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Ask HN: Which stack for prototyping?

• morpheu5 5y ago
  I like Rails on the back-end (or simpler Ruby-based frameworks like Sinatra) and Vue or Nuxt on the front-end. I have stuff in production with these and they progressed very well from prototype to production.
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    Right, I forgot to mention Rails. I've always been a bit turned off by Ruby's syntax, but always heard it's awesome in many ways. Thanks!
    • danmaz74 5y ago
      I love Rails, but if you like and already know Python, then Django is a better choice for you :)
• bwh2 5y ago
  On the frontend, buy a HTML theme on ThemeForest or similar. Your goal is very quick prototyping and visual design decisions will slow you down. These themes aren't the best code, but they look good and come with tons of layouts and components you can mix and match.
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    This is a very good advice. For this part I've been recommended "tailwind ui" and it looks very promising!
  • hiharryhere 5y ago
    Agree... also take a look at https://themes.getbootstrap.com/ https://themes.getbootstrap.com/ They tend to be higher quality and less packed with loads of random JS libraries than the ones on the big theme marketplaces.
• madhadron 5y ago
  I'm surprised no one has mentioned Pharo with Seaside. I'm not sure how you would make the iteration cycle shorter than editing code in a live Pharo image and using the image itself as the data store.
  • Qem 5y ago
    My main language is Python. But I took the Pharo MOOC just out of curiosity. When I switched back to Python, I instantly missed all the support the Pharo environment provides me. It's impressive.
• e67f70028a46fba 5y ago
  Whatever backend tech you are most comfortable with and https://htmx.org https://htmx.org, which is backend agnostic and has almost no learning curve and requires very little code.
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    Thanks! I need to look into that. Looks like a very hacker approach of prototyping, i like the concept.
    • e67f70028a46fba 5y ago
      The examples are pretty good: https://htmx.org/examples/ https://htmx.org/examples/
• PLenz 5y ago
  The best tool is one you already know
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    To be honest the point of this post was to see what people are using and if one was standing among others. I would be willing spending a bit of time learning a tool today if it can save me tons of time in future project ideas - read: would allow me to actually DO work on these ideas.
• rk06 5y ago
  Vue: because it is easiest to pick up and has great dev tools. C# with ASP .NET Core (because i am most comfortable in .NET) cloud: Azure (easy to use, has in built auth), and you can limit your credits, so you won't end up with crazy monthly bill like AWS
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    I have seen some very good real world/production projects working on this stack!
  • bpicolo 5y ago
    What’s the base rate for a cheap web app + db on azure?
• nicoburns 5y ago
  I think you've already mentioned all the obvious choices. Out of those I would probably discount Node if you want a really quick prototyping experience. Nest/Next just aren't on the same level as the others. One of the best things you can do is use Postgres as the backend.
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    Seems to read different opinions on the node stack here. I am getting to a similar conclusion to you though, where other tools were good for prototyping and the node stack really better for the real projects (post-prototyping).
    • kryptk 5y ago
      We just finished rewriting a 3 year old Rails app in Node+Knex, performance with 10k concurrent sessions is roughly 4x and p95 is 10x better. Keep this in mind whenever someone decides Rails is fine for a quick prototype and then leaves you to deal with production. I am of the unpopular opinion that Rails "many opinions" are confusing as hell to someone who doesnt breathe Rails due to the sea of implicitness: Symbols just appear you are supposed to know where from, debug requires context dumps, gems are an unholy mess of registering hooks and overloading core apis. Combined with "slow as a dog", I really dont see what there is to love here.
      • azangru 5y ago
        > We just finished rewriting a 3 year old Rails app in Node+Knex, performance ... is ... better. I suppose the next step would be to rewrite this app in Go or in Elixir? ;-)
        • marrs 5y ago
          Not sure you’d see much improvement. Node is pretty fast
      • yoyonamite 5y ago
• waspight 5y ago
  Nest with next.js for sure. With apollo as communication layer the frontend storage is resolved as well.
• Zealotux 5y ago
  I'm using Nest for mine which allows me to stay in the JS ecosystem, so far I love it, it supports pretty much all I need out of the box.
