What is a Tech Stack?
A tech stack is the foundation that supports your web application. It's a collection of all the software tools and technologies you've chosen to design, build, and drive your digital platform. Each component of your tech stack plays a crucial role, ensuring your web application is efficient, fast, and reliable.
In the rapidly evolving field of web development, choosing the right tech stack is more than a matter of programming skills; it's key to success. An ideal tech stack can create a digital experience truly loved by users, deeply influencing their perception of your product and brand. Stanford University research shows that up to 75% of users judge a company's credibility based on its website design, highlighting the importance of the tech stack in user experience and brand image. Moreover, according to BrowserStack data, over 40% of users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, underscoring the critical role of the tech stack in website performance and user retention.
Drawing on extensive experience and deep industry insights, the author has crafted this comprehensive guide to help you choose one of the most popular tech stacks in 2024, carefully selecting the best technology combination for your web application and standing out in the competitive market.
Frontend Tech Stack
The frontend tech stack includes all the visual elements that users can directly experience on a webpage, such as text, colors, styles, images, charts, etc. It typically consists of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript, while frameworks like React or Vue.js add interactivity.
HTML can be seen as the framework of a house, used for designing and presenting digital documents, essentially shaping and positioning content on the web.
CSS is like the house's paint, wallpaper, and interior decoration, determining the webpage's visual aesthetics, including fonts, colors, layout, etc.
JavaScript brings dynamism and automation to webpages, a key programming language for enhancing interactivity.
Frameworks and Libraries
React.js has become the standard for building interactive user interfaces. For more advanced applications, combining React with Next.js and others can enable server-side rendering and static site generation, thereby improving performance and SEO.
Vue.js and Angular offer comprehensive solutions for building scalable and responsive web applications. Choosing between them should be based on your project's specific needs and the team's familiarity with the frameworks.
As website speed and user experience become increasingly important, optimizing the performance of the frontend tech stack is crucial. This includes reducing load times, efficient rendering, and responsive design.
Backend Tech Stack
Programming Languages
Programming languages form the basis of the logic operations of websites and applications, connecting the user interface with the database.
Despite claims that PHP is outdated, statistics show that over 76% of websites worldwide still run on PHP. Wordpress remains the world's most popular PHP website software.
Python is known for its simplicity and readability, especially in accelerating development frameworks like Django and Flask.
C# combined with .NET Core is a powerful option for building modern, scalable web applications.
Frameworks
Frameworks play a crucial role in standardizing the development process. They provide structures for building web applications and handling common tasks.
Laravel: A powerful, elegant PHP web application framework that offers efficient tools and features to developers, making web app development easy and enjoyable.
Django and Flask（Python）: These frameworks are known for their "batteries included" approach (Django) and simplicity, flexibility (Flask).
.NET Core (C#): A versatile, high-performance framework suitable for building a variety of applications.
Web Servers
It can be seen as gatekeepers, responsible for orchestrating and managing requests from clients.
In this domain, Nginx and Apache are widely used servers, favored for their stability, flexibility, and active community support.
IIS (Microsoft's Internet Information Services): A comprehensive choice for users in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially for .NET-based applications.
Caddy, as a new web server, is being increasingly used for its high performance, potentially replacing Nginx.
Databases
Choose between SQL (like PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (like MongoDB) databases based on your application's specific needs.
SQL databases are suitable for applications requiring strong data integrity and complex queries.
NoSQL databases offer greater flexibility, more suitable for applications with large amounts of data and scalability needs. Beyond the frontend and backend layers of applications, developers also use various tools to host applications in the cloud and perform all necessary integrations, test applications to eliminate bugs, and effectively manage software projects.
Deployment and Operations Tech Stack
Deployment and operations are key steps to ensure your web application runs efficiently. Choosing the right deployment and operations tech stack can help ensure the stability, scalability, and security of your application, enabling easy deployment of code to production environments and managing application version control.
Docker is a lightweight container technology that packages applications and their dependencies into independent containers for fast deployment, cross-platform running, and resource isolation. By 2024, Docker has become the preferred deployment tool for many teams, helping development teams achieve continuous integration and delivery.
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that helps you collect and store application monitoring metrics.
Grafana is a visualization monitoring tool that helps you create beautiful dashboards to view the performance and health status of your application.
ELK Stack is a popular log management solution that helps you centralize storage, analyze, and visualize application log data.
