11 ms·

Ask HN: Which stack do you use at your startup?

88 points by xstartup 9y ago

haasted 9y ago
You might find some interesting answers at https://stackshare.io/stacks https://stackshare.io/stacks
- sdca 9y ago
  Stackshare is more informative than a majority of the replies in this thread that aren't stating their startup's name or use case.
juststeve 9y ago
windows 200, ms access for the backend, ASP (VB) for the frontend. we also do java applets
- therealmarv 9y ago
  you probably meant Windows 2000 ;)
  - jxub 9y ago
    Windows Trajan emperor edition has a really good firewall up there (sorry for bad joke, had to make it).
    - juststeve 9y ago
      Windows 200AD :)
      - yesenadam 9y ago
        :P I still write orchestral music with Cubase on a 1999 IBM PC running Windows ME. Writing this comment on my new (2005) computer with OmniWeb browser, os x 10.4. Hmm maybe I should be in healthcare.
- mhd 9y ago
  Healthcare sector?
  - FrozenTuna 9y ago
    Healthcare Dev here. Its getting better! We finally ended support for IE8 last year!
    - andrei_says_ 9y ago
      Do you still support ie9&10 or have you moved on to 11?
jpgvm 9y ago
Not sure we qualify as a startup anymore but our stack is Kotlin + Gradle + Kubernetes on GKE. Definitely the best stack I have worked with thus far.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  what framework?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thepratt 9y ago
We use PHP. PureScript Haskell Postgres :) all on kubernetes atop AWS.
iamd3vil 9y ago
We use Elixir, Go, C++ for backend and JS, Java / Kotlin, C# for frontend. We also use Postgresql, Rabbitmq and Redis.
- xstartup 9y ago
  How are you managing deployment of these many technologies? What does your CI/CD workflow like?
  - iamd3vil 9y ago
    We mostly use docker with docker swarm. Currently exploring moving to Rancher. Also we use Gitlab CI for CI/CD. Our workflow looks like this: a release is tagged, CI tests and builds a docker image which is pushed to our private registry and then we use ansible to deploy the new release on our servers. We mostly use onprem for our production and can't use any cloud with the regulations and limitations we have.
timvdalen 9y ago
We [1] use a Laravel back-end for the main system, hosted on autoscaling EC2 behind a load balancer. Our front-end web application is built on Angular, running on S3 behind CloudFront. Since we process a lot of data, we use background jobs (with SQS as a broker) to perform our analyses. The actual data processing and wrangling is done in Python. We have released some parts of our systems as open source projects [2], [3], [4]. [1]: https://odysseyattribution.co/ https://odysseyattribution.co/ [2]: https://github.com/code-orange/telemachy https://github.com/code-orange/telemachy [3]: https://github.com/code-orange/jot https://github.com/code-orange/jot [3]: https://github.com/code-orange/statuspage https://github.com/code-orange/statuspage
- bgdkbtv 9y ago
  Great to see Laravel in this discussion! Beautiful framework. A couple of questions: 1. Why did you go with Python for data processing instead of PHP? 2. Why not use Redis for queue/background jobs processing?
  - timvdalen 9y ago
    I agree! Lumen is my go-to framework for small web-based things right now, picking things from Laravel is so powerful. 1) At the time, Python (and with it pandas/numpy) seemed to be a good fit for the data we were working with (and the analysis was developed as a separate project from the main system that calls it). If we were to do it over right now (and we well might in the coming months) we would probably move this into PHP as well, which makes writing workers much easier. 2) Cost-wise, SQS makes a lot of sense - the system is highly distributed and cut up into parts (the description in my first comment is a bit simplified) so adding redis to the mix means adding a whole new server. For SQS, we're just paying per-message (and we don't have a _lot_ of messages, so it's cheap). Furthermore, I've built an algorithm to scale up the background workers based on the queue size of SQS. This runs in Lambda, which makes it super easy to access SQS properties versus connecting to a remote redis server. Basically, the algorithm rents new EC2 instances whenever the load is high and terminates them whenever the load is low.
zengr 9y ago
Elixir (Phoenix) in AWS Fargate.
GSGSGS 9y ago
I use Stackoverflow :)
- leonagano 9y ago
  Me too!
cperciva 9y ago
C on FreeBSD on EC2. Yes, the dynamic parts of the Tarsnap website are written in C.
- xstartup 9y ago
  Which OS do you use for development?
  - cperciva 9y ago
    Umm... FreeBSD?
  - jrowley 9y ago
    It's a fair question. Many people use FreeBSD just for servers and use other distros for their workstations.
    - cperciva 9y ago
      I guess so. It seems strange to me that anyone would want to inflict upon themselves the pain of using different environments for development vs. production, though.
      - jrowley 9y ago
        You'd think so, but I bet a large portion of developers on hacker news develop on a mac and run their apps in production on a linux distro. At least for web apps.
        cperciva 9y ago
        Could be. I know a lot of Mac owners who only ever do three things directly in OS X though: Run a web browser, use video conferencing software, and launch linux and BSD virtual machines.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  Thanks for your work on the ec2 AMIs. Just deployed a lambda script that spins up a FreeBSD ec2 image that checks out, compiles, and runs the contents of a dynamically provided git url, with dynamically specified pkg and pip dependencies to make my own long-running FreeBSD-based lambda-esque service for some continuous deployment. Wouldn’t have been possible without the ec2 images and the configinit magic. -mqudsi@neosmart
dejv 9y ago
Rails monolith, jQuery for some user interaction (new features are starting to use Vue.js). Hosting on Linode. Capistrano for deployments. Nothing special, but it gets the job done.
- xstartup 9y ago
  Which service do you use for hosting your repository?
  - dejv 9y ago
    Github
owaislone 9y ago
Python, Django, Go, Lambda, ECS, EC2, TS/JS, React
asplake 9y ago
Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, sklearn, numpy, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, Postgres (on RDS). PowerPoint ;-)
mittermayr 9y ago
Plain Ruby + Sinatra+ Puma + MySQL (ConnectionPool) + Sidekiq on Redis for the back-end. Sinatra/ERB for low-traffic sites, and ReactJS on S3 for more traffic on the front-end. I always like to err on the side of common denominator, rather than adding as many 'currently hip' tools as possible. Every time I try new things, it eventually brings me back to this set of tools.