• traverseda 5y ago
  The choices really do depend on exactly what it is you're making. I normally use some combination of python and htmx. I'd be using very different backends if I was building a distributed storage server, a chat server, a blog, or all kinds of other stuff. Mostly I'd be using htmx on the frontend though. Is your project mostly database admin? The django admin can probably get you something useful fast. Is your app less database driven, or you need more flexibility? Flask is a good bet. Dealing with "live" data (chat apps, etc)? An asyncio project like quart or aiohttp might be best, coupled with a database that supports subscriptions/changefeeds. Alternatively flask with server-sent-events and redis might work better. If the project was mostly an API I'd likely use fastapi. You can combine a lot of these servers in the same app with wsgi "application dispatching", although generally support for mixing asyncio frameworks and traditional frameworks isn't great. Unfortunately there isn't a one size fits all solution right now, some frameworks will do some stuff better then others.
• michael_vo 5y ago
  Blitz - (https://blitzjs.com/ https://blitzjs.com/) Blitz is built on top of Next.js and gives you postgres for free, in addition to auto-generating CRUD routes on schema changes. It's trying to be like Rails. I've used Next.js with firebase for multiple prototypes.
• angrais 5y ago
  Depends on the type of proof-of-concept you're building, e.g., website with lots of user interactions or a data pipeline? Either way, I use python (FastAPI) and vue.js to keep the front-end and backend separate. That way, if you're working in a small team then responsibilities are easily separated and helps with scaling too, e.g. when you reach 10k users. There's also a great range of libraries available so prototyping is quick on both ends. As for deployment, I use docker and a digital ocean droplet. That way, you can deploy easily as and when needed.
  • angrais 5y ago
    I should add that depending on the fidelity of the prototype that using mock data in JSON on the front-end is ideal.
• awb 5y ago
  For the design I built MVP.css for “drop in” styling without having to learn a CSS framework: https://andybrewer.github.io/mvp/ https://andybrewer.github.io/mvp/
• tpetry 5y ago
  If you are already comfortable with python then choose django. Learning a new framework will take time, which will be your case with django. You don‘t want to learn a new language too.
• pupdogg 5y ago
  - Backend -- Ruby: Roda + Sequel + SQLite (or any db) - Frontend -- Node: SvelteKit + ViteJS + TailwindCSS - FullStack (monolithic) -- Ruby: Roda + Sequel + ViteJS + TailwindCSS + SQLite (or any db)
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    Just wondering isn't it frustrating being a Rubyist not on Rails? was just wondering what's life like on the other side of Rails. I have deep respect to what you're doing don't get me wrong, it just seems hard.
• athenot 5y ago
  The best stack for YOU to prototype is not the best stack for ME to prototype. It's whatever you are most comfortable in, and can move the quickest. It's the stack where you don't have to re-learn how to do things you know are possible. So with that in mind, it's probably not the latest and greatest technology (except if you happen to have been living and breathing it for the past few years). It's probably got some warts that you don't like but for which you are also very competent at overcoming. If you are leading a team and need to decide that for them, try to find out which stack each member has gotten the most done in (in current or previous job), and average it across the team. It might be helpful to set expectation that this is not the most glorious technological project of their lives but that the goal is a rapid developement project with the goal to replace parts with something more robust once they get validated on the product/user side.
  • kvnhn 5y ago
    Absolutely this. Prototyping a project in a new (to you) language/stack only serves one real purpose: to get comfortable in said language/stack. If your goal is to get a working product quickly, with as few hiccups as possible, your comfort zone is your friend.
    • AlchemistCamp 5y ago
      That depends a lot on both the size of the project and the domain.
  • brundolf 5y ago
    The OP acknowledged this and said they specifically want to hear what others like to use anyway
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      My pet peeve: Go on Youtube to search for camera reviews. At the end of the review "The best camera is the one that you have". Well, no shit, I came here to get your opinion.
  • 5y ago
• Dowwie 5y ago
  The entire backend in Rust, using actix-web framework and async libraries for postgres and redis. You're not going to rapidly prototype anything with Rust for your first 12 months working with the language, depending on your motivation and your ability to write missing parts for security middleware. However, once you've gone through that, you can be just as productive with an async Rust stack as you can with a Python one. Your prototype will also be ready for the "no time to refactor" mandate that makes it your production system. Actix-web framework and async libraries for postgres, redis, and rabbitmq are all mature and well-documented. I realize you said quick prototype/MVP, but all of this comes at little additional cost once you know how to adopt and integrate quickly.