Software Development Tech Stacks:
Up to now, several tech stacks are at the forefront of the technology field. Here's an in-depth discussion of some of the most common and popular tech stacks, including their advantages and disadvantages:
MCMPN Tech Stack
MCMPN, which stands for macOS, Caddy, MariaDB, PHP, Node.js, is the latest development tech stack under macOS, combining the best development languages, databases, and web servers.
ServBay, an emerging deployment and operations tool, has garnered widespread attention from development teams in 2024. It offers a clean user interface and powerful features, helping teams efficiently manage and monitor the deployment of their applications. With ServBay, teams can easily handle deployment, configuration management, and troubleshooting, enhancing productivity and application stability.
LEMP Tech Stack
As a new form of modern website development, LEMP is praised for its high performance and efficiency, especially suitable for handling high-traffic websites. Combining Linux, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python, LEMP is open-source, resource-efficient, and provides developers with a flexible environment, particularly in Nginx's ability to handle high concurrent loads. Challenges may arise in large-scale environments, and transitioning from Apache to Nginx might involve a learning curve due to different configurations.
Example: High-performance web applications and content management systems, like WordPress, can effectively utilize the LEMP stack to enhance concurrency handling and efficiency.
MEAN Tech Stack
MEAN, an acronym for MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js, offers an attractive proposal to those immersed in the JavaScript ecosystem, embodying the cohesion of JavaScript. It advocates for the unity of language and data exchange, showcasing strong performance credentials. Although AngularJS is powerful, it often deters beginners due to its complex learning trajectory. Additionally, it might struggle with computation-intensive backend tasks.
Example: As a social networking giant, LinkedIn leverages the unique capabilities of the MEAN stack.
MERN Tech Stack
A close relative of MEAN, MERN is a popular tech stack, with the main difference being the substitution of Angular.js with React. Mimicking MEAN but centered around ReactJS, MERN enjoys React's modular, component-centric architecture, usually resulting in more flexibility and a smoother learning curve than Angular. Like MEAN, it has inherent limitations in computation-intensive backend activities.
Example: As a travel industry titan, Airbnb relies on the MERN stack to build its web platform.
PERN Tech Stack
PERN stands for PostgreSQL, Express.js, React, and Node.js. Essentially, it's a version of the MERN stack that uses PostgreSQL as its relational database. It combines React's powerful frontend performance with the reliability of PostgreSQL, a well-known relational database management system. The stack achieves seamless JavaScript integration. Like MERN, it may have some limitations in computation-intensive backend aspects.
Example: Many emerging startups are adopting the PERN stack for its scalability and efficiency.
Python's rapid rise in the tech world is attributed to its powerful features and wide applicability, especially in artificial intelligence and data fields. Python's perfect syntax complements its extensive libraries, particularly in AI, machine learning, and data science domains. Its versatility spans web development, automation, and more. Additionally, Python frameworks aid in rapid development. For example, Django is known for its "batteries included" approach.
As an interpreted language, Python may lag behind some compiled languages in speed. Mobile app development is not its forte.
Example: As a music streaming giant, Spotify utilizes Python for various backend services and data analysis. Instagram, despite being acquired by Facebook, still extensively uses Python for its backend services.
ASP.NET/.NET Core Tech Stack
ASP.NET/.NET Core is a versatile, high-performance web development framework provided by Microsoft, renowned for its robustness in building enterprise-level applications.
It excels at creating secure, scalable, and modern web applications. Supporting multiple programming languages and platforms, it offers a comprehensive ecosystem with extensive library and community support. Its complexity and steep learning curve might pose challenges for beginners. As Microsoft technology, it might not be the first choice for those inclined towards open-source platforms.
Serverless (Jamstack Tech Stack)
Jamstack, another popular tech stack in recent years, while not entirely "serverless," advocates for decoupling the frontend from the backend. It primarily represents JavaScript and its frameworks, APIs, and markup. It enhances performance, security, and reduces scaling costs. It can also be used with serverless functions and headless CMS for dynamic functionalities. May not be suitable for applications requiring real-time features.
Example: As a cloud computing company, Netlify is a faithful advocate and user of the Jamstack architecture. Smashing Magazine has also transitioned to this tech stack, benefiting from its efficiency, speed, and security.
Developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit for creating natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. It offers a rich, fully customizable widget set for crafting complex user interfaces. Using the Dart language, it's easy to grasp for JavaScript or Java developers. The "hot reload" feature accelerates development speed. Flutter's ecosystem is not as mature as React Native's. Although Dart is powerful, its popularity is not as high as other languages.