Tips on Choosing the Tech Stack

Are you ready to dive into the technical angle of your idea? Surely, you have already a rough concept in your mind, but to make it happen, you need: one – solid and flexible tech stack, that will satisfy all your constantly changing requirements; and two – a reliable software development team, that will share your devotion. So, to begin with, let’s discover the possibilities IT space could give you in order to implement the conceived project. And yes, there is plenty of options to choose from. But, before the insights overview, get to know what is going to influence your decision, clearly besides the technical capabilities of each technology.

Factors to Consider While Choosing Tech Stack

Indeed, everything concerning your project could affect the selection of the needed tech stack: from the budget and time to the developers’ availability. However, focusing exactly on the mentioned factors could cost you the quality of your product. Because you should decide based on the functionality that the tech stack would bring to your project, but not the expenses or time frames since these factors are always adjustable.

Hence, what really matters when choosing the tech stack? Take a look at the list below:

• Features and functionality of the product.

• Project requirements. (Users quantity, devices support, performance time, etc.)

• The credibility of technologies’ open-source community.

• Simple scalability.

• Security considerations.

• Flexibility and the possibility to go beyond standard ways.

• Size and type of your project.

  
  

Take into account these essential aspects while deciding on the core tech stack for your idea. To ensure that no factors are omitted, go through each of them and thoroughly study how they could have an impact on the development process along with the end result.

Frontend Technologies

The frontend development is liable for the part connected to the user’s interface, which allows the user to interact with the software. That is why it is crucial to create something user-friendly, fast, and convenient. There is a long list of programming languages to choose from. They’re all about using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in some way. But going in-depth, and highlighting frameworks, that are most commonly used, there are just a few highly popular options: Angular, React, and Vue.

In our Incora blog we have already defined the difference and main capabilities of React, Vue, and Angular, but let’s get through the principal distinction parameters.

• Angular has a well-defined framework and a large number of functionality. It enables software developers to move fast from concept to implementation without having to define structures or find extra libraries. For modest projects, however, it is frequently overloaded and adds needless ballast.
• React is suggested for applications that require a lot of frontend development work. React has improved support for server-side rendering, making it more SEO-friendly.
• Vue can be used for a variety of purposes. Because of its compatibility with other JavaScript frameworks as well as its ability to utilize more complex logic for existing systems, it might be a good fit for almost any application.

Mobile Development

If we are talking about mobile app development – there is a difference in the required tech stack depending on whether you’ll create PWA, Native or Hybrid products. Learn more about the difference between these approaches here.

Native applications, namely device-specific apps, are created using programming languages that are connected with devices. It is Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. At the same time, web-based technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are used to create hybrid apps. A PWA, like a hybrid app, is constructed using HTML5, CSS3, or JavaScript, and it uses the Ionic framework, which is based on Cordova.

Backend Technologies

Even though backend development does not interact with the users, it is the core of your software. Making this core a strong engine will take lots of effort, and knowledge. And in this case, the tech stack is no less important than the other factors.

Node.js, as well as Python, are by far the most popular backend programming languages.

Learn more about Node.js vs Python: What are the Pros, Cons, and Use Cases?

Python includes a vast number of pre-built libraries, allowing you to create and distribute programs more quickly. This is especially critical for tech startups. Furthermore, it is the best option for machine learning and IoT, along with the creation of 2D/3D animations, data science, and advanced web platforms.

Python frameworks include Django and Flask. Django is known for its comprehensiveness, as it strives to provide all of the tools you’ll need to construct a web app in one package. Flask is perfectly suited to incrementally introducing new features and services one by one, without parallel adjustments.

Node.js is good at handling chats with their multi-user, and real-time operations. One more use case for Node.js web-sockets is monitoring website traffic and displaying user actions in real-time. Since Node.js thrives when it comes to real-time apps, that’s a perfect fit for accessing data from relational databases.

Express is at the top spot of the Node.js frameworks’ ranking. Because the framework includes practically ready-to-use premises for API generation, you can construct web apps rapidly. In reality, it’s well-suited to a wide range of web and mobile application projects, from largest to smallest.