• rufius 5y ago
  For me? Just Go. Building a service? Go. Need a light UI for the service? Go + Go html templates. Need a command line tool? Go. Building an interpreter or transpiler? Go. That’s just me though. The reason that’s my answer is I’ve been writing a lot of Go lately. Answers I might’ve given at another point in my career: - Rust - I’d still reach for this but I find it a little slower to work in for prototyping. - C# - F# - Ocaml - D - Pascal
  • etripe 5y ago
    Interesting. If your evolution is anything to go by, I might be at an earlier point. Earlier I might have said perl or C#, nowadays I'd probably say F# or C# depending on what I'm looking to prototype. I find F# stimulates me to think about the kind of data and operations I want to support more than C# does. I would assume OCaml does the same. I know JS/TS, I find they're generally counterproductive in dissecting the problem I'm trying to solve. I might use them for rapid UI prototyping, if it's a very simple app. What made you pivot from .NET and Rust to Go? Is this a question of creature comfort, where you're just more accustomed to it nowadays and/or prefer the ecosystem? Does Go stimulate/force you to think about the problem differently and if so, how?
    • rufius 5y ago
      Well this is cheating, but I stopped working for Microsoft :). I actually still quite like .NET on the whole. But the job I took after Microsoft had me writing Rust and Go. I should note the list is in no particular order. If it were ordered newest to oldest, it’d be: - Go - Rust - F# - C# - Ocaml - D - Pascal Languages I’ve used heavily but wouldn’t for prototyping are C and C++. Most of my time at Microsoft was 67-75% C/C++ and the rest some form of .NET.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    What web frameworks are there in Goland? Is there anything trying to be Rails or is Go meant for small services?
• rchaves 5y ago
  Recently I really enjoyed using Elixir with Phoenix for this, it replaces what Rails use to do quite nicely. For frontend I try to stick again to just HTML and Vanilla JS, if I know the frontend will be more complex then I go straight to Elm
• dkarras 5y ago
  I like to keep things simple so over time I removed stuff from the things I use and kept the things that has the largest reach. So what I use to prototype is very similar to what I use to deploy: * Typescript + Vue on the front end (with nuxt) - NO SSR but nuxt precompiles the pages for me so I don't get the SEO hit. Front end can be served from any CDN basically for free. * Node for the rest API with a custom, very simple and declarative framework that wraps HTTP, this only replies in JSON (also typescript) * ArangoDB for all database needs. Has key value store, document store, graph store, so best of all worlds. I can use it like a RDBMS where it matters because graphs support relationships so no data duplication AND no need to normalize. I can basically do anything with those, from quick prototypes, to a very low traffic website to serving millions (managed k8s, horizontal scaling comes into play then).
  • karmakaze 5y ago
    +1 the choice of Vue for the front-end. I would choose a different backend (Go, Kotlin, F# but that's just me) and PostgreSQL or MySQL. As mentioned: for you probably Python+Django (rendering pages, not an API), if you want/need a dynamic front-end maybe Vue+Firestore (or the like), 3rd choice Vue+Django. From personal experience I can say it's very easy to get 'caught up' in the back-end tech and lose focusing on the front-end/product/customer.
• jitl 5y ago
  I put together a one-day hackathon project with Next.js on Vercel and Supabase. Supabase is a “firebase alternative” that gives you auth and a Postgres database in a single package in like two clicks. You use row-level security to define what permissions a user ID has using Postgres policies. If you’re a front end weighted developer this is great because you can pretend “there is no backend”, although with Next you can still write server side code that bypasses the row level security. Now, there’s issues with Nextjs/Vercel like “how do I run a job queue?” (Seems like you need an EC2 box somewhere else) that are unsatisfying, but for 1-hour productivity I don’t think you can do better.
• stevekemp 5y ago
  If I were writing a big web-app I'd probably use either golang, or Perl. I'm not a fan of PHP, I've never used any of the python frameworks, and while I can use Ruby on Rails it would usually not be my first choice - not unless I was building a simple CRUD application. Perl gives me the amazing CGI::Application framework, a lot of libraries for integrations, and a standard approach to writing tests. Golang is the new-hot, it's good for writing servers and services, also has a testing-centric development approach, good support for templates and a simpler deployment approach than most dynamic languages. Still, my preferences tell you little except what I can/will use. The answer is usually to always pick the framework/think you're most familiar with OR the thing that you want to learn next.
