16 ms·

Ask HN: If you were to build a web app today what tech stack would you choose?

• BerislavLopac 3y ago
  Personally, I'd go with https://pyapi-server.readthedocs.io https://pyapi-server.readthedocs.io
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  My current side project is using python aiohttp and htmx. The main plus of Python is that it has a lot of machine learning functionality but the truth is almost all of that is used in batch jobs and if I did anything computationally intensive serving a page I would have to farm the work out to another process. I have no trouble maintaining Python I write but it seems to always fall apart like Jenna blocks when I hand it off to somebody else. If I had to get more people involved and have it scale I might go to Flask but might also go to a Java-based backend as it really has the best ability to use threads and parallelism. As for HTMX I like it but I think there could be something similar but a little more feature risk, for instance my app has a lot of tables and tools that make it easy to add client-side sort buttons would be nice. If I had more people working on it I could see using a react-a-like system as well. The database is arangodb which I love for rapid prototyping but if it had to be really reliable the first thing I would look at is postgres.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• 3ds 3y ago
  Rails. It's all about developer comfort. ruby as a language is a delight to work with. Rails as a framework has all the features I need and then some more. Postgres as the database of course!
  • it_citizen 3y ago
    What would you use for the FE?
    • andrei_says_ 3y ago
      Rails’ Hotwire most likely. Turbo gives regular server rendered pages the snappiness of an SPA with zero dev effort. The latest Hotwire allows easy replacement or lazy loading of any portion of a page. All while preserving 10x developer efficiency. There’s simply no other stack with similar productivity. (Not the original poster but came to this thread with “Rails” as the answer) Hotwire is backend agnostic. Laravel has adopted it as a front end solution too.
    • lucidone 3y ago
      .erb templates are just as good as they were a decade ago.
• patches11 3y ago
  Next.js, material-ui, trpc Most of what you need to get something functional and not totally ugly, not a lot that you don’t.
• peter-m80 3y ago
  Next.js. I consider it the industry standard
  • revskill 3y ago
    "I consider" and "industry standard" seems weird and incompatible haha.
• chrisdalke 3y ago
  This depends on your goal: Are you trying to build + finish a project, or learn a new skill? I like to separate these goals, or otherwise try to scope projects very narrowly. For the former, I tend to reach for the tech stack that I've spent years working in and can very quickly spin up projects in. This is heavily specific to your background, but for me: - Frontend: React, vite, react-router, Chakra UI. - Backend: Node.js + Express - Database: PostgreSQL - Scheduled jobs/ML/data processing: Python - Deployment/Infrastructure: Docker, docker-compose, AWS EC2 or Lightsail, Digital Ocean droplets, Netlify, Render For the latter, there are lots of potentially better options, whether that's server-side rendering, serverless functions, etc. (Next.js, fly.io, supabase, are a few examples) and again depends on your industry.
  • andrewstuart 3y ago
    Exactly this, but I’d only deploy to a simple cloud virtual machine, and not from AWS, Azure or GCP…. 9 cents a gigabyte is crazy.
    • SwiftyBug 3y ago
      What's a simple cloud virtual machine?
      • DeepSeaTortoise 3y ago
        Damn kids and their "Docker, docker-compose, AWS EC2 or Lightsail, Digital Ocean droplets, Netlify, Render" just give me a simple VPS
• very_good_man 3y ago
  Rails 7.1 deploy with Kamal to a low cost place.
• iamcalledrob 3y ago
  It would depend whether the web app is a "dynamic website" or a "super interactive app that happens to run in a browser". For a website, it'd be Go + HTML/CSS (sprinkling JS where needed). Here's why: (1) Code will "just build" years later (2) Deployment is stupidly easy -- just build to a single binary with all resources embedded (3) Everything about the stack is stable and easy to reason about. Though perhaps not exciting. For a "web app", I feel there are no great options. The half life of the JS ecosystem is about 5 minutes, so whatever you start with will be out of fashion shortly after. React has had some staying power, though isn't without its flaws. I generally feel like most "web apps" could actually be websites though.
• Dansvidania 3y ago
  i am using svelte and firebase
• replwoacause 3y ago
  I might be the only one in here with an answer like this, but PowerShell and the Pode framework. I am super productive with it, as much so as in any other language, and it plays nice with the rest of my stack (Tailwind, HTMX, SQLite.) I can leverage the .NET framework and C# libraries when I need to and can iterate quickly. All of this runs on the latest version of Ubuntu LTS. Obviously, this won’t work for everyone but for my purposes I haven’t been able to beat it and it makes me happy.
  • majkinetor 3y ago
    Very nice. I used pode for for some of my infrastructure services. Anything to show?
    • replwoacause 3y ago
      I wish, but right now it is all internal company stuff. I'd like to build something publicly accessible with it someday though so maybe I'll do a Show HN if I have something worth releasing.
• pier25 3y ago
  Depends on the app. Probably Laravel with Livewire and Lit for creating interactive widgets. Postgres for the db.
• Nezteb 3y ago
  Elixir, Phoenix (with Ecto and Postres), LiveView. Functional programming, pattern matching, and immutability make life a lot easier.
• edent 3y ago
  LAMP. It can easily be maintained by a single developer. Scales well enough for a decent number of users. Huge ecosystem of components. Easy to deploy to literally any web host. Wide variety of front-end systems. If you need to scale, it can do that. Developers for it are plentiful. But you can always rewrite it in the flavour-of-the-month framework when you hit either scale or money.
  • simonw 3y ago
    Which P?
    • edent 3y ago
      Haha! As it's you, I'll say Python. But for me, PHP.
  • supportengineer 3y ago
    Agree but with Postgres instead
    • xhkkffbf 3y ago
      I'm having great luck with SQLite. Most of the content is cached in ram so there aren't many hits on the db.