The other alternatives, for the backend development, involve JavaScript itself, with its interactive and object-oriented coding, client-side application evaluation, as well as many other impressive characteristics. Ruby ranks second on this list because it is a paradigm-agnostic programming language. It implies you may use it to create a backend rich in features and capabilities for your project regardless of the type of solution your issue demands.

Database Variety

Compared to the other categories of technologies, there are not just a huge variety of databases on market, but there are also different types of them. Dividing into SQL (relational) and NoSQL (non-relational) they have diverse structures for storing. While relational databases use tables, non-relational databases use a storage architecture that is tailored to the demands of the files stored. There is no standardized format or implementation for non-relational databases because there are several sorts of them, such as column-oriented, key-value, graph, and document data stores, each having its own unique connecting methods. Learn more about this in our previous posts.

Here goes the list of the most widely used databases:

• MongoDB – document-oriented database, storing data in JSON-like documents. Agility and adaptability are both aspects of it.
• Redis – an in-memory data model repository that can be used as a database, cache, or message broker.
• PostgreSQL – database, that makes use of and expands the SQL language, as well as a number of other capabilities, to store and maintain even the most complex data operations securely.
• MySQL – client/server system that includes a multithreaded SQL server that enables multiple backends, a variety of client programs and libraries, administration tools, and diversity of APIs.
• Neo4J – graph database, that makes data management speedy, since it uses relationships that are already stored in the database and do not need to be calculated. It allows the intuitive relationship between entities.

DevOps Services

Now, let’s move on to DevOps Services, which are working in parallel to the full development cycle, and enable to continuously integrate and deliver. Establishing DevOps Services requires planned separate architecture, with all the internal processes and technologies described. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are just a few of the most popular DevOps services. Find out their price comparison here.

The CI/CD pipeline combines numerous processes like integration, testing, delivery, and deployment to form an Agile workflow for DevOps services. For each process, there is a particular set of possible DevOps tools. Below we will highlight some of the most common ones, categorized by the stage of the pipeline.

• Build: Kubernetes, Docker, Puppet, Chef
• Continuous integration: Jenkins, AWS, CircleCi
• Test: Mabl, XRay, SauceLab
• Deployment: Jira, Bitbucket, AWS CodePipeline

Surely, during the estimation and discovery phase of the project, your development team will offer you the most fitting solution for you among mentioned.

API Integration

API integration is a link between the two or more programs that allows them to share material via their APIs. The API integration platforms act as a consolidated center for all of the APIs you want to use, and they come with resources to help you expand your integrations faster. MuleSoft, IBM API Connect, Microsoft Azure, and Tray are prominent API integration platforms. To decide which exactly API integrations your software will need, you should analyze the market and target’s requirements. For example, eCommerce marketplaces utilize APIs of the various online shops to provide a wide selection of products for customers. For eLearning platforms, there would be required CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service) API for real-time communication, and Calendar API for classes’ scheduling.

Even though different software might find it necessary to add different APIs, there are some of them, that almost every application will need: Cloud APIs and Payment APIs.

Briefly put, cloud APIs such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive interact with a cloud environment to provide processing, storage, and system resources.

Payment Gateway APIs are required for the software to accept payments. Payment Gateway could be any well-known application, such as Stripe, Apple Wallet, or ApplePay, which will help you generate revenue from your product. Obviously, this part is crucial for the monetization strategy.

Tech Stack of Well-know Platforms

Making the decision for your app could be easier if you find popular apps with a similar set of features and compare tech stacks. But don’t be scared about the number of technologies, when you dive deeper into their full architectures’ elements, because current well-architected apps aren’t monoliths anymore. Developers currently prefer building software with microservices, so the various kinds of technologies run distinct parts of the system.

Instances of tech stacks from well-known companies are provided below. However, current consumption may evolve over time. These aren’t all-inclusive lists.

To sum up

If you want to see significant and long-term advancements in your idea, you’ll need an optimal tech stack. Choosing it won’t be so challenging when you find a reliable development team, which will cover the full Discovery phase, with estimation, Technical Documentation, and architecture defining.

First posted here.