bgdkbtv 9y ago
We use Laravel for the backend and VueJS on the front end. Forge/Envoyer for deployments. Amazon S3 for storage, db/redis for queue processing. Great setup, a lot of the headache is taken out and lets us focus on the development aspects of creating software.
Davetron 9y ago
ReactJS front-end, Grails back-end API with a PostgreSQL DB deployed on AWS.
yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
Haskell & Elm. Deployed to AWS with NixOps. Persisted with PosgreSQL and Redis. Code hosted in either Bitbucket or GitHbub. Tasks managed with Trello and email. Occasional sync meetings over appear.in or Zoom (I travel).
- vaibhavsagar 9y ago
  This is my favourite stack here by far. What are your pain points?
  - yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
    NixOps supposedly supports several hosting providers, but the DigitalOcean integration is currently broken. AWS works great, but it's annoying to be forced into that choice by the tool. Haskell and Elm both work great, but I can imagine in future using something like Haste or PureScript Bridge; it'd be nice to work with both the backend and UI as a single project. Not a pain currently, but this is a nice to have. Biggest pain is documentation. Haskell stuff is documented, but more hand-holdy examples would be ideal. OTOH, some language communities have a culture of writing documentation that is too hand-holdy, flooded with emojis, and is generally frustratingly infantilising. I'd like Haskell to strike a balance between the two. I'm optimistic we'll get there eventually.
    - thepratt 9y ago
      Have you run into design decision limitations with Elm yet?
      - yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
        Nope. Not in any of the several products I've put in production with Elm. There have been times when I've needed more things than Elm provides — one time I needed a library for parsing a streaming JSON response — but the JS interop through ports works just fine.
tablet 9y ago
Context: https://fibery.io https://fibery.io - Work management platform for SMB Stack: Clojure PostgreSQL Kafka React Javascript
shoshin23 9y ago
Company - www.LetsEnvision.com Stack: Swift, Obj-C Python C++ MongoDB
zuzuleinen 9y ago
Backend - Golang Frontend - React app DB: MySQL
- xstartup 9y ago
  How do you do migrations with Golang? Which ORM do you use?
  - abdelm 9y ago
    This may be useful: https://github.com/mattes/migrate https://github.com/mattes/migrate
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Seconded. I use it with the go-bindata backend and Postgres driver. Some notes: - Migrations are written in plain SQL, so there may be portability issues if you need to support multiple DBs. (Or you need to write the same migration once per supported SQL dialect.) - It does not `CREATE DATABASE` for you when applying the first migration. For my app that uses Postgres, I wrote some extra code to do that. Feel free to copy if you like: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f9f7c2452652c475d/main.go#L145-L178 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f...
  - zuzuleinen 9y ago
    For ORM we use GORM: http://gorm.io http://gorm.io For migrations we use goose: https://github.com/pressly/goose https://github.com/pressly/goose
jamil7 9y ago
Node.js / Express, Nginx, RethinkDB, Docker, tiny bit of Go. Preact / hyperscript frontend.
rayalez 9y ago
As an indie founder, I prefer to use Node/Express and React/Redux, hosted on Digital Ocean. Really fast and convenient to build SaaSes and single page apps like: https://nulis.io https://nulis.io https://helix.startuplab.io https://helix.startuplab.io If I don't need a lot of fancy interactive functionality, and am building more of a usual web 2.0 website, I sometimes go with Django/PostgreSQL: https://fictionhub.io https://fictionhub.io http://webacademy.io http://webacademy.io http://lumiverse.io http://lumiverse.io For static blogs and content websites, I go with pelican generated sites simply served with nginx: https://startuplab.io/blog https://startuplab.io/blog
- t3h2mas 9y ago
  helix reminds me of https://github.com/ioddly/meditations/ https://github.com/ioddly/meditations/ I'm curious if you prefer Django over js alternatives for any particular reason?
realPubkey 9y ago
- java - dojo - IE11 - jenkins - we are not a startup :)
beaconstudios 9y ago
Node and React/Redux, both with TypeScript. Starting to wish I'd learned PureScript so I didn't have to make do with Ramda for scaling.
pritambarhate 9y ago
Java (SparkJava Web Framework), PostgreSQL, Redis, Angular 4, S3 for files. Have also used Spring, Jersey, SQS, MongoDB in previous projects.
laci27 9y ago
Make your MVP in whatever language you know best. Don't chase after buzzwords or trends. I personally use PHP, mySQL and Redis with nginx proxy, cause I know these the best. Probably nodejs would be a bit faster, but then again, I would probably make 100s of mistakes, not to mention god knows how many bugs, because I'm not 100% familiar with the language.
ozren1983 9y ago
Python/Django, PostgreSQL, React, EC2.
ralala 9y ago
Server-Side: - Python with Pyramid - SQLAlchemy with Postgres + Cassandra - Celery with Redis - Swagger Client-Side: Mostly React, React-Native
mbuechmann 9y ago
I use Go + MongoDB. Hosting via Docker/Kubernetes in GKE. Gitlab is used for VCS, CI/CD and issue tracker.
artworx 9y ago
We are doing live video streaming, mostly Java and React. Our backend is running on Kubernetes in Google Cloud. Streaming servers are hosted in AWS, but we are preparing to move to dedicated servers. We also use Consul for service discovery and statistics for streaming servers.
HarveyKandola 9y ago
We're building/selling "enterprise" software. Multi-tenanted single codebase supporting both SaaS and self-host (Windows, Linux, macOS). Stack: - EmberJS front-end - Go backend (static binaries that embed EmberJS GUI) - MySQL database - AWS EC2 pulling Docker images from Docker Hub
bottled_poe 9y ago
I run a development shop in Australia and work with a lot of startups to build their MVP. This puts us in a position to recommend our preferred stack: - Django backend - React frontend - Native mobile iOS/Android OR Xamarin (depends on project) - PostgreSQL - AWS (Elastic Beanstalk) OR Heroku - S3
- hobbes_calvin 9y ago
  I am an experienced Django developer, but just starting with React. Can you point towards any source which suggests good project setup and structure?
  - bottled_poe 9y ago