    • hotnfresh 3y ago
      FNPP FreeBSD Nginx PostgreSQL PHP/Python Or, for something a bit less mainstream and only for certain types of application but more minimalist: FNRL FreeBSD Nginx Redis Lua
  • issa 3y ago
    Never underestimate the value of tried and true solutions!
  • edg5000 3y ago
    For anything that is anticipated to grow beyond a very small codebase, the lack of static checkability really becomes a pain with PHP. I'm surprised that Java and modern C++ are not more popular. I know for large web applications, Java is popular in "enterprise" environments.
• lobo_tuerto 3y ago
  Elixir, Phoenix (+LiveView), Tailwind CSS and PostgreSQL. :)
• Vanclief 3y ago
  Fronted: React Backend: Golang Database: PostgreSQL
• randomdev3 3y ago
  Go, postgres/MySQL,static Vue frontend
• out_of_protocol 3y ago
  Elixir/Phoenix + Postgresql. Maximum comfort, minimum chore. For frontend side, if i can get away with minimal js, i'd go that way. If not, highly depends on team and target interactivity. If it's just me, i'd go with LiveView
• Zealotux 3y ago
  Just had been thinking about this today, the current state of web development is making me seriously depressed. I would pick what I'm most comfortable with, a simple monolithic Nest.js application running Fastify, with Postgres or SQLite, Dockerized, hosted on a predictably-priced host like Hetzner, and Ansible to automate everything. I know that stack will give me plenty of headroom until I eventually need to scale differently. Front-end is still React, which has a massive ecosystem, and I feel like I can do _anything_ with it by just bringing in some dependencies, if it's a passion project then I want to deliver features fast, React allows me that. I feel like a dinosaur, edge, workers, cloud functions... I'm familiar with none of that magic, there's probably a whole universe of amazing new ways to build for the web I'm sleeping on, but at that point I don't even care really.
  • ACS_Solver 3y ago
    The discussion is making me scared from another perspective. I have experience with a pretty wide variety of development. I've worked with embedded microcontrollers (minimalistic RTOS), embedded applications (on top of a proper Linux), desktop applications in Java and in C#, some C++ work, gamedev and more. But to this day I haven't touched Web apps. I have not written a line of JS and the closest I've done to modern web is a tiny API in Go that sends a JSON response and renders a static HTML page. With my total lack of Web experience (and self-confessed hate of webapps as a user), I have no opinions on React, Rails, Node.js, Vue and whatever people are naming here. But I'm taken aback at the variety - there's 20-odd replies all giving different answers. Does Web development in 2023 not have 2-3 tech stacks that dominate? Are the existing frameworks/techs so lacking that new ones keep appearing to address those problems? Is there a high rate of change because things keep improving? If so, where is that improvement for me as a user, when webapps still feel inferior to late 90s native programs?
    • ghusto 3y ago
      I'm in the same situation as you, but have what I think be an incredibly unpopular theory on why all those competing technologies exist: Everyone is trying to unsuccessfully patch JavaScript. Every few years, a group thinks they're the ones with the one true ring, and try again. Each new shiny seems to promote even poorer practices than the last, lowering both the bar and the barrier of entry further.
• ivory54321 3y ago
  I have just launched a relatively straightforward webapp that required a light touch front end with fairly significant data processing on the backend - Backend: Django (Postgres in production) + Celery to handle async tasks - Frontend: HTML (standard django renderer), CSS, HTMX + occasional jQuery - Deployment: Render I was already familiar with Python and I feel the language is more than capable to handle the data processing required and with Django I could concentrate on the actual app functionality without diving too much into auth etc
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• pelletier 3y ago
  You mention it's a passion project. If technology is the center of that passion, then pick what you're passionate or curious about! If not: the tried but true Rails + Postgres. Add more things only when needed. For example Alpine.js if a bit of interaction that's not covered by Rails' Turbo. If the need for background processing arises, bring in the good_job gem, and there may be no need to deploy it separately at first. For hosting I'm not quite sure these days. Heroku may be on life-support, but its feature-set covers most basis.
  • mooreds 3y ago
    > For hosting I'm not quite sure these days. Heroku may be on life-support, but its feature-set covers most basis. I'd probably start with Render for rails hosting these days. Seems to be the best heroku descendant.
• shreedx 3y ago
  SvelteKit + Supabase to do it quick and dirty. Since I am not the best programmer out there (my day to day job is product owner), it allows me to actually finish my projects and validate them with the market within days instead of months. I can totally see how a senior fullstack dev would have a completely different approach though.
  • jcarrillo 3y ago
    I’m curious why you think this approach is “dirty”. I can see the “quick” part. Care to share?
• achandlerwhite 3y ago
  .NET 8 on my mac using Rider. It’s not the .NET Framework you might remember from the 2000’s.
• vandyswa 3y ago
  No extras. Hand written JS, CSS, and HTML. Backend use CGI or for long polling type apps, golang and an HTTP server module. Or Python and its batteries-included HTTP server (but I'm moving away from Python).
• pplonski86 3y ago
  Backend in Django Rest Framework. Postgres as db. Frontend Typescript and React. Deployment with docker compose on AWS.
• vandyswa 3y ago
  Do note sqlite3 suffices up to a surprisingly demanding workload.
• traverseda 3y ago
  Django/flask/qaurt (depending on what features I need), htmx, and any more complicated stuff (client side terminal emulator, client side text editor) wrapped in individual web components. Probably use sakura.css to start with for css.
• Minor49er 3y ago
  I'm going to be working on a niche search site soon. For it, I'm planning on using PHP, Nginx, Postgres, and Typesense for the back end and probably React for the front end
• pabe 3y ago
  Django + HTMX + SQLite or PostgreSQL Hosted on a virtual machine. ... Or the stack you're most efficient/ effective in. A short time-to-market is most important for learning. If you don't reach an audience, your project might bore you soon. Tech rarely is the holy grail to success.
