How to choose the right technology stack for a full stack development project
Today, every company that wants to succeed reaches out to the tech industry. Businesses create software to improve user experiences, optimize operations, and capture new growth opportunities. And a tech stack is the foundation of any successful project.
Business owners must therefore have at least a fundamental awareness of what a tech stack is, what options are on the market, and how to pick a tech stack that will benefit their firm.
What is a Technology Stack?
A group of tools called Tech Stack are used to implement IT projects. Programming languages, frameworks, libraries, different development tools, and programming paradigms typically make up the Stack. The product’s viability and competitiveness, as well as its functioning, scalability, and ongoing maintenance, are all predetermined by the combination of the abovementioned factors.
Let’s update any technological stack lists that may already exist.
The Frontend Tech Stack
Everything that users might see on their app screens is part of the frontend.
Here, it’s especially important to remember to include the following:
- The HTML markup language, which renders the material in the browser;
- CSS stylesheets for content styling,
- JavaScript, a programming language, creates the web application’s interactive elements.
These technologies can be used with helpful UI frameworks and libraries like Bootstrap, React.js, Angular, Node.js, jQuery, etc.
The Backend Tech Stack
The back-end tech stack feeds data to the client but is not visible to the end user. Among the back-end technologies are
- Operating systems
- Nginx and Apache web servers
- Programming languages like Objective-C, C#, Java, PHP, and Python
- Node.js,.NET, Django, and other frameworks built on top of programming languages are examples
- Databases including Oracle, Neo4j, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server.
- AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Heroku, and other cloud infrastructures and services
Your application’s server and client sides must be considered while planning the future technology stack.
Middleware
Both front-end and back-end technologies are included in the list of tech stacks. If middleware is required for the project, you should also choose it. In light of the project’s requirements, a developer might decide on the following:
A distributed network can include one or more types of connectivity or communication between two or more applications or application components thanks to middleware, which is software.
Using middleware technology makes it possible to connect apps that were not intended to work together and gives you the most functionality. Middleware makes it possible to accelerate time to market and streamline application development.
Each category may provide a wide selection of technologies for excellent project structure, performance, and communication. Additionally, consider including some frameworks for pre-made solutions in the project. First things first, though.
The Importance of Your Technology Stack
As a business owner, you might first believe that a CTO or product manager should be in charge of selecting a tech stack while designing a custom app. These people are much more experienced in app development and have backgrounds in programming. On the other hand, a solution stack is so closely related to business operations that relying entirely on technical experts to make a choice is equivalent to endangering the future of your entire business.
Because of this, it isn’t easy to overstate how crucial a business owner’s involvement in the process is. Here are some things to think about when computer experts offer you advice.
Why is it Important to Choose a Technology Stack?
You need solid technical and architectural skills and knowledge to choose a tech stack efficiently. The team must be aware of all the quirks and distinctions of each technology to make an informed choice of them.
In light of this, you should prioritize the technologies in your Stack that you are most comfortable with. You shouldn’t pick a new technology just for the sake of it.
New frameworks and programming languages are frequently too undeveloped or lack experienced developers working with them. The selection of such technologies could force project developers to spend time learning the new technology rather than advancing the project.
However, you shouldn’t choose anything out-of-date and ineffectual simply because expert people are present. In these situations, the project’s efficiency and support issues may occur. Finding the exact middle ground is crucial when choosing technologies.
The availability of resources for the project’s implementation is another important factor to consider. For instance, adding a certain technological platform to the project makes no sense if your team does not already have an expert familiar with it. If no developers can use the selected technologies successfully and promptly, even the most stunning cross-platform Stack is meaningless.
Key Things to Consider While Choosing A Technology Stack for Your Project
Additional factors must be considered when deciding on the optimum tech stack for a project, including development costs, time to market, and maintenance concerns.
A Pre-Existing Structure
What will hardware and software configurations your application require? Will you be able to use already-existing third-party integration mechanisms or build out APIs?
You should carefully evaluate what systems your app will integrate, even if you’re starting and haven’t yet committed to a CRM, ERP, or other complex business software.
Objectives Of The Projects
An application’s functional and non-functional needs will determine your project’s selected technology stack.
Mobile geofencing is an illustration of a functional requirement. Within specific geographic regions, the feature monitors mobile user activity. It encourages the usage of native languages by your developers, such as Swift (for iOS) or Kotlin/Java (for Android).
Non-functional requirements consist of the following:
- How many users will be simultaneously utilizing the app?
- How soon should the app respond to user input?
- Should we break up the functionality of a programme into microservices?