    I have not personally been involved with a lot of the development for the past couple of years. I could ask a colleague. Send me an email - james@blitzm.com
- moltar 9y ago
  How do you find clients? I want to do something similar. Thank you.
  - bottled_poe 9y ago
    You have the right approach. Sales first - send me an email (see profile)
- 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  What's your opinion on .NET Core?
- jxub 9y ago
  Do you serve React frontend directly from Django or from a dedicated Node.js or other server?
bitL 9y ago
Python, Flask, Tensorflow, Keras, Amazon MWS, Boto
baystep 9y ago
Backend: Java (phasing out), Go (phasing in), Postgres, Redis, all on Ubuntu EC2's. Frontend: JS (TypeScript/ES6), React, ReactNative, SASS, all Webpack'ed (except RN). I think it's a fairly light stack but am happy with it. I would use this as the starting point for pretty much every project.
- swah 9y ago
  I love Go, but always feel it is not very productive for web app backends. What about you ? Do you use an ORM w/ Go?
  - kanishkdudeja 9y ago
    In my opinion, it's great for web app backends as well. The net/http library suffices. Just that you might need a library for routing like https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter
    - swah 9y ago
      Yes - that part of the server code is great in Go. I use go-chi.
      - baystep 9y ago
        Gorilla Mux isn't bad either and is pretty tried and tested. Also Go is one of the few (if not only?) languages with HTTP/2 built in to the standard library. Not to mention the gRPC over TLS that comes stock as well.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Go optimizes for readability and lack of surprise at the expense of conciseness, which is why you feel it may not be productive. I think that the better maintainability vs. something like Rails massively outweighs the upfront cost of having to type more code, but other people might judge differently. Furthermore, Go emphasizes "doing it your own way". There are no big web frameworks in Go, you just pull in some small and rather orthogonal libraries and make up your own abstractions to tie them together as you build your application. The end result is something that's highly optimized for your personal needs, but it requires a certain way of thinking and working that's not for everyone (and not always desirable). Some people do better when given more freedom; those should prefer Go etc. Some people do better when working within a well-known set of rules; those should prefer Rails etc. Regarding ORM, I use Gorp (https://github.com/go-gorp/gorp https://github.com/go-gorp/gorp) for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and basic SELECTs (e.g `SELECT * FROM things WHERE id = $1`), but when doing complex reports, I write SQL by hand [1] because ORMs are usually too constrained. I always feel like I know more SQL than the people who designed the ORM. [1] For example: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f9f7c2452652c475d/pkg/reports/domain.go#L100 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f...
kapauldo 9y ago
Rails, mongo, elasticsearch.
yread 9y ago
SQLite, ASP.NET Core, jQuery, Bootstrap. Kinda boring but works
marianoguerra 9y ago
Erlang in the Backend on DigitalOcean. React/immutable/requirejs/bootstrap in the frontend. The integrations with payments and similar are Java on AWS Lambda.
nouney 9y ago
Backend: - Go, NodeJS - Redis, MongoDB, Tile38, Neo4j - GKE - Traefik Frontend (mobile app): - React-Native
- t3h2mas 9y ago
  How has Traefik worked for you? Is it serving production traffic?
notmarkus 9y ago
Elixir, React, Postgres hosted through Heroku.
hungerstrike 9y ago
Backend: Node.js, SQL Server, Redis. Frontend: React, Redux, Bootstrap via create-react-app.
tmaly 9y ago
for my food site I use nginx as a proxy, Go for the server and Postgresql as the database. I deploy to digitalocean
l2cluster 9y ago
Ruby, Scala, Postgres on AWS
twovi 9y ago
Python Flask, SQLite, some front-end framework that is available at the time, Linux Digital Ocean
0x54MUR41 9y ago
Backend: Python, Go, Java Mobile development: Android and React Native Database: MySQL and PostgreSQL Redis and also RabbitMQ.
- samat 9y ago
  Could you please share your experience with RN? Have you created an app from scratch or added RN to existing native app?
  - 0x54MUR41 9y ago
    I have never created an apps or worked with React Native before. But, I would share the experience from my colleague who develops Android apps in our startup. We are a startup that helps people in the middle-low income using technology. The people who use our technology usually have Android mobile phone with minimum specifications (Jelly Beans, low memory and spaces). At first launch, we used Android Native to build our application. The application meets our costumer needs since we consider to build an apps that consumes low memory and spaces. Then our costumer are growing and the features are complex, we use React Native to existing native app. Our application now consumes memory and spaces two times than Native one. Beside that, sometimes when you use a library, Native is more stable than React Native.
joojia 9y ago
Python, Django, Postgres, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, Redis, MySQL, Nginx, HAproxy, Elasticsearch, Spark, React.
pkstn 9y ago
Ubuntu, node.js, MongoDB, Mongoose, express, RE:DOM, stylus, nib, pug, ...
nickh9000 9y ago
(serious) hobby project: beanstalk, vertx, java, dynamodb, elasticache. Frontend: Kotlin.
latte 9y ago
Started with Python + Django + MySQL, hosted on PythonAnywhere. At some point, decided to rewrite the project from scratch in Clojure using MongoDB, since Clojure was much better suited for solving the problem in question (modelling the grammar of a natural language - https://www.pealim.com https://www.pealim.com) and MongoDB was better suited for the constantly evolving grammar spec. The rewrite took around two months and I believe that it was the right decision, though I still miss some of the things that Django provides for free (like the admin interface and user authentication). I also use ClojureScript + Reagent, though not yet on the user-facing parts of the app.
- senorsmile 9y ago
  pealim.com is my most visited site (according to the chrome home screen). I could not have learned עברית so quickly the last couple of years without it. תודה רבה!!!
habyte 9y ago
As a data company specialized in real time statistics for combat sports, we've built an API with Node.js + Hapi and MySQL. The front-end was developed with Vue.js.
simonsarris 9y ago