  • appplication 3y ago
    I feel like I want to like htmx, and the concepts sound cool. But json is such a nice generic serialization format. Like my API can be in service of my frontend, but also other applications. While, unless I misunderstand it, htmx seems to philosophically believe the backend is the frontend. Are there any patterns where you have an API with nice json payloads but also use htmx to push the rendering to backend? What do you do when you have users that just want basic data from the API? Do you add json endpoints, or is it more of a “fuck you learn how to accept html” situation?
    • pabe 3y ago
      You can have both a hypermedia API and a data (JSON) API. Your hypermedia API is a lot more lightweight and flexible as it's tied to your web app. The HTMX authors talk about that topic in their book: https://hypermedia.systems/json-data-apis/ https://hypermedia.systems/json-data-apis/ "These two different types of APIs have different strengths and needs, so it makes sense to use both. The hypermedia approach can be used for your web application, allowing you to specialize the API for the “shape” of your application. The Data API approach can be used for other, non-hypermedia clients like mobile, integration partners, etc. Note that by splitting these two APIs apart, you reduce the pressure to constantly change a general Data API to address application needs. Your Data API can focus on remaining stable and reliable, rather than requiring a new version with every added feature."
• kamma4434 3y ago
  Elixir with Liveview, or any server side you know well (in my case it’s Java/jsp) with Htmx.
• ivan_gammel 3y ago
  Depends on business scope, growth model etc. My default option is Java/Spring Boot/PostgreSQL for BE with HATEOAS API, Typescript/Angular SPA for FE if personalized experience is required. If it’s about just serving some almost static webpages, then some SSG+headless CMS with a bit of vanilla.js. Choice of stack is simple: it may not be the best in class or fancy choice, but it’s close enough, allows simple infrastructure setup, quick start with rapid iterations and easy to go from 1 dev setup to a team. More importantly I have a lot of experience with this stack, so I can focus on business rather than on learning new technology.
• o_m 3y ago
  Frontend: Remix or Next.js with server components Backend: ASP.NET Web API (REST). Only calling these APIs from the backend-for-frontend Node code. Hosting: Everything at one Cloud provider, either Azure or AWS. No SaaS-services. Database: Postgres Infra: Terraform or Bicep for infratructure as code, and Docker.
• calvinmorrison 3y ago
  depends on the app but Laravel + something. It's all built in, you can buy packages that implement most SaaS features out of the box, authentication, 2 factor, all the crap you need is rolled in as packages. I would stick with something like Orchid for admin type CRUD apps as there is ZERO html/js knowledge required. for a public app - I would still use Orchid on the backend and then on the frontend use something simple with blade templates and controllers. PHP is a lot better than it was, Laravel developers are easy to find, the stack is very well understood, and it's flexible enough to build whatever you want. EDIT: I just wanted to add 99% of "apps" are not retail facing but are internal apps or business to business type apps that solve a specific business niche. For that, I only care about how fast and easy is it to stand up and implement that specific business logic.
• modeless 3y ago
  I just started trying out Bun and its focus on speed plus broad compatibility makes it an absolute pleasure to use so far. For hosting I haven't started yet but think I might try fly.io with LiteFS as database. Just for fun, I wouldn't choose it for a work project until I've tested it out.
• maia_g 3y ago
  FE: Svelte. BE: Go, Postgres. Keeping it fairly simple.
• v3ss0n 3y ago
  Litestar + HTMX Litestar + Svelte SQLAlchemy Haystack https://litestar.dev https://litestar.dev
• karakanb 3y ago
  Laravel Jetstream with Inertia + Postgres, for sure. It is the most productive setup I have found for myself as a solo dev trying to deliver a full web app. If it is more like a backend-only setup, an API or sth, I tend to default to Go these days due to the speed and ease of deployment.
• exabrial 3y ago
  For internet facing webapps where infinite customization of html/css is important: Jakarta EE: Java 17/CDI/Quarkus for the backend, HTMX for the frontend. Quarkus is now standards based and has a large community. Java executes at near CPP speed but with memory safety. Java has the literal best debugger in the industry and also the combination of CDI and Mockito make writing true unit tests easy and fast. It literally has everything. Honestly though, the vast majority of webapps I implement are "boring" and the technology behind them needs to be boring and focus on productivity and maintainability. For this I usually select JakarataEE and JSF/Primefaces. Component based frameworks like this are stupid easy to slap together forms and business processes for internal webapps.
  • MichaelNolan 3y ago
    Are you sticking with java 17 for a specific reason instead of java 21/latest? Besides that I agree with everything you wrote, Java is an incredible ecosystem.
    • exabrial 3y ago
      17 for the minute, although Tomcat already has support for virtual threads
    • nogridbag 3y ago
      Quarkus only officially supported Java 21 a few days ago. I'm planning on upgrading our app this week.
• scosman 3y ago
  SvelteKit + hosted Postgres (supabase, neon) Very fast to get going and nice developer experience. Love jamstack style hosting. Scales from simple static site generator that is free to host, to live APIs/dynamic pages, and back again without changing frameworks. Can make beautiful pages that load in 100ms and 30kb. Currently using tailwind css because it also compiles (like svelte) and only ships what you use to the client.
• martinald 3y ago
  .NET 8 for the backend, and then blazor webassembly for the front end if it's complicated, or just boring old server side rendering with htmx if it's not. I've seen a lot of projects fail/struggle in golang (package ecosystem is still missing a lot of basics imo) or nextjs (very buggy). .NET has been my secret weapon. It's boring, works really well, has a good ecosystem and asp.net is really well thought through and you can go as "deep" as you want with middleware etc. Plus performance is extremely good, as is the deployment story with docker these days (having to use Windows server with .net Framework a few years ago was a nightmare, enough to put me off, but in .net core Linux is a first class citizen now). Also the IDEs are great these days, especially rider.