Tech Stack Maturity
Tech stack maturity is a different factor when choosing a solution infrastructure. Exists a well-developed ecosystem of third-party libraries, tools, and frameworks that could speed up the development of your app? How well-documented is this technology stack? Is it a proprietary technology that will force you to stay with a vendor for years, or does it have a reliable open-source community surrounding it?
The general rule is that more established ecosystems with lots of support documentation and pluggable solutions are found in older tech stacks.
How soon should the app respond to user input?
There are, however, certain exceptions. Take Vue.js, a JavaScript framework whose creator strongly emphasizes documentation and the availability of pluggable components from the start.
Availability Of Developers Resources
Some traditional tech stacks, like LAMP, are more well-liked than others for a reason. Business owners should carefully evaluate the developer expertise available for the various tech stacks they consider using to build their solutions.
Even if you aren’t bootstrapping and aren’t prepared to offer developers in high demand substantial salaries, the issue with resource availability may come up later when you hire more talent or need to replace someone.
Scalability And Flexibility
How simple would it be to make changes once your digital product has been distributed to customers? Can you easily upgrade some parts of the tech ecosystem and replace others to suit the demand for higher throughput brought on by the expanding user base?
Your development process and the flexibility of your tech stack are related.
- Can you scale up and down your DevOps workflows with the toolset you have?
- Does the onboarding process for QA engineers and coders take a long time?
- How long will the app be unavailable while a database or other crucial components are updated?
Your app will eventually require third-party connectors to provide consumers with additional value by providing more data to and from other applications. It is worth your time to ensure that the toolchain you select is capable of it.
Security Aspects
Let’s talk briefly about security now. Like other business owners, you imagine an app that is well-defended against viruses and hacking attempts, right? Therefore, anybody who convinces you to choose a tech stack purely based on some hazy security issues has no idea what modern tech stacks are.
I’m not aware of a single tech ecosystem that doesn’t offer good gear to create even solutions that require high levels of security, like banking and HIPAA-compliant apps.
At Topflight Apps, we frequently construct financial and healthcare apps using a variety of well-liked tech stacks. And each time, we judge based on the abovementioned elements and the development cost and time to market.
Security is it’s own and needs to be considered for each Stack separately.
Various Top Tech Stacks
It would be illogical not to provide ready technology stack solutions that quickly enable operations and save the time of application developers in this fast-paced environment of modern business and technology. Let’s look at a few of them.
.Net Stack
The .NET framework is a sizable technology stack that includes, to name a few, 60+ frameworks, platforms, libraries, and SOA. Choose the widely used and dependable .NET framework if you want a dynamic and interesting web application.
To create effective server-side apps and enterprise systems, you can combine .NET with other open-source technologies. This particular Stack performs admirably as a broad technology platform for many databases and all front-end components. While .NET apps have a very quick runtime, they are also very easy to create, which enables development teams to finish projects on schedule.
Precise platform interoperability allows a web developer to create several cutting-edge features. Development teams can choose any framework to work on a project because .NET can be easily adapted. Additionally, it makes it possible for web developers to use different programming languages.
MEAN Stack
JavaScript development teams use the MEAN stack, an efficient open-source software package, to build dynamic applications and web portals. It is the best choice for creating dependable and scalable applications.
The Stack is made possible by helper programmes created and written in JavaScript, which facilitates the creation of client-side and server-side applications. Accessing and comprehending the server-side environment’s programming benefits the development experts working on the client side.
The MEAN stack supports the MVC paradigm and is mobile-friendly, thanks to AngularJS’s compatibility. It also provides access to the Node.js JavaScript module library and allows the transmission of data sets using NoSQL’s native JSON.
LAMP Stack
Common open-source software is the LAMP stack. This technology stack comprises PHP, the Apache HTTP Server, the Linux operating system, and the MySQL database.
LAMP has been used for a very long time and is technically reliable. Even as a stand-in for the PHP programming language, it melds with Python and Perl.
Development teams use it because it is ideal for dynamic web portals and applications. The LAMP stack benefits from being combined with other open-source software and provides better interoperability.
MERN Stack
Like the MEAN stack, the MERN architecture entirely encloses the various development stages from client to server.
This combination of technologies is primarily used in eCommerce development projects, where ReactJS is used to improve the front end and NodeJS to improve the back end.
MEVN Stack
A modified version of the MEAN stack called the MEVN model uses Vue.js instead of Angular. The advantages of both the React and Angular technologies are present in Vue.js.
It provides and enables improved performance, programming style, and useful technological resources.
The models are fully functional, ready-to-use solutions for medium- and large-scale development projects.
Conclusion
When developers approach the process, it’s evident how to select a technological stack for startup app development. Determining the technology to use for the project is always more difficult for the client. Both understand how crucial the Stack is to the success of any project, be it a project or an app.