We sell diagramming libraries, most notably (by sales volume) a JavaScript diagramming library: https://gojs.net https://gojs.net Our stack is: we don't care. One of us spun up a couple AWS resources and a windows machine with IIS because that's what he knew how to configure the quickest. It seems like it would be a waste of time to spend any more time thinking about it until we have a real need. We have some orders database stuff we wrote ourselves ages ago with SQL Server that hasn't needed significant changes in 10+ years. In other words, to us, the stack is whatever makes itself disappear the soonest so we can work on the actual product. Nothing fancy, nothing new, nothing changed for the sake of it. If our product touched the stack more, we'd spend more time on it, but only insomuch as it was the product (if the product is a speedy website, etc). Our workflow/cycle is all JavaScript based for the JS product. We push release with a gulp script I wrote.
busymichael 9y ago
https://DNDEmail.com https://DNDEmail.com is do not disturb for your Gmail. We use Python on Google App Engine. Google's NDB datasource. The Chrome Extension is written in JavaScript. Wordpress on wpengine.com for the front-end brochure website. I've written about how to simplify your MVP stack[https://dndemail.com/2018/01/30/how-to-simplify-your-app-platform-and-dump-the-co-founder/ https://dndemail.com/2018/01/30/how-to-simplify-your-app-pla...] to speed up launching.
- bkovacev 9y ago
  Webapp2 or something else? :) It's been so long I've seen someone use python on GAE, it's ridiculous. It was my first ever "real world" programming project back in 2011.
  - busymichael 9y ago
    Yes, webapp2 with Jinja for the front end. For my endpoints I am just pushing json through webapp2. Simple to use and administer.
bfrog 9y ago
Rust on Linux with Cassandra, the strong typing without a GC is a boon to stability and performance (my own sanity). Cassandra is fantastic, looking forward to using Scylla at some point.
- jxub 9y ago
  Would you mind if I asked what type of application do you have that needs the kind of write performance? Also, are there any Rust drivers for Scylla? This stack looks awesome in terms of pure perf.
  - bfrog 9y ago
    Ads (matching, serving, recording analytics), Scylla uses the same protocol Cassandra does. I've been using the CDRS crate which is pretty nice. It has a few rough spots that I've started to smooth over and send PRs for when I get a chance.
anonfunction 9y ago
Backend API servers: Golang, Python, Redis Frontend Web Servers: PHP (Laraval), JS (React), MySQL
mariushop 9y ago
Meteor + React + MongoDB got eddtor.com really quick out of the door. But after 5+ years of maintaining my shipped products (I'm a freelancer, ME-JUST-ME kind of dev), my absolute happiness in customer service & maintanance was the most boring stack of all: PHP + HTML + JS + MySQL/MongoDB. Vanilla FTW.
- hodl 9y ago
  MVC framework?
git-pull 9y ago
For anyone here interested, there's a website that has a nice UX for this: https://stackshare.io/ https://stackshare.io/ What I like about it is you can add open source projects to your stack, not just SAAS services. And also, you can split your server-side stack from your personal tools.
Johnc314 9y ago
for what? if its for analytics? we use Panoply and Chart.io sources are all over the place
petraeus 9y ago
i'd like to see this question answered only by companies grossing over $100 million and less side-dev passion projects.
- tomascot 9y ago
  COBOL, C++ and Java?
- senorsmile 9y ago
  My company is well over that number. I probably only know about a quarter of the stacks... And even within those, there is a lot of variation. There are java heavy stacks, python heavy stacks, nodejs, Ruby. Lots of systems level stuff in C, C++, Java. I can't even speak to any front end frameworks (although I know there are at least a few). Almost every other application you could think of is in use somewhere... Nagiod, Sensu, Icinga, OpenNMS, memcached, redis, nginx, Apache, redshift, MySQL, postgresql, rabbitmq, zeromq, Ansible, Chef... This is likely barely scratching the surface.
- iends 9y ago
  Don't companies over $100 million use almost every major stack?
standyro 9y ago
We're not exactly a startup, but a small growing data science, analyst, and engineering team in a bigger company. You name it... but a typical data and web stack. OS/Distros: FreeBSD and Linux (CoreOS and CentOS) Languages: Python (Data Science) & Javascript (Front End) Frameworks: Flask, Django, Angular, React, Bokeh, Tensorflow, Scikit-learn Container Services: Docker, Mesos/Marathon/DCOS (currently testing Kubernetes in GKE - Google Cloud) Databases: Redshift, Postgres, Cassandra/Scylla Deployment Tools: Jenkins, Github, Gitlab (different team) All running in AWS deployed through CloudFormation and Salt. There's even a Windows Server 2016 instance thrown in there for good measure running Tableau. That's the most reliable part of our stack. </rolls-eyes>
- huangbong 9y ago
  Node.js/GraphQL/Next.js/PostgreSQL/AWS Lambada (via up). Entirely serverless stack with the application state residing in the DB and a JWT to identify the user. No OS, containers, kubernetes, instances, etc to deal with other than a single RDS instance.
lukeHeuer 9y ago
On https://www.stackpair.com https://www.stackpair.com I'm using Go, Rails, Redis, Memcached, Minio, Sidekiq, Postgres, and Kubernetes on GKE. The iOS app is Cordova: https://www.stackpair.com/apps/ios https://www.stackpair.com/apps/ios For storage and backups I use Hubic and Rclone. Hubic is the best deal I've been able to find for LTS: 10TB for €5/m.
clementmas 9y ago
PHP (Laravel), JS (Vue + Vue Router + Vuex), MySQL. Keeps things simple.
Can_Not 9y ago
Using postgre, redis, FeathersJS, Nuxtjs, and VueJS. The near real-time updates and sever side rendering is great.
T3RMINATED 9y ago
Microsoft Products all the way... only way to scale.
vladholubiev 9y ago
At Shelf [1] we use: Front-end: React, Redux, Vue.js, Meteor.js. Served from S3 via CDN (AWS Cloudfront) Back-end: Node.js in AWS Lambda with AWS API Gateway, also Node.js in Docker hosted on AWS ECS, spot instances Storage: MongoDB (on mLab), Elasticsearch (on Elastic Cloud), S3 Other: GitHub, Circle CI, Terraform, Jest [1] https://shelf.io/ https://shelf.io/
mattmanser 9y ago
My present client has ASP.Net/SQL Server/Azure. Not the greatest fan of Azure, mainly because of the admin portal, but apart from that it's been good. Constantly get told by their clients that we do everything much faster than other SASS providers they work with, like weeks where others have turn arounds of months.