  • andrewstuart 3y ago
    Do you deploy .NET on Windows or Linux?
    • harshalizee 3y ago
      You can deploy on both quite easily. The newer .NETs are properly multiplatform
      • wrboyce 3y ago
        That is probably why they are asking…
    • martinald 3y ago
      Linux exclusively - I detest Windows server, via docker. I feel that it's actually quite rare to run modern .NET apps on Windows Server now.
      • PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        I understand and agree with your sentiment but .net core on windows is definitely not rare. What's rare is asp.net windows developers knowing what a reverse proxy is (they typically install the asp.net core hosting packages).
• dinkleberg 3y ago
  Go using the Gin framework. I’d use SQLite until I had a compelling reason not to. Server side rendering using pongo2 templates. Vanilla js and Htmx where appropriate. I’ve built several projects like this and just started another one and it is by far my favorite stack. I don’t like spending time fighting frameworks, so I like to keep my stack as minimal as possible. Thankfully the Go ecosystem pretty uniformly shares that ideology.
• d-z-m 3y ago
  Go for backend, HTML template files for frontend + Alpine.js for reactivity. Probably custom/classless CSS as I'm falling out of love w/ Tailwind. Probably would deploy on EC2. If I was trying to learn something new, I'd experiment with solid.js or htmx.
• phartenfeller 3y ago
  SvelteKit + SQLite for me. SvelteKit is easy to pick up and their standards make sense to me. Of course SQLite has limits but it takes a lot of complexity or concurrent users to come close to them.
• lylejantzi3rd 3y ago
  Does anybody still use Perl 5?
  • renedobricia 3y ago
    Yes! Mojolicious & Dancer2 are perfect for web development in Perl
• edg5000 3y ago
  Two recent projects I wrote in C++20 using my own HTTP library. Only dependencies are a JSON library and a HTML template library (only used in one project). For these projects I used my own Postgres C++20 library. Another recent project I did in mostly pure Java, with only a third-party library for SMTP email sending, and a library for using HTML templates. IDE is VSCode with clangd as linter, and gcc as compiler, and CMake as build system. For Java, I use the RedHat VSCode plugin. Frontend in pure TypeScript, with an icon library. Challenges I encountered: - Statically checking data structures between frontend and backend. This needs code generation. And there was a lot of code repetition for shared data structures between front- and backend. - More database abstraction would be good. Other than that it all runs great.
• dwb 3y ago
  Depends on project requirements of course and it's been a little while since I used them in anger, but sounds like Rails and Postgres are still going strong so I'd probably pick those. If something like React was strictly necessary I'd use React plus the most vanilla TypeScript stack, but I'd use only Rails' built-in stuff if at all possible. I don't know exactly about hosting but I'd probably go for something like Render or Heroku.
• mar1n3r0 3y ago
  Go + wasm(https://github.com/maxence-charriere/go-app https://github.com/maxence-charriere/go-app) + IPFS + orbitdb
• eternityforest 3y ago
  It would definitely either be TS or Python. I think I might use Bootstrap but I'd heavily customize theming. Probably SvelteKit or Vue for the frontend. Most likely SvelteKit. SQLite or a flat file database for sure. I think what I would do is use Tornado to serve SvelteKit pages, if I went with Python. Definitely a monorepo for front and back end. Probably I'd try to do zero server side templating.
• dewbrite 3y ago
  My last full stack passion project I used Axum for the backend/API, Mithril.js with Coffeescript for the frontend, then S3* and Meilisearch for data storage.
• oooyay 3y ago
  I use Typescript and Python. Usually Svelte or Vue and Django. For Async components of the backend I write components in Go.
• edimoldovan 3y ago
  Go Std, HTML + plain CSS + vanilla JS if needed. No build steps.
• JohnBooty 3y ago
  Literally anything, thanks to ChatGPT/CoPilot/etc. Choosing a stack has always been a balance between "what you are currently productive in" and "the best possible tool for the job." These days, assuming you have a base level of skill and experience, it's like 2-10x easier to get up to speed in a brand new stack thanks to those AI coding buddies Your current competencies still matter and always will, but today, IMO we're way more free to choose the "best" tool and assume that we can get up to speed quickly. Putting that aside, I still think Rails is amazing for "most" webby stuff. Would consider Flask if I needed things from the Python ecosystem. Or I guess Phoenix if I needed that massive concurrency. Would pair them with Postgres and/or Redis as needed. For frontend... Vue? Or maybe just server-side rendering if I could get away with it.
  • arrowsmith 3y ago
    I'd use Phoenix even if I didn't need massive concurrency.
• qq99 3y ago
  SolidStart or Qwik, + postgres
• moltar 3y ago
  - TypeScript end to end - infra on AWS via AWS CDK TypeScript - backend domain plain TypeScript - frontend plain React, no framework (TSX) - database RDS Aurora serverless v2 (Postgres) - monorepo using pnpm
• 0xblinq 3y ago
  Laravel + Hotwire if working alone or with a small team. Laravel + Inertia if working on a large team or with dedicated backend and frontend teams.
• coreyp_1 3y ago
  I loved Drupal back in the day, but at some point (D8+, part of it moving to Symfony), it became too difficult to manage and for me personally to keep up with. But I believe that, in the early days, Drupal made excellent foundational design choices as a framework, and if you used it's APIs in your custom module development, then, generally speaking, you would have a secure website. But now, D7 is approaching EOL, and I absolutely don't want to migrate to the latest flavor. D7 has been rock solid for a decade, and I have no desire to chase the latest fad. I wish that there were a stable, monolithic solution that is simpler to setup (as in including everything, including database, webserver, SSL certs, etc.) that just worked and was extendable and overridable programmatically, in the same way that Drupal was. Modern web stacks have become a bucket of Lego pieces that seems ok if you are an expert in everything and know how to put everything together exactly. The problem is, most people aren't experts in form handling, login and authentication, media handling, caching, etc.
