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Ask HN: If you are starting in 2024, what is the most productive solo dev stack?

• zidad 2y ago
  I know c# is not the coolest kid on the blcok, but my pick would be Blazor. Since it's all based on .net it's mature, performant, stable (finally, now with .net 8), long term support, great tooling and readily available strategies for testing, configuration, deployment, debugging etc. And because I'm so tired of NPM/JavaScript (UI) frameworks reinventing themselves with new name every 6 months.
• deepshaswat 2y ago
  I am in a unique position to answer the question as I started learning Software Development last Oct after working as Automation engineer for more than 10 years. Based on the skills and tech stack that I found would be useful to start a company are as follows: - NextJS - FE & BE - NodeKS - Express/Hono for backend specific - TypeScript - Tailwind CSS + Shadcn-ui - MongoDB / Postgres - Prisma ORM - Resend / AWS SES - Clerk / NextAuth - AWS EC2 -> Backend Deployment - Vercel - GitHub - Upstash Redis / AWS ElastiCache - DB and Session Caching - Cloudflare / AWS Cloudfront + AWS WAF - AWS API Gateway You can keep 6-8 months to learn and build couple of projects using the tech stack
• SnoopDougDoug 2y ago
  This is a job for Perplexity: MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js) stack. Here's why: The MERN stack is a highly popular and versatile full-stack JavaScript solution that allows you to build modern web applications efficiently as a solo developer. It provides several advantages: 1. Full JavaScript Stack: By using JavaScript across the entire stack (frontend with React, backend with Node.js/Express), you can leverage your JavaScript skills without having to learn multiple languages. This reduces the learning curve and increases productivity. 2. React for Frontend: React is a powerful and widely-adopted library for building user interfaces. Its component-based architecture and virtual DOM make it efficient for developing complex and interactive UIs. 3. Node.js/Express for Backend: Node.js, with Express.js as the web framework, allows you to build scalable and high-performance backend services using JavaScript. This eliminates the need for a separate backend language. 4. MongoDB for Database: MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database that integrates seamlessly with the MERN stack. Its flexible schema and scalability make it suitable for various types of applications. 5. Large Community and Ecosystem: The MERN stack has a vast and active community, ensuring abundant resources, libraries, and tools for efficient development. This can significantly boost productivity for a solo developer. 6. Isomorphic/Universal Rendering: With the MERN stack, you can implement isomorphic/universal rendering, which allows you to render the same code on the server and client-side, improving performance and SEO.
• hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  Without becoming a software engineer? None. Work for 1 hour a month in the developed world to make enough money to pay for, say, a month on https://wpengine.com/ https://wpengine.com/, and get to working on the actual website, not its infra. Even Python will take someone starting from zero anywhere between 10-100 hours to fully grok. A phenomenal time investment if you have any professional interest at all in computers, but if you truly don't, a ridiculous one.
  • eimrine 2y ago
    100 hours to grok Python from zero as an upper bound? You must to be a rockstar.
    • orionblastar 2y ago
      It helps if you have other languages learned before learning Python.
      • hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
        Ah, but no, I really was assuming we are starting from scratch.
    • GianFabien 2y ago
      It might be possible to become comfortable with Python language within 100 hours. But I can't see how anybody could come up to speed with even the essential set of "batteries" without prior web standards, etc knowledge.
  • kirso 2y ago
    i.e. in professional capacity. Hence the criteria of "# of jobs" does not apply.
• haebom 2y ago
  "Svelte"
• meiraleal 2y ago
  PWAs (which is still html + js)
• perilunar 2y ago
  For static content: no stack, just html and css, and serve from GitHub Pages. Maybe Wordpress or Squarespace if you want to do something dynamic. Anything beyond that and you will need to become a software engineer, or at least learn some programming and server ops.
  • codingdave 2y ago
    You can also serve JS from github pages for dynamic sites. You just can't host a back-end server or data store.
• wszrfcbhujnikm 2y ago
  Hard to say. I go with DHH: the one that makes you happy. Since you won’t know maybe just pick something mainstream. But I am against nodejs because I find the NPM ecosystem, imports, TS setup and config etc. messy and time consuming versus literally anything else. For example Go, Python, Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP are all reasonable.
