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

#1

Post by kirso » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 4:22 AM UTC

Most answers to tech stacks take into account "knowing what you know best".

However, for people who are starting out, without the goal or aim becoming a software engineer and aside of the golden trio (html, css, javascript). What would you learn today to build web apps (both static content and interactive experiences)?

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

#2

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 4:49 AM UTC

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/, 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.

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

#3

Post by eimrine » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 5:23 AM UTC

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #2

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/ , 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…

100 hours to grok Python from zero as an upper bound? You must to be a rockstar.

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

#4

Post by orionblastar » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:00 AM UTC

eimrine wrote: post #3

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #2

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/ , 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…

100 hours to grok Python from zero as an upper bound? You must to be a rockstar.

It helps if you have other languages learned before learning Python.

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

#5

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:30 AM UTC

orionblastar wrote: post #4

eimrine wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 hours to grok Python from zero as an upper bound? You must to be a rockstar.

It helps if you have other languages learned before learning Python.

Ah, but no, I really was assuming we are starting from scratch.

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

#6

Post by haebom » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:42 AM UTC

"Svelte"

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

#7

Post by meiraleal » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 6:58 AM UTC

PWAs (which is still html + js)

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

#8

Post by perilunar » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:28 AM UTC

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.

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

#9

Post by wszrfcbhujnikm » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 7:44 AM UTC

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.

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

#10

Post by GianFabien » Sat, Jun 08, 2024, 8:28 AM UTC

eimrine wrote: post #3

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #2

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/ , 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…

100 hours to grok Python from zero as an upper bound? You must to be a rockstar.

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.