  • cdnsteve 3y ago
    Give Django a try. It's something that checks your boxes.
• jcutrell 3y ago
  Sinatra, flask, or Laravel. Something that gives me a direct control over routes and allows me to opt-in to magic when I want or need it. Dynamic language. Depending on the frontend need, I might go with straight server rendering static pages. So often the big stack of rendering contexts and HOCs and blah blah blah just gets in the way. Rendering a view shouldn’t be difficult, and progressive enhancement is easier starting from strict HTML + well structured CSS. I love React, I’d be happy to try Svelte… my fear in not doing that would be “when we eventually need it, it’s difficult to opt in progressively” (which is terrible).
• memchr 3y ago
  I would choose Remix based solely on my assessment of the integrity and personal character of the people I’ve met who use it, which I suspect is similar to those who created it.
  • gardenhedge 3y ago
    I would also choose Remix. Logical routing with a really simple retrieve/update pattern (loaders and actions).
• lucidone 3y ago
  Laravel or Rails spitting out Blade or ERB templates respectively. As a solo dev you have everything you need in both ecosystems and you aren't doing 2x the work with a separate front end and back end.
• CharlesW 3y ago
  I just went through this and settled on Vue, TypeScript, and Vite for a rewrite of a PHP app. I can recommend that stack. Vite and TypeScript were new to me. I'd briefly used a older version of Vue for something. I currently deploy to Vercel, but don't have any Vercel dependencies. I used Phind, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot extensively in order to understand the "AI pair programming" experience. They were helpful for suggesting solutions and helping understand mistakes. Just to set expectations, the flow was less "problem→solution", and more "problem→try this→iterate→try this→iterate→solution".
  • MH15 3y ago
    Vite and Typescript are truly incredible. The state of frontend is improving somewhat.
• madduci 3y ago
  jQuery for frontend, backend in SpringBoot or Quarkus
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  T3 stack, with bun (Typescript, tRPC, Tailwinds Next.js React, Prisma, Zod Bun) Client and server in one project and language. All the trendy, still free, easier to use compute instances let you deploy javascript server projects. Many don't support other stacks like Java or Python. Heroku supports python but no longer has a free tier.
• leosanchez 3y ago
  ASP.NET Core MVC + htmlx. Tailwind, ansible, docker
• porridgeraisin 3y ago
  - Node - Either vanilla js or vue. In a while, s/node/bun Go on the server is fine as well.
• lsferreira42 3y ago
  I've been in love with: Backend: Golang standard lib, gorilla/mux for routing Front: htmx + tailwind If i need a database, i tend to start with redis, then sqlite and ONLY if it scale, postgres!!
• paxys 3y ago
  BE - Go FE - Typescript, React, Tailwind DB - Postgres Cache - Memcached Server/Routing - Envoy
• j0hnyl 3y ago
  The last few web apps I've built: Flask / HTMX / Pico.css / Postgres or Sqlite Dockerized so that it's easy to spin up. Edit: Caddy for webserver.
  • HuwFulcher 3y ago
    Interesting that you mention Pico. I really like it (my personal site uses it) but it doesn’t strike me as the go to choice for a web app?
    • j0hnyl 3y ago
      I guess my needs are relatively basic. I like that all I have to do is include it and things look presentable out of the box without me having to do much design work. What are your choices for more complex projects?
      • HuwFulcher 3y ago
        Definitely agree that it’s a breath of fresh air to just write HTML and it look good. For more complex projects it’s normally Tailwind
• brundolf 3y ago
  The answer to this kind of question is always "whatever you're most comfortable/productive with" For me personally, I've been working on one that's pretty app-y and used Postgres + Deno + React/MobX (built with esbuild) I'm very comfortable and happy with TypeScript, so I like having it on both ends (especially because I can share types between the two sides of the wire). And Deno and esbuild make the tooling story really simple and no-nonsense on the back and the front respectively, while being less opinionated than a framework like Next (I like Next for other things, just didn't choose it here)
  • zamerick 3y ago
    This, with the added mention that if you intend to turn this into a business and hire people, choose something that is easy to hire for.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  Nodejs Plain SQL with Postgres React
• meiraleal 3y ago
  Just pure ol' JavaScript with a couple libraries. Frontend: Lit and Tailwind (in reality, unocss, a tailwind runtime that doesn't need build) Database: indexeddb + some CRDT Backend: no backend, webrtc to sync between devices without a central server Hosting: Github and cloudflare cache, the app has a functionality to deploy itself, generating a minified tailwind CSS and if needed, a "SSR" version of it (but without hydration, this is the part of the frontend craziness that I don't wanna get close).
• wruza 3y ago
  With all these modern frameworks and stacks, most of the practical AI UI tools were made with gradio. Interesting contrast.
• absqueued 3y ago
  Lately its been Fastify, Postgres and Svelte Kit. Also tried Remix for a few smaller projects - didnt really fly but was quick to develop. Fastify has been game changer for me.
• nathants 3y ago
  picking a stack isn’t enough. you need to codify it and build tooling around it so you can completely forget how it works. picking it up cold after a year should be just as easy as picking it up from yesterday. mine is here[1]. 1. https://github.com/nathants/aws-gocljs https://github.com/nathants/aws-gocljs
• jmstfv 3y ago
  I built my business on Rails/SQLite/Sidekiq+Redis. Hetzner (bare metal) for hosting. Bash script for provisioning a server. Vanilla JavaScript only when necessary. Tailwind for design. nanoc for generating a static site. If I were to start again, I'd pick the same stack again. It just works and gets out of the way.
• jareklupinski 3y ago
  I've been meaning to try Django (mit Postgres) + HTMX + Alpine + Tailwind for a while, and while I don't typically write a django admin page, https://github.com/unfoldadmin/django-unfold https://github.com/unfoldadmin/django-unfold at least puts them in the same box for me to start playing with
• RalfWausE 3y ago
  Well, i am currently building a little App for my job that is also a bit of a passion project, well, i am building using the Internetcomputer and the motoko language in the backend and vanilla JS and html in the frontend.