  • bmn__ 5y ago
    > the amazing CGI::Application framework Year 2000 called, it wants its webdev paradigm back.
    • zbentley 5y ago
      > Year 2000 called, it wants its webdev paradigm back. "Come and take it!" ~ Serverless frameworks, Lambda, etc.
• lostsoul8282 5y ago
  I won't be the most popular person on hacker news for this but check out bubble.io for the front end and then use heruku(free tier) + python(flask + fastapi, etc) for the API. With this stack you can quickly build a API, connect it to bubble and show people your idea in a way that's actually working. Later on you can move all your API data off bubble and replace the front end with whatever you want. I found it the cheapest and easiest way to build something very quickly.
• ransom1538 5y ago
  For a fast prototype, picking a language that has ready to go api examples in your space is the best bet: Twilios: https://imgur.com/a/iACVPvU https://imgur.com/a/iACVPvU Stripe: https://i.imgur.com/esOq0dB.png https://i.imgur.com/esOq0dB.png ETC
• sto_hristo 5y ago
  For web stuff, my personal go to choice is Node.js and some templating engine, like Handlebars. I used that on several occasions to quickly hack together stuff and see what an actual integration with some service looks like. Then i move straight to Java. How does that defines as prototyping, i'd leave for the semantics patrol. Reiterating "personal choice."
• juancn 5y ago
  Be careful, prototypes sometimes become products. So, pick something comfortable for you, but that you could grow into a product with a good enough scale.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yeah, I have never seen the prototype not get ported over somehow. You need a lot discipline to throw away everything even if you knew going in that it was crap.
• brundolf 5y ago
  Personally I stick with Node (Express if it's a web server). Next.JS is cool but it's a bit too magical for my tastes, at least when hackability is the key priority. Usually I end up adding TypeScript into the mix, even for prototypes. However, I'm pretty comfy with the configuration side of that (webpack, etc) so it isn't a huge time sink. If it is going to be a huge time sink, you might try Deno instead. It has Express-like libraries of its own.
• radicalriddler 5y ago
  Different stacks for different people. I prototyped an app with a MERN stack. Mongo, Express, React (CRA) and Node. By no means was the backend performant, and for this app, I had no reason to use document database instead of relational, but because I know how to write with mongoose, I chose mongodb. Now that the prototype is done, I'm looking at other languages and frameworks for the backend such as Phoenix, Hyper.rs or asp.net core. If I want to be lazy, I'll just convert the mongo queries to Postgres and be done with it, and then move my CRA React App to Next.JS.
• newlisper 5y ago
  Clojure/Ring + Datomic + React
  • blacktriangle 5y ago
    I've come to find Datomic less than great for prototyping in situations where my data model is evolving. Since your history of data is immutable you get to live with all of your mistakes forever, you can't really just write a migration that shifts from one data model to the next.
    • newlisper 5y ago
      You can always ETL the latest value of the DB to a new DB/Schema
    • stuarthalloway 5y ago
      Do you have a specific example? Datomic is great for evolving in prod (https://blog.datomic.com/2017/01/the-ten-rules-of-schema-growth.html https://blog.datomic.com/2017/01/the-ten-rules-of-schema-gro...), and Clojure is a great language for generating data (or ETL) when you want to make radical changes in dev.
      • blacktriangle 5y ago
        It was a service ticket system where we moved from a boolean status to a string for more states (noob modeling mistake I know). The problem came up a few months later when a dev pulled every attribute, saw the old field, and wrote new code against the old field, leading to some really confused tickets. Looking at that blog post though, it seems that using #9: Annotate your Schema could have helped us avoid this situation. Thats an interesting feature of Datomic I was unaware of.
• xupybd 5y ago
  Safe stack iff I don't ever want to put it into a production environment for work. If it's my side project then I would still use it. Why because at the moment I like F#.
• Jarwain 5y ago
  I like feathersjs for the server/api since I find service-oriented thinking to mold well to most projects and it scales well, plus easy integration with almost any database. Re: frontend, I like vue/nuxt plus Vuetify as a component framework
• turtlebits 5y ago
  Svelte + Hasura (+ Keycloak for auth) Skip the backend unless you absolutely need it. Saves so much complexity, time and money.
  • sebast_bake 5y ago
    I agree with the many who recommend not building a backend. I'm loving Supabase at the moment. In the past I have built things very quickly with Firebase. For the front end, skip CSS too. It's such a time sink. Use Material UI or Ant Design.