88 points by xstartup 9y ago

haasted 9y ago

You might find some interesting answers at https://stackshare.io/stacks https://stackshare.io/stacks

sdca 9y ago
Stackshare is more informative than a majority of the replies in this thread that aren't stating their startup's name or use case.

juststeve 9y ago

windows 200, ms access for the backend, ASP (VB) for the frontend. we also do java applets

therealmarv 9y ago
you probably meant Windows 2000 ;)
- jxub 9y ago
  Windows Trajan emperor edition has a really good firewall up there (sorry for bad joke, had to make it).
  - juststeve 9y ago
    Windows 200AD :)
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      :P I still write orchestral music with Cubase on a 1999 IBM PC running Windows ME. Writing this comment on my new (2005) computer with OmniWeb browser, os x 10.4. Hmm maybe I should be in healthcare.
mhd 9y ago
Healthcare sector?
- FrozenTuna 9y ago
  Healthcare Dev here. Its getting better! We finally ended support for IE8 last year!
  - andrei_says_ 9y ago
    Do you still support ie9&10 or have you moved on to 11?

jpgvm 9y ago

Not sure we qualify as a startup anymore but our stack is Kotlin + Gradle + Kubernetes on GKE. Definitely the best stack I have worked with thus far.

2_listerine_pls 9y ago
what framework?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

thepratt 9y ago

We use PHP. PureScript Haskell Postgres :) all on kubernetes atop AWS.

iamd3vil 9y ago

We use Elixir, Go, C++ for backend and JS, Java / Kotlin, C# for frontend. We also use Postgresql, Rabbitmq and Redis.

xstartup 9y ago
How are you managing deployment of these many technologies? What does your CI/CD workflow like?
- iamd3vil 9y ago
  We mostly use docker with docker swarm. Currently exploring moving to Rancher. Also we use Gitlab CI for CI/CD. Our workflow looks like this: a release is tagged, CI tests and builds a docker image which is pushed to our private registry and then we use ansible to deploy the new release on our servers. We mostly use onprem for our production and can't use any cloud with the regulations and limitations we have.

timvdalen 9y ago

We [1] use a Laravel back-end for the main system, hosted on autoscaling EC2 behind a load balancer. Our front-end web application is built on Angular, running on S3 behind CloudFront. Since we process a lot of data, we use background jobs (with SQS as a broker) to perform our analyses. The actual data processing and wrangling is done in Python. We have released some parts of our systems as open source projects [2], [3], [4]. [1]: https://odysseyattribution.co/ https://odysseyattribution.co/ [2]: https://github.com/code-orange/telemachy https://github.com/code-orange/telemachy [3]: https://github.com/code-orange/jot https://github.com/code-orange/jot [3]: https://github.com/code-orange/statuspage https://github.com/code-orange/statuspage

bgdkbtv 9y ago
Great to see Laravel in this discussion! Beautiful framework. A couple of questions: 1. Why did you go with Python for data processing instead of PHP? 2. Why not use Redis for queue/background jobs processing?
- timvdalen 9y ago
  I agree! Lumen is my go-to framework for small web-based things right now, picking things from Laravel is so powerful. 1) At the time, Python (and with it pandas/numpy) seemed to be a good fit for the data we were working with (and the analysis was developed as a separate project from the main system that calls it). If we were to do it over right now (and we well might in the coming months) we would probably move this into PHP as well, which makes writing workers much easier. 2) Cost-wise, SQS makes a lot of sense - the system is highly distributed and cut up into parts (the description in my first comment is a bit simplified) so adding redis to the mix means adding a whole new server. For SQS, we're just paying per-message (and we don't have a _lot_ of messages, so it's cheap). Furthermore, I've built an algorithm to scale up the background workers based on the queue size of SQS. This runs in Lambda, which makes it super easy to access SQS properties versus connecting to a remote redis server. Basically, the algorithm rents new EC2 instances whenever the load is high and terminates them whenever the load is low.

zengr 9y ago

Elixir (Phoenix) in AWS Fargate.

GSGSGS 9y ago

I use Stackoverflow :)

leonagano 9y ago
Me too!

cperciva 9y ago

C on FreeBSD on EC2. Yes, the dynamic parts of the Tarsnap website are written in C.

xstartup 9y ago
Which OS do you use for development?
- cperciva 9y ago
  Umm... FreeBSD?
- jrowley 9y ago
  It's a fair question. Many people use FreeBSD just for servers and use other distros for their workstations.
  - cperciva 9y ago
    I guess so. It seems strange to me that anyone would want to inflict upon themselves the pain of using different environments for development vs. production, though.
    - jrowley 9y ago
      You'd think so, but I bet a large portion of developers on hacker news develop on a mac and run their apps in production on a linux distro. At least for web apps.
      - cperciva 9y ago
        Could be. I know a lot of Mac owners who only ever do three things directly in OS X though: Run a web browser, use video conferencing software, and launch linux and BSD virtual machines.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
Thanks for your work on the ec2 AMIs. Just deployed a lambda script that spins up a FreeBSD ec2 image that checks out, compiles, and runs the contents of a dynamically provided git url, with dynamically specified pkg and pip dependencies to make my own long-running FreeBSD-based lambda-esque service for some continuous deployment. Wouldn’t have been possible without the ec2 images and the configinit magic. -mqudsi@neosmart

dejv 9y ago

Rails monolith, jQuery for some user interaction (new features are starting to use Vue.js). Hosting on Linode. Capistrano for deployments. Nothing special, but it gets the job done.

xstartup 9y ago
Which service do you use for hosting your repository?
- dejv 9y ago
  Github

owaislone 9y ago

Python, Django, Go, Lambda, ECS, EC2, TS/JS, React

asplake 9y ago

Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy, sklearn, numpy, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, Postgres (on RDS). PowerPoint ;-)

mittermayr 9y ago

Plain Ruby + Sinatra+ Puma + MySQL (ConnectionPool) + Sidekiq on Redis for the back-end. Sinatra/ERB for low-traffic sites, and ReactJS on S3 for more traffic on the front-end. I always like to err on the side of common denominator, rather than adding as many 'currently hip' tools as possible. Every time I try new things, it eventually brings me back to this set of tools.

bgdkbtv 9y ago

We use Laravel for the backend and VueJS on the front end. Forge/Envoyer for deployments. Amazon S3 for storage, db/redis for queue processing. Great setup, a lot of the headache is taken out and lets us focus on the development aspects of creating software.

