Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#1

Post by jennoo » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 12:24 AM UTC

I've been fiddling with a idea sometime and I want to turn it into a product. I first want to build a MVP. I can't make a decision stack I am going to use. I find it difficult to make the difference between taking too much and too little account of an untenable and scalable 'future'.

Do you consider SQL for your data layer or settle for NoSQL solution, or maybe for something like firebase? How do you think serverless functions can contribute to a MVP?

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#2

Post by billconan » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 12:50 AM UTC

I use mongodb, I found it is quick for prototyping. But I'm worried about race conditions, because I think its transaction is limited. But for my current stage (MVP), it seems to be fine.

I might eventually switch to postgresql, but I don't know how to deal with data migration once my database changes. I want the program design to be stabilized first.

I will not use firebase, it will be very expensive. I have tried aws lambda once to create myself an email redirect service. I found it hard to debug.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#3

Post by christiansakai » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

If you don’t know what to use. Use Javascript

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#4

Post by pbiggar » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

We're building a new tool which makes it really easy to build backends, and MVPs are particularly easy. We literally built someone's product with them during a one hour onboarding earlier. https://darklang.com (or email me: paul@darklang.com)

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#5

Post by xhgdvjky » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

I would highly recommend completely ignoring scalability for your MVP. Choose tech you enjoy writing/learning.

Right now you don't have enough info to make a good performance decision, so you might as well choose a stack that will encourage you to complete the project.

As you learn more about the task, you will be able to decide what kind of tech makes the most sense.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#6

Post by timtamboy63 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

Rails + Postgres for MVP. Very quick to prototype (you can build a CRUD app with a few commands) and fairly flexible. Then when you want to scale you can add a JS framework if you need and use Rails for the API piece.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#7

Post by repsilat » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #3

If you don’t know what to use. Use Javascript

I'm a Python/C++ programmer and I think this is good advice. There are a lot of JavaScript programmers around, JS engines are fast and the tooling is great. I have rarely had an opportunity to share frontend and backend code, but it does happen.

If I were starting a new product I'd look into TypeScript. Haven't used it, but I hear a lot of "I tried it and it was a clear improvement" which I think is a good sign. I would also look into whatever the big companies are pushing as their storage layer of choice, though I'm normally a Postgres guy. Would give me peace of mind to still talk to it with SQL though.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#8

Post by sergiotapia » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

Phoenix + Postgres, railsy enough to get it done quick and room enough to take the same codebase to a million user throughput. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#9

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

If I were you I’d use the stack you are most comfortable with if it can satisfy your requirements.

Otherwise choose what would be easiest to learn. E.g. if you know python but not web python, learn a python web framework instead of moving to NodeJS.

I’d probably keep it simple for an MVP and use a cloud managed SQL database, a popular stack like rails or something equivalent and use minimal client side JS (not a SPA) because that’ll reduce your time to getting it done.

Use cloud services to save you headaches as much as possible: managed databases, VMs preloaded with Linux. Cheat by chucking cloudflare in front of it to get SSL, unless your cloud can do the letsencrypt for you.

Avoid Kubernetes, docker, nosql, lambdas and anything else that’ll complicate things.

You want a monolithic crud app that serves up HTML like it’s 2006.

Re: Ask HN: What is your goto stack when building a MVP and why?

#10

Post by legostormtroopr » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

Web app: Django+Postgres+Bootstrap locally done with Docker, deployed with Heroku.

With Django you get a lot straight out of the box, including: user management, admin dashboards. For an 1 or 2 person built MVP I wouldn't even bother with a JS frontend, just Django forms & Bootstrap templates and full HTTP/POST forms. It simplifies everything and removes a point of failure.

You can get a solid functional system working very, very quickly. Which you can deploy to Heroku for $0 while you iterate, which can be converted to production ready system for as under $50/month depending on what you need.

Desktop: Python+Qt - but thats old and probably bad advice in 2019.