    • gaoshan 5y ago
      Just be aware that both of those UI libraries only save time if you go with the out of the box experience. If you need to theme them there will be a bit of a learning curve and if you really need to customize then that learning curve goes up dramatically.
• hiyer 5y ago
  If you're already very comfortable with Python then that should be your first choice for the backend. You can be flexible with the framework though - Flask[0] is also popular, or you can try one of the new async ones like FastAPI[1]. For the frontend I would suggest htmx[2]. You will anyway need to do some html, and htmx will save you the trouble of learning a JS framework. 0. https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/1.1.x/ https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/1.1.x/ 1. https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/ https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/ 2. https://htmx.org/ https://htmx.org/
• AlchemistCamp 5y ago
  For me it's Ruby for shell scripting, Elixir+Phoenix for web apps VIM mode (of whatever IDE or editor) for editing.
• kryptonomist 5y ago
  Backend: I would stick with Python, but modernized with some bit of dataclass and typings. A very tempting alternative is Golang, where it's fast build time and light syntax makes it a good candidate for prototyping. Also, I know many do not like it in this forum, but a document-oriented database such as MongoDb will save you a lot of time when dealing with json style documents. Frontend: Here, I feel Angular can still deliver, once you have climbed the steep learning curve, the most important being to use a toolkit such as Bootstrap, which is a huge time-saver.
• emrah 5y ago
  > As a former developer, I have had countless project ideas and choosing the tech it's going to be written in has always been a [unnecessary?] long topic, often leading to procrastinating and giving up on the idea. And here you are, posted the question on HN and doing it all over again :) The answer is the tech stack doesn't matter all that much. All you care about is bringing ideas to life and python is versatile enough to do anything, so pick that.
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    After reading all the answers here, you probably sum it up very well!
• readonthegoapp 5y ago
  AFAIK laravel 8 -- the latest -- is the only stack to provide auth out of the box As in They give you a login screen When you install an app 'starter kit' Breeze -- the simplest -- in this example Downside is you get stuck w vue and tailwindcss as defaults curl -s https://laravel.build/example-app | bash cd example-app php artisan migrate composer require laravel/breeze --dev php artisan breeze:install npm install npm run dev php artisan migrate
  • tbronchain 5y ago
    This really fits into the "getting something up and running quick" category. Thank you!
  • cookingmyserver 5y ago
    Django also provides auth out of the box. Granted the existing login page is for the admin, but that brings up another point.. it has a built-in admin portal which is super helpful! If you want a user facing login page there are default login views, all you really need to do is make the template for the page.
    • 07121941 5y ago
      Love using Django
  • simplerman 5y ago
    I will second Laravel. Also PHP developers are cheaper, if one day your project turns into a business, you can hire for a lot less money.
  • tcbasche 5y ago
    Django (Python) also includes auth if I’m not mistaken. A good approach I’ve seen is using Django to create REST API’s while using the admin interface and ORM support as free bonuses.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    Ah Laravel depends on Vue by default? I didn't know that.
• jbergens 5y ago
  I would start with separating the frontend and backend, as some others have suggested. I would probably use react but could try svelte or vue also. In the start you can mock the backend or have a memory-kept version of it. For backend (the api) I would go for c# or nodejs (maybe with nextjs). I might combine this with a serverless solution like Architect. https://github.com/architect/architect https://github.com/architect/architect
• ck0d3r 5y ago
  For web: Next.js + React.js + Tailwind CSS + MongoDB!
• aristofun 5y ago
  Ruby on Rails, people!
• nprateem 5y ago
  Find a bootstrap visual editor and use that to mock up a Web site. Make sure to use one with lots of blocks you can just drop in the page. Use framework7 with Vue for a mobile/webapp. For a more complicated site build it with django or php if you might want to hire cheaper devs in future.
• ecesena 5y ago
  I use python/flask on GAE or express js on firebase functions. React for fe. (In all cases, no managed instances.)
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Extreme minority opinion: Lazarus/Free Pascal
• muttantt 5y ago
  Python (Flask) and AngularJS/Material 1.8
• ck_one 5y ago
  Frontend: NextJS DB: GoogleSheets Google Sheets allows you to see all your data immediately and setup takes 5 mins. Does it scale? No. This will ensure that you throw away your prototype and use your learnings during a rewrite in case the project becomes more successful.