Davetron 9y ago

ReactJS front-end, Grails back-end API with a PostgreSQL DB deployed on AWS.

yakshaving_jgt 9y ago

Haskell & Elm. Deployed to AWS with NixOps. Persisted with PosgreSQL and Redis. Code hosted in either Bitbucket or GitHbub. Tasks managed with Trello and email. Occasional sync meetings over appear.in or Zoom (I travel).

vaibhavsagar 9y ago
This is my favourite stack here by far. What are your pain points?
- yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
  NixOps supposedly supports several hosting providers, but the DigitalOcean integration is currently broken. AWS works great, but it's annoying to be forced into that choice by the tool. Haskell and Elm both work great, but I can imagine in future using something like Haste or PureScript Bridge; it'd be nice to work with both the backend and UI as a single project. Not a pain currently, but this is a nice to have. Biggest pain is documentation. Haskell stuff is documented, but more hand-holdy examples would be ideal. OTOH, some language communities have a culture of writing documentation that is too hand-holdy, flooded with emojis, and is generally frustratingly infantilising. I'd like Haskell to strike a balance between the two. I'm optimistic we'll get there eventually.
  - thepratt 9y ago
    Have you run into design decision limitations with Elm yet?
    - yakshaving_jgt 9y ago
      Nope. Not in any of the several products I've put in production with Elm. There have been times when I've needed more things than Elm provides — one time I needed a library for parsing a streaming JSON response — but the JS interop through ports works just fine.

tablet 9y ago

Context: https://fibery.io https://fibery.io - Work management platform for SMB Stack: Clojure PostgreSQL Kafka React Javascript

shoshin23 9y ago

Company - www.LetsEnvision.com Stack: Swift, Obj-C Python C++ MongoDB

zuzuleinen 9y ago

Backend - Golang Frontend - React app DB: MySQL

xstartup 9y ago
How do you do migrations with Golang? Which ORM do you use?
- abdelm 9y ago
  This may be useful: https://github.com/mattes/migrate https://github.com/mattes/migrate
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Seconded. I use it with the go-bindata backend and Postgres driver. Some notes: - Migrations are written in plain SQL, so there may be portability issues if you need to support multiple DBs. (Or you need to write the same migration once per supported SQL dialect.) - It does not `CREATE DATABASE` for you when applying the first migration. For my app that uses Postgres, I wrote some extra code to do that. Feel free to copy if you like: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f9f7c2452652c475d/main.go#L145-L178 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f...
- zuzuleinen 9y ago
  For ORM we use GORM: http://gorm.io http://gorm.io For migrations we use goose: https://github.com/pressly/goose https://github.com/pressly/goose

jamil7 9y ago

Node.js / Express, Nginx, RethinkDB, Docker, tiny bit of Go. Preact / hyperscript frontend.

rayalez 9y ago

As an indie founder, I prefer to use Node/Express and React/Redux, hosted on Digital Ocean. Really fast and convenient to build SaaSes and single page apps like: https://nulis.io https://nulis.io https://helix.startuplab.io https://helix.startuplab.io If I don't need a lot of fancy interactive functionality, and am building more of a usual web 2.0 website, I sometimes go with Django/PostgreSQL: https://fictionhub.io https://fictionhub.io http://webacademy.io http://webacademy.io http://lumiverse.io http://lumiverse.io For static blogs and content websites, I go with pelican generated sites simply served with nginx: https://startuplab.io/blog https://startuplab.io/blog

t3h2mas 9y ago
helix reminds me of https://github.com/ioddly/meditations/ https://github.com/ioddly/meditations/ I'm curious if you prefer Django over js alternatives for any particular reason?

realPubkey 9y ago

- java - dojo - IE11 - jenkins - we are not a startup :)

beaconstudios 9y ago

Node and React/Redux, both with TypeScript. Starting to wish I'd learned PureScript so I didn't have to make do with Ramda for scaling.

pritambarhate 9y ago

Java (SparkJava Web Framework), PostgreSQL, Redis, Angular 4, S3 for files. Have also used Spring, Jersey, SQS, MongoDB in previous projects.

laci27 9y ago

Make your MVP in whatever language you know best. Don't chase after buzzwords or trends. I personally use PHP, mySQL and Redis with nginx proxy, cause I know these the best. Probably nodejs would be a bit faster, but then again, I would probably make 100s of mistakes, not to mention god knows how many bugs, because I'm not 100% familiar with the language.

ozren1983 9y ago

Python/Django, PostgreSQL, React, EC2.

ralala 9y ago

Server-Side: - Python with Pyramid - SQLAlchemy with Postgres + Cassandra - Celery with Redis - Swagger Client-Side: Mostly React, React-Native

mbuechmann 9y ago

I use Go + MongoDB. Hosting via Docker/Kubernetes in GKE. Gitlab is used for VCS, CI/CD and issue tracker.

artworx 9y ago

We are doing live video streaming, mostly Java and React. Our backend is running on Kubernetes in Google Cloud. Streaming servers are hosted in AWS, but we are preparing to move to dedicated servers. We also use Consul for service discovery and statistics for streaming servers.