• pylua 3y ago
  I am surprised I haven’t seen angular listed here. I would pick flutter / istio / booternetes / helm
• FractalHQ 3y ago
  Loving seeing so many Sveltekit + Postgres posts! Truly hard to top the dream team.
• ja27 3y ago
  I'm a simple man. Node/Express with probably MariaDB and React. Maybe give Tailwind a spin. Same with next.js if I had the time. Would prefer go on the backend but language switching when doing frontend at the same time is a bit of a pain.
• owenpalmer 3y ago
  Supabase + Flutter is a stack I can highly recommend if you want to get off the ground fast. Both are extremely intuitive to get started with.
  • gardenhedge 3y ago
    Flutter for web? I've used it, and liked it, for mobile. Is web the same?
• phendrenad2 3y ago
  php, heroku, mysql, redis, cron2go.
• janosdebugs 3y ago
  Something boring, well documented, and widely used. The more boring the better. I'd avoid hotshot stacks like the plague because they are usually immature and tend to change quickly. Ideally, I'd pick something that has OpenAPI as a first class citizen or code generation, including validation.
• FlyingSnake 3y ago
  Django with HTMX + Alpine on the frontend. Deployed as Docker container on a cheap VPS. It's boring, time tested but by Jove, does it get the job done fast. I'm building a B2B2C marketplace in my free time and I'm blown away by the practicality of this stack. Due to longevity of Django, every problem I encounter is just a search away. DRF makes it dead simple to add REST APIs. The Admin panel is a golden cherry on top.
  • scottwick 3y ago
    Yeah, this is exactly what I do as well. I'd be curious to hear more about your deployment process, specifically how you get your Docker image onto the VPS. Do you just push to a registry like DockerHub and then pull it down on the VPS?
    • FlyingSnake 3y ago
      Yes, I use GH actions to push it to a registry and then manually pull it on the VPS. I’m sure there are better ways to automate this but I’m too lazy at this point to implement them.
      • klecansky 3y ago
        You can use Watchtower (https://containrrr.dev/watchtower/ https://containrrr.dev/watchtower/) that solves problem of manual pulling on VPS.
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    Sounds good. Do you do type checking? DB?
    • FlyingSnake 3y ago
      Yes, using mypy and planning to check out Ruff instead. PostgreSQL for prod DB, SQLite for local dev.
      • 3y ago
• JakeAl 3y ago
  Remember APE. The right medium is always the most Accessible Powerful cost Effective relative to your audience and available resources.
• lexoj 3y ago
  Go + HTMX (DB Postgres or Sqlite)
• rahlokzero 3y ago
  Today: Expo for web and native, with a FastAPI backend. Tomorrow: Who knows.
• filestorage 3y ago
  Frontend: Angular or Vue, deployed on AWS S3 bucket + cloudfront (for https) Backend: AWS Appsync (or AWS API Gateway) integrated with AWS Lambdas written in Golang. Authentication through AWS Cognito. DB: anything serverless from AWS (Dynamodb, Aurora etc.) This way the app would be 100% serverless, no need for effort to scale it or to maintain the infrastructure (apart from automating the ifrastructure through AWS CDK).
  • mattrighetti 3y ago
    You won’t need a lot of effort to scale even with a Go backend deployed on an EC2 instance in the majority of cases. Serverless is cool when you start with 300 users and you’re still in the free tier plan. After that, it’s going to cost you a fortune when you really need to scale, and I’m not even thinking about the time that you would need to waste writing everything back to a monolith/microservice, because that is what’s going to happen most likely.
    • definitelyauser 3y ago
      I wrote a Go application to run on AWS lambda, but also compileable as a monolith. Was fun running on lamba etc, until as you say, the costs starts soaring massively. Moved it to a cheap VPS and never looked back.
• yetanother12345 3y ago
  Exactly the same "tech stack" as I used before that term became popular: - HTML - JS (Ecma Script, not some "framework") - CSS (not "Typescript" or whatever, standard CSS) For backend I'd use PHP. Yes, PHP. Edit: The same would apply for $job
  • pxeger1 3y ago
    Typescript and CSS are orthogonal. I think you’ve misunderstood what typescript is, or had a brain fart / typo.
• 1-2-3-5-8 3y ago
  If it is my money/time then I'll choose Django, Rails or Phoenix. If it was a big corporate with deep pockets then I'll (or they'll force me to) go with React, Angular etc.
• mattrighetti 3y ago
  If it’s a personal project, I would pick and try out the latest trends that I’ve been keeping an eye on. I’m planning to try out HTMX + a backend written either in Rust or Go. Since it’s a passion project it doesn’t necessarily need to be out there for thousands of users, so I’ll go with SQLite.
• sim04ful 3y ago
  The ReactJS + Typescript + Rust + LMDB combo just works so well for me.
• taf2 3y ago
  I’d start with rails. It stays out of the way while providing all the core features necessary to grow.
• cvalka 3y ago
  Go + htmlx + TiDb or YugabyteDB
• Narciss 3y ago
  T3 stack with MUI deployed to vercel + Postgres (I use supabase) My latest projects are built with it, but I also use a very similar stack at my work so it’s easy to pick it up. Also, this stack is free if using vercel + supabase until you reach an BIG userbase
• em-bee 3y ago
  depends on the goal: if the passion is to learn some new tech then well, there are lots of options, i'd pick something that i haven't worked with yet. if it is something where the passion is in the content, i would use the same old stack that i used for my last few projects. in my case that is aurelia+custom backend which is a reusable object storage and user management platform, where i didn't need to add any project specific features for some time now. if i could not use that backend, i would pick something that makes it easy to manage objects through a REST API. if i had to evaluate a new framework then the main thing that i would look for is the ability to minimize or avoid any dependency on build tools. unfortunately, with the rapid evolution in frontend frameworks there is also a rapid evolution in build tools. that just adds extra effort to maintain a site for more than a few years. without buildtools getting in the way i can maintain a site with minimal effort, and i know it will still be running in a decade from now.
