Definitely Django. It is SO easy to develop in python, and there are many learning resources available.
Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
591–600 of 736 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#592Whatever is easiest to host and has the best module library for the problem domain. Assuming a web app is probably lean towards node on the backend to keep things simple. But really I'd look at platforms like fly.io, vercel, supabase, netlify and build around their defaults.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
imo rails without react and leveraging hotwire is going to be the next big thing in web dev. react is a huge increase in complexity for not much appreciable gain. you are not facebook and don't have facebook's needs. rails is nimble by itself.
I'm a fan of this too, and it honestly confuses me that people would do a Rails API with React for a MVP . If you're already doing the backend in rails, it's hardly any more work to just do hotwire with server side rendering at the same time, and you can switch to a SPA later (if you really do need to).
it's also not a ton more work to pivot and turn the rails app with hotwire into an ios/android app with a minimal amount of work. and yeah you can also sprinkle react in if you need some component or two or even do the api that way and drop into a full SPA if you really need that. but at that point you are doubling the amount of work on the frontend for little gain in my view.
I liked the idea of react and have used it but i don't feel like it improves the situation enough for 95% of the sites out there to justify it and the enormous extra work there is in getting state/routing/etc to jive with the backend. I'm hoping strada, if it ever comes out, will be a large improvement to turbo native and at least provide a very compelling alternative react native.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#594After working with the PETAL (Phoenix, Elixir, TailwindCSS, Alpine.Js, Liveview) stack at $JOB for a while now, I have to say I've never been more productive. Early on I would still have to lean on Alpine heavily for various JS interactions but with all the features Liveview has been adding and improving on (Hello JS module!) I find myself needing it less and less. Liveview really has been a game changer for me. Tail…
I too would reach for the PETAL stack you mentioned. I don't code professionally anymore, but when I did I had experience using a lot of different languages (e.g., C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, Elm, Python, Perl, Lisp, Node, Clojure, F#, etc.). Elixir is by far the most productive and joyful language I've ever experienced. It's absolutely beautiful.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#595You must state also which kind of product you want to build
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
> part of this is that people have accepted the poor experience of non-realtime applications my experience has taught me the exact opposite: people have accepted the poor experience of real time applications (client side crashes that bring down the entire page, half-baked routing that is essentially just rebuilding the browser navigator, inconsistent client vs server rendering processes). developers tend to completel…
> people have accepted the poor experience of real time applications (client side crashes that bring down the entire page, half-baked routing that is essentially just rebuilding the browser navigator, inconsistent client vs server rendering processes). People complain about that stuff all the time. >stick their head in the sand when these issues are occurring. there's complete classes of problems that simply go away…
> Well, yes. If you don't actually build a real time application you won't get the benefits of a real time application
A rails application can be just as "real time" as any SPA, I don't think that definition really means anything. You get a distinct set of problems that come with SPA's that don't exist in a traditional server side rendered app that have nothing to do with how "real time" the app feels.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second this. I would say that I am pretty advanced with Python (and Django) and same with JavaScript (Vue and Nuxt) and have written applications that got used by multiple users. I saw a sharp rise in my productivity when I knew enough about the frameworks. But Elixir + PhoenixLiveView + Tailwind has been life changing. I learned Elixir for the sake of the joy of learning a new programming language and I kept playi…
Moving from Python/JS -> Elixir at a startup seems very high risk, have the rewards been worth it? I can imagine issues with hiring, unknown unknowns, and less libraries/support in general.
The start-up I work for uses Phoenix and Elixir. I've been there around two years now and we haven't experienced any issues with hiring or finding skilled people. If anything, I'd point to Elixir as being one of the major factors of our success.
We are a remote company, so things may not be as easy, depending on your location, if your company demands people be in the office.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad I came across your comment, I'm planning a 2-week project for learning purposes and I thought rails backend with react/ svelte would be the fastest way to prototype. My ruby/ rails experience is very limited compared to my JS experience; I really just started experimenting with rails. I'm blown away by the magic, JS frameworks feel like toys in comparison. I also like that Rails is omakase. Based on your exp…
I'd stick with rails unless you have a complex front-end where UI responsiveness is of the essential (i.e., highly graphical-interactive). React is many levels up in terms of complexity.
Rails and React are doing completely different things in the stack; I don't understand this argument (having worked with both, but never getting good at Rails)
React is purely about managing the frontend and user interactions. Many apps are very heavy on this. For a lot of things I've built, I think Rails would have been overkill. Even for ones that use a database, I find node.js/express/prisma much easier to work with (until you get into migrations). Activerecord's story around migrations is the best I've used.
But for an MVP you don't really need to worry about that.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#599Definitely old schools. I am building a MVP right now(kinda building my parachute while jumping off the plane)and I went with Django. And here is why. 1. Very vibrant community of devs and time-tested open-source libraries.If you want a multi-tenancy there is a library for that. IF you want stripe integration there is one for that. If you want "fully built out" services, then we have a plethora of free and paid templ…
It’s funny that only in our industry “time tested”/“battle tested” is called old school and frowned upon. No wonder we see software bloat everywhere.
JS frameworks are also battle tested. "old school" is not necessarily a bonus because the common paradigms have shifted.
Using Django with React is not as easy as a full-stack framework like Next.js. Modern tech stacks are now generally moving towards either full-stack JS frameworks like Next.js, Remix, Astro, etc and/or serverless with things like railway.app, fly.io, Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy, Supabase, neon.tech, etc.
Many features of "old school" frameworks are becoming redundant or are being replaced by options with better DX.
Re: Ask HN: What would be your stack if you are building an MVP today?
#600Late to the thread and haven't read anyone else's responses yet, but I get the feeling this is going to be a common refrain; I'd just go with what I'm most familiar with.
Some off the shelf PHP8/Nginx Docker container, Laravel for the API (always pull in php/larastan for enforcing best practices), Maria for the DB, Laravel's Blade/Vue for the front, probably slap it on AWS as that's what I'm most familiar with. I like structured data, I like that modern PHP has (90%) of the safety of Java while being less verbose.