HarveyKandola 9y ago

We're building/selling "enterprise" software. Multi-tenanted single codebase supporting both SaaS and self-host (Windows, Linux, macOS). Stack: - EmberJS front-end - Go backend (static binaries that embed EmberJS GUI) - MySQL database - AWS EC2 pulling Docker images from Docker Hub

bottled_poe 9y ago

I run a development shop in Australia and work with a lot of startups to build their MVP. This puts us in a position to recommend our preferred stack: - Django backend - React frontend - Native mobile iOS/Android OR Xamarin (depends on project) - PostgreSQL - AWS (Elastic Beanstalk) OR Heroku - S3

hobbes_calvin 9y ago
I am an experienced Django developer, but just starting with React. Can you point towards any source which suggests good project setup and structure?
- bottled_poe 9y ago
  I have not personally been involved with a lot of the development for the past couple of years. I could ask a colleague. Send me an email - james@blitzm.com
moltar 9y ago
How do you find clients? I want to do something similar. Thank you.
- bottled_poe 9y ago
  You have the right approach. Sales first - send me an email (see profile)
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
What's your opinion on .NET Core?
jxub 9y ago
Do you serve React frontend directly from Django or from a dedicated Node.js or other server?

bitL 9y ago

Python, Flask, Tensorflow, Keras, Amazon MWS, Boto

baystep 9y ago

Backend: Java (phasing out), Go (phasing in), Postgres, Redis, all on Ubuntu EC2's. Frontend: JS (TypeScript/ES6), React, ReactNative, SASS, all Webpack'ed (except RN). I think it's a fairly light stack but am happy with it. I would use this as the starting point for pretty much every project.

swah 9y ago
I love Go, but always feel it is not very productive for web app backends. What about you ? Do you use an ORM w/ Go?
- kanishkdudeja 9y ago
  In my opinion, it's great for web app backends as well. The net/http library suffices. Just that you might need a library for routing like https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter
  - swah 9y ago
    Yes - that part of the server code is great in Go. I use go-chi.
    - baystep 9y ago
      Gorilla Mux isn't bad either and is pretty tried and tested. Also Go is one of the few (if not only?) languages with HTTP/2 built in to the standard library. Not to mention the gRPC over TLS that comes stock as well.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Go optimizes for readability and lack of surprise at the expense of conciseness, which is why you feel it may not be productive. I think that the better maintainability vs. something like Rails massively outweighs the upfront cost of having to type more code, but other people might judge differently. Furthermore, Go emphasizes "doing it your own way". There are no big web frameworks in Go, you just pull in some small and rather orthogonal libraries and make up your own abstractions to tie them together as you build your application. The end result is something that's highly optimized for your personal needs, but it requires a certain way of thinking and working that's not for everyone (and not always desirable). Some people do better when given more freedom; those should prefer Go etc. Some people do better when working within a well-known set of rules; those should prefer Rails etc. Regarding ORM, I use Gorp (https://github.com/go-gorp/gorp https://github.com/go-gorp/gorp) for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and basic SELECTs (e.g `SELECT * FROM things WHERE id = $1`), but when doing complex reports, I write SQL by hand [1] because ORMs are usually too constrained. I always feel like I know more SQL than the people who designed the ORM. [1] For example: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f9f7c2452652c475d/pkg/reports/domain.go#L100 https://github.com/sapcc/limes/blob/ab4245a8f195672b808f990f...

kapauldo 9y ago

Rails, mongo, elasticsearch.

yread 9y ago

SQLite, ASP.NET Core, jQuery, Bootstrap. Kinda boring but works

marianoguerra 9y ago

Erlang in the Backend on DigitalOcean. React/immutable/requirejs/bootstrap in the frontend. The integrations with payments and similar are Java on AWS Lambda.

nouney 9y ago

Backend: - Go, NodeJS - Redis, MongoDB, Tile38, Neo4j - GKE - Traefik Frontend (mobile app): - React-Native

t3h2mas 9y ago
How has Traefik worked for you? Is it serving production traffic?

notmarkus 9y ago

Elixir, React, Postgres hosted through Heroku.

hungerstrike 9y ago

Backend: Node.js, SQL Server, Redis. Frontend: React, Redux, Bootstrap via create-react-app.

tmaly 9y ago

for my food site I use nginx as a proxy, Go for the server and Postgresql as the database. I deploy to digitalocean

l2cluster 9y ago

Ruby, Scala, Postgres on AWS

twovi 9y ago

Python Flask, SQLite, some front-end framework that is available at the time, Linux Digital Ocean

0x54MUR41 9y ago

Backend: Python, Go, Java Mobile development: Android and React Native Database: MySQL and PostgreSQL Redis and also RabbitMQ.

samat 9y ago
Could you please share your experience with RN? Have you created an app from scratch or added RN to existing native app?
- 0x54MUR41 9y ago
  I have never created an apps or worked with React Native before. But, I would share the experience from my colleague who develops Android apps in our startup. We are a startup that helps people in the middle-low income using technology. The people who use our technology usually have Android mobile phone with minimum specifications (Jelly Beans, low memory and spaces). At first launch, we used Android Native to build our application. The application meets our costumer needs since we consider to build an apps that consumes low memory and spaces. Then our costumer are growing and the features are complex, we use React Native to existing native app. Our application now consumes memory and spaces two times than Native one. Beside that, sometimes when you use a library, Native is more stable than React Native.

joojia 9y ago

Python, Django, Postgres, Cassandra, RabbitMQ, Redis, MySQL, Nginx, HAproxy, Elasticsearch, Spark, React.

pkstn 9y ago

Ubuntu, node.js, MongoDB, Mongoose, express, RE:DOM, stylus, nib, pug, ...

nickh9000 9y ago

(serious) hobby project: beanstalk, vertx, java, dynamodb, elasticache. Frontend: Kotlin.

latte 9y ago

Started with Python + Django + MySQL, hosted on PythonAnywhere. At some point, decided to rewrite the project from scratch in Clojure using MongoDB, since Clojure was much better suited for solving the problem in question (modelling the grammar of a natural language - https://www.pealim.com https://www.pealim.com) and MongoDB was better suited for the constantly evolving grammar spec. The rewrite took around two months and I believe that it was the right decision, though I still miss some of the things that Django provides for free (like the admin interface and user authentication). I also use ClojureScript + Reagent, though not yet on the user-facing parts of the app.

senorsmile 9y ago
pealim.com is my most visited site (according to the chrome home screen). I could not have learned עברית so quickly the last couple of years without it. תודה רבה!!!

habyte 9y ago

As a data company specialized in real time statistics for combat sports, we've built an API with Node.js + Hapi and MySQL. The front-end was developed with Vue.js.

