs, and plays nice with class-transformer.
Have started a project with Prisma purely for the hassle free migrations, easier API and type-safety.
Oh no haha, I thought it came out of the box with multi-select, oops.
I love using Next just for SEO potential alone! Interesting choice on the backend, would you recommend it over Node.js?
Ahh I see, I need to get educated on Nestjs ASAP. Saw the project page, looks awesome!
Nest.js is Node.js. Node is the runtime that makes javascript on the server. Did you mean Express?
If that's the case, Nest.js is built on top of Express too. It's a meta-framework.
Yes NestJS is way better than NodeJs in a lot of ways :)
NestJS is nothing without NodeJs :D
I use Python. Frappe to be specifig. For business apps, it simplifies audit, revision management, user permissions, etc.
Nodeja in AWS lambda, supabase, vue3 with typescript hosted on cloudflare pages, cloudflare workers and upstash redis
I know there are lots of stuff there but connecting them together didn't take much time
I'm writing an article about the whole stack on medium
For my indie hacking, I use Firebase + Flutter because it's super easy to scale, deploy, and iterate quickly.
For my day job, I use Elixir + Phoenix. Both stacks are great to work with. Definitely a steeper learning curve with Elixir, but super fun to program in
I'm mainly a back-end developer and Elixir is my first choose for that (PG or Mongo for persistence).
Using React+TS for front-end and as I am not a designer, I use Material UI React components.
Gigalixir and Heroku for hosting.
In 2022 I'll try my best to learn more about Elixir, Java, and .NET. Wish me luck 🍀
Been building with Next.js+Tailwinds lately—and an interested by what Remix is bringing to the table though not quite ready to jump in with yet another new thing.
Anyone else using Remix so far?
Laravel + Vue 3 + InertiaJS = 😍
Next.js + Preact, Typescript, Supabase. I'm interested in Astro though.