  • codingdave 2y ago
    Yet any one opinion is just that - one opinion. I find node easy and quick, and some of the ones in your easy list to be easy while others are time-consuming and odd. We're both right - it is all a question of what you are used to. So for someone just starting out, I agree - just pick one. You'll learn it, it is will make sense, you will be productive, and because you only know one thing everything else will seem weird. If you keep doing things, you'll learn more and then things will seem less weird.
    • machiaweliczny 2y ago
      What ORM / framework are you using?
    • randomdata 2y ago
      > it is all a question of what you are used to. In a Dunning-Kruger kind of way? As in, without having the familiarity with other options, you can't recognize how slow and difficult it is?
      • wszrfcbhujnikm 2y ago
        You T shape it. Play with other frameworks. And also read blogs by people using those frameworks. Keep learning!
• demian32 2y ago
  For static pages, regular HTML and CSS will be sufficient. For dynamic ones, I would choose Laravel (a PHP framework). I'll give a rather unpopular opinion, but in the beginning, you don't need to become a master in PHP and know every function. The Laravel documentation will guide you step by step when you want to add authentication or create a simple feature for adding dynamic content. There are also plenty of community tutorials. If simplicity is important to you, I would advise against going the fullstack JS route. The Node.js environment or more specifically a framework like Next.js is very convoluted. You'll have to combine packages and functionalities yourself, and constantly changing versions will significantly complicate it.
  • altdataseller 2y ago
    What if you need javascript? What would you recommend in addition ti to laravel? Or is Laravel enough?
    • kugelblitz 2y ago
      I would argue adding JavaScript on top of Laravel will make you slower. You can use Blade as the templating engine (or how JS people would call "Server Side Rendering" but which has been default for most full stack frameworks). Otherwise you need to create 2 additional interfaces, one for backend and one for frontend. And an additional layer of error handling. I personally prefer Symfony over Laravel because of it's modularity and extensibility, but Laravel has the edge on getting started quickly and available SaaS features (such as billing modules and stuff). If you need SPA-ish features, you could use htmx and if you need some on-site interactivity, I like Alpine.js.
    • pyronite 2y ago
      Alpine + Livewire is the go-to stack for SPA-like Laravel functionality these days. If you "need" JavaScript for form purposes, Filament is well worth taking a look at as well.
    • 0xblinq 2y ago
      Checkout Inertiajs , it’s and adapter for Laravel to integrate it with react or vue
• cianuro_ 2y ago
  Ruby on Rails if you are a beginner. If you are experienced, Rails/Laravel but I'd loop Clojure in too.
  • kirso 2y ago
    Doesn't Rails have like an insane learning curve? (I might be as well wrong) at at least compared to other frameworks.
• muzani 2y ago
  I'll still keep shilling Parse Server + Parse Dashboard for back end. It's open source, it plugs into MongoDB, which is very scalable for when the day comes to replace it with something else. It has things like auth, password reset, cloud functions, etc built in, and there's tutorials for email adapters. It does much of the things you can do on Firebase, but easier and cheaper. Dealing with the DB is extremely easy too - it handles relations within databases, queries, and the UI of Parse Dashboard is simple like your regular online spreadsheets. It's very easy to normalize DBs and all that. Old article I wrote on how to set it up in half an hour: https://smuzani.medium.com/setting-up-a-mobile-backend-server-in-half-an-hour-f1b13e88092c https://smuzani.medium.com/setting-up-a-mobile-backend-serve... For front end, JS + jQuery + Bootstrap works fine for basic interactive experiences. You probably don't need React level stuff unless you're building a social media site or similar. One of the advantages of React is that it's easy to communicate what's happening to team members without documentation, but this is unneeded if you're solo. There's disadvantages though - you have to optimize things like all your JS files, and handle reloading from cache when you've updated a JS file. There's no "clean" or "modular" code; if you made a bar like the " new | threads | past ..." the top of this page, you use find and replace. But I have sites that run perfectly fine for years on this, without much issue in maintenance. Another bonus with simple HTML+CSS+jQuery+Bootstrap is that you can also host it on some really cheap servers. Netlify is free at first, but it does not scale well to say, 10k visits/day.