simonsarris 9y ago

We sell diagramming libraries, most notably (by sales volume) a JavaScript diagramming library: https://gojs.net https://gojs.net Our stack is: we don't care. One of us spun up a couple AWS resources and a windows machine with IIS because that's what he knew how to configure the quickest. It seems like it would be a waste of time to spend any more time thinking about it until we have a real need. We have some orders database stuff we wrote ourselves ages ago with SQL Server that hasn't needed significant changes in 10+ years. In other words, to us, the stack is whatever makes itself disappear the soonest so we can work on the actual product. Nothing fancy, nothing new, nothing changed for the sake of it. If our product touched the stack more, we'd spend more time on it, but only insomuch as it was the product (if the product is a speedy website, etc). Our workflow/cycle is all JavaScript based for the JS product. We push release with a gulp script I wrote.

busymichael 9y ago

https://DNDEmail.com https://DNDEmail.com is do not disturb for your Gmail. We use Python on Google App Engine. Google's NDB datasource. The Chrome Extension is written in JavaScript. Wordpress on wpengine.com for the front-end brochure website. I've written about how to simplify your MVP stack[https://dndemail.com/2018/01/30/how-to-simplify-your-app-platform-and-dump-the-co-founder/ https://dndemail.com/2018/01/30/how-to-simplify-your-app-pla...] to speed up launching.

bkovacev 9y ago
Webapp2 or something else? :) It's been so long I've seen someone use python on GAE, it's ridiculous. It was my first ever "real world" programming project back in 2011.
- busymichael 9y ago
  Yes, webapp2 with Jinja for the front end. For my endpoints I am just pushing json through webapp2. Simple to use and administer.

bfrog 9y ago

Rust on Linux with Cassandra, the strong typing without a GC is a boon to stability and performance (my own sanity). Cassandra is fantastic, looking forward to using Scylla at some point.

jxub 9y ago
Would you mind if I asked what type of application do you have that needs the kind of write performance? Also, are there any Rust drivers for Scylla? This stack looks awesome in terms of pure perf.
- bfrog 9y ago
  Ads (matching, serving, recording analytics), Scylla uses the same protocol Cassandra does. I've been using the CDRS crate which is pretty nice. It has a few rough spots that I've started to smooth over and send PRs for when I get a chance.

anonfunction 9y ago

Backend API servers: Golang, Python, Redis Frontend Web Servers: PHP (Laraval), JS (React), MySQL

mariushop 9y ago

Meteor + React + MongoDB got eddtor.com really quick out of the door. But after 5+ years of maintaining my shipped products (I'm a freelancer, ME-JUST-ME kind of dev), my absolute happiness in customer service & maintanance was the most boring stack of all: PHP + HTML + JS + MySQL/MongoDB. Vanilla FTW.

hodl 9y ago
MVC framework?

git-pull 9y ago

For anyone here interested, there's a website that has a nice UX for this: https://stackshare.io/ https://stackshare.io/ What I like about it is you can add open source projects to your stack, not just SAAS services. And also, you can split your server-side stack from your personal tools.

Johnc314 9y ago

for what? if its for analytics? we use Panoply and Chart.io sources are all over the place

petraeus 9y ago

i'd like to see this question answered only by companies grossing over $100 million and less side-dev passion projects.

tomascot 9y ago
COBOL, C++ and Java?
senorsmile 9y ago
My company is well over that number. I probably only know about a quarter of the stacks... And even within those, there is a lot of variation. There are java heavy stacks, python heavy stacks, nodejs, Ruby. Lots of systems level stuff in C, C++, Java. I can't even speak to any front end frameworks (although I know there are at least a few). Almost every other application you could think of is in use somewhere... Nagiod, Sensu, Icinga, OpenNMS, memcached, redis, nginx, Apache, redshift, MySQL, postgresql, rabbitmq, zeromq, Ansible, Chef... This is likely barely scratching the surface.
iends 9y ago
Don't companies over $100 million use almost every major stack?

standyro 9y ago

We're not exactly a startup, but a small growing data science, analyst, and engineering team in a bigger company. You name it... but a typical data and web stack. OS/Distros: FreeBSD and Linux (CoreOS and CentOS) Languages: Python (Data Science) & Javascript (Front End) Frameworks: Flask, Django, Angular, React, Bokeh, Tensorflow, Scikit-learn Container Services: Docker, Mesos/Marathon/DCOS (currently testing Kubernetes in GKE - Google Cloud) Databases: Redshift, Postgres, Cassandra/Scylla Deployment Tools: Jenkins, Github, Gitlab (different team) All running in AWS deployed through CloudFormation and Salt. There's even a Windows Server 2016 instance thrown in there for good measure running Tableau. That's the most reliable part of our stack. </rolls-eyes>

huangbong 9y ago
Node.js/GraphQL/Next.js/PostgreSQL/AWS Lambada (via up). Entirely serverless stack with the application state residing in the DB and a JWT to identify the user. No OS, containers, kubernetes, instances, etc to deal with other than a single RDS instance.

lukeHeuer 9y ago

On https://www.stackpair.com https://www.stackpair.com I'm using Go, Rails, Redis, Memcached, Minio, Sidekiq, Postgres, and Kubernetes on GKE. The iOS app is Cordova: https://www.stackpair.com/apps/ios https://www.stackpair.com/apps/ios For storage and backups I use Hubic and Rclone. Hubic is the best deal I've been able to find for LTS: 10TB for €5/m.

clementmas 9y ago

PHP (Laravel), JS (Vue + Vue Router + Vuex), MySQL. Keeps things simple.

Can_Not 9y ago

Using postgre, redis, FeathersJS, Nuxtjs, and VueJS. The near real-time updates and sever side rendering is great.

T3RMINATED 9y ago

Microsoft Products all the way... only way to scale.

vladholubiev 9y ago

At Shelf [1] we use: Front-end: React, Redux, Vue.js, Meteor.js. Served from S3 via CDN (AWS Cloudfront) Back-end: Node.js in AWS Lambda with AWS API Gateway, also Node.js in Docker hosted on AWS ECS, spot instances Storage: MongoDB (on mLab), Elasticsearch (on Elastic Cloud), S3 Other: GitHub, Circle CI, Terraform, Jest [1] https://shelf.io/ https://shelf.io/

mattmanser 9y ago

My present client has ASP.Net/SQL Server/Azure. Not the greatest fan of Azure, mainly because of the admin portal, but apart from that it's been good. Constantly get told by their clients that we do everything much faster than other SASS providers they work with, like weeks where others have turn arounds of months.