• Glench 3y ago
  I used SvelteKit, but it would be nice if there was something like rails on top of SvelteKit that brought database connections / models, admin screens, etc. SvelteKit is the best combination of front-and-backend in terms of performance and developer usability that I've found.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ta456457547 3y ago
  Spring Boot and Thymeleaf. The JS ecosystem has gone to utter shite.
• mooreds 3y ago
  Either one that I wanted to learn or one that I knew. Which of those depends on whether the focus of the passion was exploration of new tech to make an impact on my understanding of tech or exploitation of existing tech to make an impact on the world. If it was the former, today I'd probably learn Rust + whatever webapp stack is popular in that language. Seems to make some pretty interesting guarantees around programming and is blazing fast. If it was the latter, I'd pick rails. Nothing in my experience beats rails for productivity for a bog standard webapp.
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  NextJS again! I keep changing my mind. Part of me wants to use old school tech. But I do like the DX of Next. NextJS tends to make sites that need JS on the front end. And probably bigger bundles than an old school MVC job. I will take that hit though for some of the positives of working in React and productivity and modernness and community of great work around React.
• joshka 3y ago
  For a more nuanced viewpoint than "This is the tool I am most familiar with" (which for the most part is both the right answer for that person, but probably not for you), see the MDN articles starting at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Understanding_client-side_tools https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_tes... and reading down through the next few chapters.
• lgkk 3y ago
  I’d use whatever scales best for the least cost. Go backend. Single binary. Big performance. I’d use Go for as many things as possible until I actually had a need for distinct technologies (queues, redis, etc.). Throw embedded db into the mix and you shouldn’t have any problems for a long time. React UI on cloudflare pages. Free. Easy. Postgres. Single node goes far. Great plug n play extensions. Same as with Go I can push this pretty far until there is some serious requirement to do something else. Deploy on either cheap bare metal or an affordable provider like DO.
  • cookiengineer 3y ago
    Do you by any chance know whether there's something like a go library or converter/transpiler that allows you to reuse the structs from a backend on the client side? Currently I always have a little redundancy in my projects when it comes to the JS HTTP client that calls the golang backend's API and I want to avoid that.
    • lgkk 3y ago
      Not that I am aware of. If there is one I’d try it out. I usually just make the types by hand on TS client. Maybe gpt :p
    • ryanlime 3y ago
      [dead]
• mikewarot 3y ago
  I'd write it in Lazarus/Free Pascal, compile it to WASM[1], and do whatever hacks I had to do in order to push it through the internet into a web browser. There's nothing even close to the productivity we had back in the days of VB6/Delphi to be had on the web, ever. The closest we're going to get is a pale imitation. [1] https://wiki.freepascal.org/WebAssembly https://wiki.freepascal.org/WebAssembly
  • ddmf 3y ago
    I remember writing a cgi app in delphi back in the late 90s to emulate our in house excel sheet that priced up a custom computer. Do you have any suggested reading for what you're suggesting because I'm just about to start a project and as we do a lot of our LOB apps in Delphi this seems useful?
    • mikewarot 3y ago
      No, I don't have any suggested reading... just a plan of action should it be required. I'm assuming that enough work has been done that it should be possible to build a CRUD application in Pascal, and have it eventually produce working WASM executable code. I have some existing code in pascal[1]... and it would be helpful for it to run in the browser.... lemme see how bad it is making this happen. It'll take a few days, I think. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid https://github.com/mikewarot/Bitgrid
      • mikewarot 3y ago
        Turns out I was able to get something to work in about 2 hours... just after the HN edit window closed. Here's a really small Hello World in Pascal --> WASM --> Web Page you can see the output from, all in a GitHub repo.[1] [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/fpc_wasm https://github.com/mikewarot/fpc_wasm
  • meiraleal 3y ago
    If that was really true, it would be a competitive advantage of many companies. Unless they are hiding it. Desktop apps are easier to develop as there are way less moving parts. There isn't nothing magical about VB6/Delphi, just a lot of work put there. Many JS developers are multiple times more productive than what was possible to accomplish with VB6/Delphi.
• hotshoe 3y ago
  React on the front-end because of eco; Fastify on the backend w/ Postgres. I host React w/ Remix for light-duty SSR, but real work gets done on the backend. I'm moving away from metaframeworks as single solution -- they're easy, but keeping biz logic on the be makes it much easier to swap out fe and better for testability IMO. I'll prob shift over to Solid once / if Start ever ships, else Qwik.
• austin-cheney 3y ago
  Instead of thinking about tech stack think about the problem you want solved. Most devs think about tech stack first and so all they do is read from a database and struggle to put text on screen. Then once that climb that mountain their product looks identical to everything else and is limited to putting text on screen at considerably inflated expense.
