How to choose a Right Technology Stack For Web Application Development?

Regardless of whether you manage web application programming from time to time or on a regular basis, or dedicate all your time to this activity, you have already faced the obvious question: “How to pick the best technology stack for web development?” With such huge numbers of various choices available, it is tough for concept devisers to pick a set of application development technologies that would be ideal for their project in terms of spent resources and resulting quality.

This article will assist you while making up a decision by featuring the most significant aspects and providing additional information on picking the most effective technology stack for web applications.

Basically, a Tech stack is the mix of programming languages, tools, and frameworks that the developers use to create web and mobile applications. There are two main components to any application, known as the customer side and server side, likewise popular as front end and back end.

Client-side (Front end):

Client-side, as the name suggests is where the real interaction with the user happens. The user will interact with the website, the web app, or a mobile app depending on what he is using.

For front-end development, there are mainly 3 technologies that can be used:

1. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) – HTML controls the structure of the information displayed to a user in a web browser.

2. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – CSS is used for formatting the content written in HTML language.

3. JavaScript – JavaScript helps to make web pages dynamic, intuitive, and interactive. Right now, Angular and React frameworks for JavaScript and Twitter’s Bootstrap framework for CSS are the most favored framework as they let you create highly intuitive user interfaces.

Server Side (Back End):

The back end or server-side of a web app is hidden from users and includes every component needed for running an application such as OS, Web server, Programming language, Web framework, and a database

The server-side stack responds to user requests, accesses the database, and executes simple CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations. Nowadays, LAMP is the most popular backend stack used by developers.

When it comes to choice for MVPs, JavaScript’s MEAN stack is rising in terms of popularity.

MEAN is short for MongoDB, Express.js, Angularjs, and Node.js. MongoDB acts as the NoSQL database, Express and Node run on the backend and AngularJS renders the interface.

LAMP is the abbreviation for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Linux is the server operating system, Apache is the web server, MySQL is the database and P is for PHP, the scripting language.

Points to consider while choosing a technology stack:

1. Size or complexity of your web project:

Generally, large and complex web applications require bigger stacks and more sophisticated tools for effective operation. Let us make a quick review of application types and suggested web development stacks using plain classification.

Small Web Applications: If the scope of the project requirement is a small one, and you need to deliver it in the shortest time possible, then simple technologies like CMS or WordPress can be used

Mid Range Web Applications: Government projects or large online stores, including stores that sell physical goods and digital multimedia. They provide more functions that may be implemented using various frameworks. In such cases, Java and C# are the commonly used programming languages

Large/Complex Web Applications: social networks, large trading platforms, fintech applications. Due to the large scope of their functionality, they require a combination of multiple web application development technologies and may utilize several programming languages.

2. Extensibility:

This parameter defines whether your application is able to grow, if necessary. As the number of users goes up, the app must be able to handle the growth spurt. The developers should choose a stack that will accommodate the future growth of the app. Horizontal scaling means running the product on several servers at the same time to handle the influx of traffic. Vertical scaling means you add more programs to process new data. Both horizontal and vertical scaling are important to prevent a product collapse in the future.

3. Team Constraints:

An important factor to consider is the level of expertise the developer team possesses in working with various technology stacks. Even after deciding on the tech stack, remember, the job doesn’t end there. The developer team will have to maintain the app after launch too. So, it is important to choose technologies that are easily testable.

4. Cost of Development:

While most of the popular tools and frameworks are free and open source, you may have to subscribe to them by paying fees to get access to the advanced features. So it is important to determine how much you are willing to spend on an app development project.

Conclusion:

As you may see from this article, every web application demands a specific approach to its realization, including the choice of a technology stack. There are no universal solutions, but there are some beneficial tips to pay attention to. You need to understand your project requirements well in order to choose the technologies for it.

Be sure to apply this principle while evaluating your project specifications, your team of developers, budget, and terms, as well as your personal experience and skills. Those are the points that directly influence the choice of a web development stack. A talented team of skilled and professional web developers will be able to choose the right tools for creating a scalable and highly functional app that beats the competition.

Interested to know which is the perfect web tech stack for building your new product? We can help you…

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