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

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41–50 of 98 posts

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

#41

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.

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 wei…

> 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?

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

#42
I’m enjoying SvelteKit + Tailwind with shadcn-svelte components.

Picking a framework advice: https://youtu.be/RTLSSGPoASU?si=UeVO_rHtYK_YS48v

Understanding the different types of frontend frameworks: https://youtu.be/CQuTF-bkOgc?si=EMKfE_sNZNqf6c-x

shadcn-svelte: https://www.shadcn-svelte.com/

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

#43
post #17

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 t…

I gotta say, back when I worked in an old company they built a service for a client using Parse Server that still works great today, although nowadays it is fully self hosted. It has its limitations, but it’s a good abstraction for simple use cases, and it handles a lot of traffic without problems.

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

#44
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

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

#45
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.

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

#47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For static pages, regular HTML and CSS will be sufficient. Not if we are talking about productivity, as asked here. HTML is rather simple to learn, but can be annoying enough to write. And let's not start talking about CSS is for a beginner... Using some flavor of markdown and convert it to html would be far more productive. There is enough software around for enabling people a fast start, and you have the option t…

I tried Hugo and Jekyll and such, but it felt out of flow, and I felt going through docs and setting up builds was more effort than just writing it in HTML. The true benefit of HTML IMO is being able to just save something in a plaintext editor and then open it right away. These days you can probably just write whatever format you like and Claude or ChatGPT will convert it to HTML.

I spent hours researching the right Markdown to HTML renderer. Writing HTML by hand would've been faster. There's dozens of these frameworks and none are perfect.

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

#48
post #35

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.

The official RCA is deprecated. Is there a fork you recommend?

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.

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

#49
post #35

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.

The official RCA is deprecated. Is there a fork you recommend?

$ npm create vite@latest

And follow the prompts

Site: https://vitejs.dev/guide/

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

#50
post #33

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 hav…

How do you go about determining the aptitude of a particular LLM with a particular stack? What does your evaluation look like?
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