• stephane-klein 3y ago
  I just started a project and chose this stack: - SSR SvelteKit with Hydration (https://github.com/sveltejs/kit https://github.com/sveltejs/kit) - PostgreSQL database server - Postgres.js - PostgreSQL client for Node.js (https://github.com/porsager/postgres https://github.com/porsager/postgres) - Migration powered by graphile-migrate (https://github.com/graphile/migrate https://github.com/graphile/migrate) - PostgreSQL Row-Level Security (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/ddl-rowsecurity.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/ddl-rowsecurity.html) - svelte-headlessui (https://github.com/rgossiaux/svelte-headlessui https://github.com/rgossiaux/svelte-headlessui) - sveltekit-i18n (https://github.com/sveltekit-i18n/lib https://github.com/sveltekit-i18n/lib) - TailwindCSS (https://tailwindcss.com/ https://tailwindcss.com/) - Superforms (https://superforms.rocks/ https://superforms.rocks/) - sveltekit-flash-message + svelte-french-toast (https://github.com/ciscoheat/sveltekit-flash-message https://github.com/ciscoheat/sveltekit-flash-message + https://github.com/kbrgl/svelte-french-toast https://github.com/kbrgl/svelte-french-toast) Tooling : - asdf (https://asdf-vm.com/ https://asdf-vm.com/) - Docker and Docker Compose - NodeJS - pnpm - Jest for unittest All deployed on a VM at Scaleway (https://www.scaleway.com/en/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/) with Bash script (https://github.com/stephane-klein/sveltekit-tendaro-webshell-skeleton/tree/main/deployment https://github.com/stephane-klein/sveltekit-tendaro-webshell...) After 3 months of development on this stack, I'm very satisfied. My application is fast, light and requires very little code. Project skeleton example: https://github.com/stephane-klein/sveltekit-tendaro-webshell-skeleton/tree/main https://github.com/stephane-klein/sveltekit-tendaro-webshell...
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • jannesblobel 3y ago
    Why did you choose sveltekit-i18n instead of another svelte i18n lib?
    • stephane-klein 3y ago
      > Why did you choose sveltekit-i18n instead of another svelte i18n lib? Mainly for the following argument: - It is built for SvelteKit and has good SSR support. And also, the following: - The translations are loaded for visited pages only. (and only once!) - As of v2.4.2, the size of the sveltekit-i18n package is 14 kB in the minified form and 4.6 kB in minified + gzipped form From https://blog.aakashgoplani.in/comparing-i18n-libraries-in-sveltekit-svelte-i18n-sveltekit-i18n-and-typesafe-i https://blog.aakashgoplani.in/comparing-i18n-libraries-in-sv...
• xjidjccudux 3y ago
  Htmx+tailwind with rust/leptos serverside. Avoiding JS as much as possible.
• ezedv 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • epiccoleman 3y ago
    This has got to be a ChatGPT response
• throwaway167 3y ago
  Yesod/Haskell for the backend, backbone.js for front end. Oracle for DB.
• hknmtt 3y ago
  i cannot answer objectively for obvious reasons. but i am very happy with Go back-end, Quasar front-end, JSON for message formatting and MariaDB for data storage. I have made couple of project in this manner, in addition to previous ones, so I am very happy with this setup and cannot really imagine trying anything else that would work better. Quasar can be also built into a mobile app which is another bonus.
• ramikalai 3y ago
  I started work on a passion project recently and chose to use Next.JS on Vercel. It's new to me and so there was a little bit of a learning curve but that was part of the fun. Seems super simple to get up and running and let's you focus on the product itself rather than the stack. Alternative answer: Use whatever you're most familiar/comfortable with.
• necatiozmen 3y ago
  For the frontend, there is React framework called refine for building CRUD apps like admin panel and internal tools https://github.com/refinedev/refine https://github.com/refinedev/refine It has built-in integrations for UI libraries and data providers. You can select your stack
• briandoesdev 3y ago
  I've really been into what I call the "HAG" stack: HTMX, Alpine.JS, Go. It's simplicity has been a fresh of breath air. I love Go and being able to use it for almost the entire web app is amazing. I am excited for the upcoming router enhancements Go has proposed, that will let me move off Chi router. I try to stay as close to the std lib as possible. Though, the `templ` package is amazing and I very much will continue to use it when possible. For my database I use `libsql` by Turso with server mode. As for deployment, I just dockerize the app and the database then run them as two separate components in a Docker App. Makes it a simple and easy to develop and deploy updates.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• schappim 3y ago
  Rails + Postgres w/ [1] jumpstartrails [1] https://jumpstartrails.com https://jumpstartrails.com
• maxbrydak 3y ago
  HTMX for the front end Go for the backend Postgres for DB Redis for cache
• devhe4d 3y ago
  Something that I am good / fast at
• mixandgo 3y ago
  I'd use Ruby on Rails with Hotwire. For building a SaaS quickly, it's my go-to framework.
• HerrBertling 3y ago
  Last thing I built is using SST for some lightweight recurring TypeScript lambda functions + DynamoDB for data storage. Plus a very simple one-page Remix + TailwindCSS frontend because deployment of that through SST is a breeze as well. It is the stuff I know and can easily handle. For anything new, I'd try Phoenix to see what I can achieve with Elixir and a non-React/Vue frontend.
• rio2 3y ago
  Backend: Go, SQLite Frontend: Flutter If Flutter is not possible or suitable than htmx + bulma (or w3c, pico etc..).
• rasulkireev 3y ago
  What you know best! For me it would be: *Django* for backend with the built-in templates. No frontend backend split. TailwindCSS for styling. StimulusJS for sprinkling JS wherever needed, which is not very often. Postgres as my DB (although if I'm not integrating Stripe, SQLite will suffice). Maybe Redis for caching and as a broker for background tasks, if needed.
  • kirso 3y ago
    What if you don't know any? :)
• jvatic 3y ago
  I'm surprised nobody said they'd use [Yew](https://yew.rs/ https://yew.rs/), especially given the premise of this being for a passion project.
• tdriver 3y ago
  I built this site recently with Blazor: https://gpsoutage.com https://gpsoutage.com It runs completely on the client and is hosted for free on Azure. There is a lot of support for Blazor and as a .Net backend dev, I didn't have to learn too much front-end code. I'd definitely choose Blazor again.
• agonzalezro 3y ago
  Phoenix & its Liveview. Backed by Postgres or even SQLite for some use-cases.
• Exuma 3y ago
  Posting here so I can refer back to this...
• hevisko 3y ago
  Fishing tackle - much easier to go fishing than to navigate today's stacks and interfaces.