  • cweagans 2y ago
    You might be interested in Pocketbase. Lots of overlap. It’s really good.
    • muzani 2y ago
      Oh, this is nice! Thanks for the recommendation! On a glance, it looks like Pocket Base is easier and faster to set up but Parse Server might scale better, just because it's tied in with MongoDB by default. SQLite is an interesting choice, but 10k persistent real time connections is pretty much near the point where you should be hiring someone to scale it up. Supporting Google login out of the box is a major plus, and the dashboard works great on mobile.
• cpach 2y ago
  FWIW, this was discussed a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40376391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40376391
• Tanzirul 2y ago
  For static, I would choose HTML, CSS, and JS (Basically a framework and library like React). I usually use Laravel, Vue, and InertiaJS for the fullstack. Even though I considered trying a new stack for [1], I decided to stick with what I am familiar with. One reason is because Laravel already integrates well with queues. However, I am not a fan of MySQL and am thinking about switching to a different database. [1] https://replyhub.co https://replyhub.co
• greenie_beans 2y ago
  python + django
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  Probably a full stack framework such as rails or Phoenix. I will argue rails because even if i don't love it, once you learn activeadmin it becomes really fast to build features with it
• huahaiy 2y ago
  Clojure/clojurescript
  • heyest 2y ago
    I love Clojure and CLJS but unless you're already familiar with those ecosystem I'd not recommend them for a solo dev starting a new project.
  • createaccount99 2y ago
    Isn't cljs kinda deprecated now that google closure compiler got shut down?
    • meiraleal 2y ago
      That's great news! I'll check clojurescript again when they get ride of Google closure
• PedroBatista 2y ago
  The most productive stack is the one you already know. If you know Python choose a Python stack, if you know Java choose a Java stack. within the language you know choose the most used one or the most boring one who existed for more than 10 years.
  • arrowsmith 2y ago
    This answer is such a cop-out. I know Rails very well, but I'm still a million times more productive in Phoenix than I ever was in Rails. Sure, it took some time to learn Phoenix and get up to speed, but if I could go back I'd have made the switch much earlier. What is the advice here exactly: "never learn anything new"?
    • giancarlostoro 2y ago
      I agree with this sentiment. I know half a dozen or even a dozen programming languages (some more than others obviously) and my first project is almost always a web project. Not every language has a decent streamlined / full feature web framework (I really havent found one for Rust yet that has everything OOTB) so you have to build your own pieces (which I've done with CherryPy, though learning Django was a boost, imagine had I never tried Django as suggested above), but now and then new projects emerge. ASP .NET is fantastic, but if a project requires libraries I cannot find for .NET I may opt for Python altogether, which is part of why I with IronPython got more love and attention from Microsoft more directly. With their backing I could see Python on .NET being much more prevalent. Jython is basically in a weird limbo state, and I doubt Oracle will ever have the brain cells to invest in open source in a way that pays them back endlessly. The real take away is, there's always new web tech you've never heard of that makes you infinitely more productive. Blazor is peak web development for me right now. The ability to design components and not have to leave C# for UI logic is amazing.
      • lostmsu 2y ago
        Have you tried Python.NET? (I am a co-maintainer) https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet
• fasteddie31003 2y ago
  I really like React Create App on the front end with AWS API Gateway connected to AWS Lambdas. I use AWS Cognito for user login and AWS DynamoDB for my data store. Hosting is dirt cheap to start and scales well if your app takes off. The downside is that you're coupled to AWS.
  • itake 2y ago
    The official RCA is deprecated. Is there a fork you recommend?
    • alright2565 2y ago
      NextJS does more than create-react-app, but you're not required to use all those extra features. You can use it to just escape the tedium of configuring JS tooling.
      • itake 2y ago
        I spent 4 hours trying to figure out how to build a static nextjs website. I ended up giving up and switching to astro. You basically need to understand SSR to do static sites.
    • throwitaway1123 2y ago
      Vite is the closest thing we have to a Create React App successor. It does most of what CRA did in its heyday, while subsisting on far fewer dependencies. Run `npm create vite@latest` and just follow the CLI prompts.
      • itake 2y ago
        someone told me about vite. ill try that out next. I switched to astro for a blog after giving up with nextjs, and it works pretty well for a blog. not sure about a front end app though.
