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Ask HN: What web development stack offers the best long-term support?
Hi HN! I'm a very occasional web developer, who usually work solo on projects. The problem I've run into is that I'll set up a piece of software, using a framework such as Laravel, and then not need to update it for a couple of years. However, when I go back to updating is, usually much of the tooling is broken, and the framework is out of dates, not getting any security updates, etc. I don't usually have time to update to the latest "version" of the framework that is being actively developed, in addition to the usually day-long process of figuring out why something like grunt or webpack isn't working properly.
Hence my question: What tools, frameworks, etc, move slowly, in terms of development, and are easy to work with? What web development stack is the least likely to break after not touching it for a few years, or even a decade?
Any insights are appreciated. Thank you!
- theandrewbailey 5y agoJava EE is incredibly stable and backwards compatible, but it might not have all that you're looking for in a framework.
- fiftyacorn 5y agoAre you recommending jsf?
- mooreds 5y agoI'd look for LTS support for your framework. For instance, Symfony has an LTS release and a more regularly released "stable support" release. The LTS has 3 years of support: https://symfony.com/releases https://symfony.com/releases I'm not aware of all the frameworks that have these types of LTS support, but that's what I'd look for.
- runawaybottle 5y agoLong answer: My advice is to look for something that doesn’t have that compilation step (avoid angular/react) as I think 8 years from now someone is going to have a hell of a time compiling a legacy app in webpack. Short answer: Jquery
- boplicity 5y agoThat's actually quite helpful, as most of the problems are in terms of the tooling and/or compiling. It's good to be clear about this. I know Laravel the best, but it does depend on the types of compiling that I'd like to avoid.
- el_dev_hell 5y agoI agree 100% with avoiding compiled frameworks (React/Angular/Svelte, whatever). But betting on jQuery being around and functional in 10 years is a gamble. The modern DOM is very user friendly. I'd advocate for skipping any framework and writing plain JavaScript.
- Jugurtha 5y agoWe've been using Flask, Bootstrap, and vanilla JavaScript for years now. We also do TypeScript because our product offers a Jupyter notebook experience with super-powers, however. [collaborative editing, scheduled long-running notebooks, automatic experiment tracking, deployment, monitoring, etc].
- imvetri 5y agowordpress
- psikomanjak 5y agoExpressJS hasn't been updated in two years and is one of the widely used frameworks out there. It has matured enough it doesn't need to be updated.
- xcubic 5y agoI don't see how you came to that conclusion. With 111 issues and 63 PRs there seems to be quite a bit of work to do. Also, as far as I know, the v5 has been on the works for probably more that 2 years. I also that that at a certain point there were some issues with Doug Wilson (https://thefullstack.xyz/history-express-javascript-framework https://thefullstack.xyz/history-express-javascript-framewor...) What you call matured, I sadly call stagnation.