        • throwitaway1123 2y ago
• simonw 2y ago
  Part of my stack selection process these days is considering how well LLM tools like ChatGPT and Claude "know" the stack in question. Using libraries that have been around for a few years and have accumulated a lot of training data is a huge productivity boost here, because LLM tools can both write code that uses them and usefully explain and debug them when they go wrong. It's weird and a little uncomfortable to have this as part of my selection criteria, but if I want to maximize the rate at which I can build things it's honestly a useful rule of thumb.
  • hiatus 2y ago
    How do you go about determining the aptitude of a particular LLM with a particular stack? What does your evaluation look like?
    • simonw 2y ago
      "Vibes" Seriously. The only way that works for me is to spend a bunch of time messing around with a model trying out different things. I really want to have a more repeatable process for this. I've been tinkering with a way of setting up my own automated evals to run against different models but I'm a fair way off having something usable there. For programming libraries I find that my assumptions usually hold: if a live set is widely used and has been around for a few years it's likely to get good results. I picked the WTForm Python library recently for this reason.
  • yodon 2y ago
    Isn't this identical to a dev from five years ago saying "I picked X stack because of the community"? ChatGPT learns from blog posts, forums, etc. If there's a vibrant and helpful community around a stack, ChatGPT has a lot to work with. If it's obscure, not so much.
    • simonw 2y ago
      It's similar to that, yes. The difference is that I didn't use to rate that as one of my highest selection criteria, because if a new library was well designed and well documented enough I wouldn't feel the need for large amounts of community support. Today if a new library is well designed and well documented I still might pick a more mature competitor purely for the LLM advantage.
• forgingahead 2y ago
  Ruby on Rails
• stavros 2y ago
  It really depends on what you're building, but Django is still undefeated for 95% of the things a solo dev will want to create. Everyone here recommends React, but all the interactivity usually doesn't add business value, just complexity and slowness.
  • kirso 2y ago
    How is it compared to Rails? It seems like the world is just divided between server first or JS framework first depending on how much interactivity. In my case i just need some API calling, retrieving data, rendering it on the dashboard (just text, no graphs) and pushing some of the content to another API.
    • stavros 2y ago
      I haven't used Rails, but I assume the two are similar. Django is more popular, which probably means more of an ecosystem, but if you need a simple API, either will do.
• wslh 2y ago
  Is there a good "drag and drop" option on the UX/UI side? I assume .NET is one?
• monkey26 2y ago
  Solid-Start.
• bckr 2y ago
  I’m enjoying SvelteKit + Tailwind with shadcn-svelte components. Picking a framework advice: https://youtu.be/RTLSSGPoASU?si=UeVO_rHtYK_YS48v https://youtu.be/RTLSSGPoASU?si=UeVO_rHtYK_YS48v Understanding the different types of frontend frameworks: https://youtu.be/CQuTF-bkOgc?si=EMKfE_sNZNqf6c-x https://youtu.be/CQuTF-bkOgc?si=EMKfE_sNZNqf6c-x shadcn-svelte: https://www.shadcn-svelte.com/ https://www.shadcn-svelte.com/
• android521 2y ago
  For me , it is typescript all the down from nodejs , react to react native . The ecosystem is big . Whatever issue you had, there’re likely tons of resources on the web. It makes me very productive and can easily switch context between server , web and mobile as it is just the same typescript
• dixhsgfd 2y ago
  If you’re just starting out a full batteries included thing will work best, meaning database and frameweok with history of stability, popularity and long term support. Ruby on Rails, php with laravel, Python with Django. Because any framework that’s not married to an orm means more voices you have to make and less support and more problems. No js framework meets these criteria although nextjs gets kind of close imo.
• bags43 2y ago
  FE: Angular + Material (Maybe blazor if no experience with JS/TS) BE: .NET or Spring Boot Database: SQLite (eventually PostgreSQL in Docker container) Hosting: Hetzner
• yodon 2y ago
  An under-appreciated advantage of single-devs is ease of refactoring. In the time it takes a big team to schedule a pre-meeting for discussing changing a schema, solo-devs can whip through many huge cross-cutting refactors across their entire architecture without anyone complaining about broken merges. Building a real, successful thing generally involves more time and more learning about the customer space than you expect at the outset. As a single dev, you have a massive advantage over big teams in your ability to make huge fast change in the architecture of your product. Here's the controversial part of this: if you want to maximize your ability to make big changes, you want a strongly-typed codebase (for me that's TypeScript on the front-end and C# on the backend because of the quality of the refactoring tooling for it). There's no formal guarantee that strong typing will keep your code working across big refactorings, but in practice it just works. You focus on getting the inner loops right and the compiler and IDE takes care of the rest. Yes, you can probably write the first iteration faster in a dynamically typed language, but when you start making those big changes that are your unfair competitive advantage against larger teams, the strong typing combined with modern IDE tooling capabilities means a working system remains a working system even as you treat it like completely malleable clay. I'm also a fan of modular monoliths, again for ease of major refactoring (if you're not familiar with it, check out for example TurboRepo in the node.js space). You can organize an enormous amount of code well using this technique, including having things partitioned to hand off to other devs or multiple teams if you happen to eventually want to scale up from single dev to multi-dev.
• alanfranz 2y ago
  Rather than the stack as in programming languages, libraries, frameworks, to build applications you should probably focus on platforms - be it something like vercel or render or heroku, or a bit more low-level like aws lambda, pick some platform+stack that works well together and that relieves you from thinking about ops and deployment at all. It will prevent you from wasting time at running your app rather than coding features.
• thelastinuit 2y ago
  phoenix liveview.
• heluser 2y ago
  It looks like the answers are heavily biased towards “my favorite tool”. And don’t take into account what’s actually asked. For a person who doesn’t want to become an swe (e.g. working on a specialized area at a big company) and who is a newcomer the answer is simple: JS, period. Take Next.js and try writing something using SO, chatGPT, articles and books. Treat html , css as “will learn on the go when I need something”. Next.js is the closest that the JS has to the standardized, pawed path. It covers all you need front-end, back-end, static sites. Batteries included. Note: I am mostly a back-end / SWE and mostly avoid JS, but I also have to admit that IMO that’s the best match with the authors goals.
  • borisjoffe 2y ago
    I'd consider Nuxt - it has all the benefits of Next without having to deal with React, and it's also pretty popular/standardized. Vue is easier to write than React
  • kirso 2y ago
    Can I just say, thank you? Some of the answers are exactly what I've been trying to avoid. My only goal is being able to build my own stuff, I don't really care about kubernetes or scaling. I don't anticipate to have 1m active users with concurrency. At the same time, I got a bit scared by React quite frankly and hence was only looking at Sveltekit. However you rightly pointed out, its still being shaped despite being similar to Next.js and seems like ideal for React devs who want to jump into more simplicity and "vibes" with DSL. My only other consideration was Rails but for that one - the learning curve is even steeper.
    • Glench 2y ago
      Reading your question, I think Svelte or SvelteKit is probably a good option like you said. It's basically just JS/HTML/CSS as normal but if you want interactive UI stuff it's very simple to add. At this point SvelteKit is totally stable, it's just not as popular as React so it doesn't have as much community / LLM support.
• 0xblinq 2y ago
  Adonis + Inertia or Laravel + Inertia
• _waqas_ali_ 2y ago
  React with Next.js (including API routes), Tailwind for styling, docker to containerise it, DigitalOcean to deploy it for cheap
  • kirso 2y ago
    Frankly I think I am too dumb for React, which seems more like an enterprise tooling rather than focusing on simplicity and productivity.
• ivylee 2y ago
  I rebuilt my personal website[1] (static site) using Astro[2], and it was a pleasant experience. [1]: https://ivylee.github.io/ https://ivylee.github.io/ [2]: https://astro.build/ https://astro.build/
  • kirso 2y ago
    For static sites Astro is the way! What do you use for more interactive / app like experiences? Specifically I need to call external APIs to retrieve data, store it, and then call another API to send some of the adjust results in the body.
• anuragk11 2y ago
  For people who are starting out, I would recommend going with React(with Vite!) and Node + Express on backend. It's simple enough to get started with and has great community support. Tip: ChatGPT and other LLMs are quite proficient as well in these tech ;)
• bilsbie 2y ago
  Django and postgres