How to Choose a Tech Stack for Your Next Project

Every application that does not consist of tiny homemade software uses multiple technologies. Your chosen options are responsible for each layer of a system’s architecture. Whether your company is designing a mobile application, web development, or software development project, these technologies selected for a solution refer to a project’s ‘tech stack’.

Your technology stacks say much about your company. Your frameworks, programming language, and tools all work to demonstrate your organisation. When asking what is a tech stack in terms of your company development, it’s worth considering the impacts this has on its functions. Marketing, services, overall business performance, and scalability are leading factors.

Your technology stack, in effect, determines everything about you. This blog will give you an overview of tech stacks and how you should choose one for your company and its projects.

What is a Tech Stack: Building Blocks

Imagine you have a tower made of Lego bricks. Each row represents one of the system layers. Each of them may consist of one or more bricks. The same applies to a mobile or web app. You can choose more than one operating system or several technologies to meet the expectations of your solution.

When a system grows and grows, it becomes more difficult to change once you have selected a technology. Therefore, choosing wisely at the beginning of your implementation is essential. Every team needs to decide which elements of a product are most important. They must also select the proper framework or technology for this layer.

However, any decision concerning selecting elements of a tech stack will impact the entire development process. Essentially, it doesn’t matter if the application is web, mobile or desktop-based – each have their own tech stack.

In web apps, there are four main layers in which to select an element of a tech stack:

Selecting Tech Stack Components

Each segment of the tech stack will contains a wide range of options. Let’s explore some of the most significant selections.

1. Front end

Frontend refers to the client side part of the project. It’s somewhat probable that every web app uses HMTL, CSS and JavaScript to present content to the user. However, this isn’t mandatory. HTML + CSS are responsible for presenting our final product to the client. In addition, the application uses JavaScript to deploy and deliver content.

Many HTML and CSS frameworks solve a majority of problems faced by developers. Below is a list of the most popular frameworks:

Each framework provides us with mechanisms, components, and rules that ease the process of working with visual presentations. To make your web page responsive, then you need to add a framework to your technology stack that enables this option.

JavaScript has the highest number of frameworks of all programming languages. There also exist legacy products, which continue to be used, but contain unsupported frameworks. An example is Knockout. See below for a list of consistently-developed and improved instances:

Of course, there are many others that developers use. However, I have mentioned the most popular support, scalability, and performance resources.

2. Back end

Part of a system responsible for reading, writing, calculating and manipulating data is called the back end. It is possible to specify two things you can put into your tech stack. The first is the technology responsible for business logic. The second is one which enables connection with data.

Before you choose which back end technology will be delivered, you must select which programming language you wish to use. This selection narrows the number of useable frameworks. At this point, the most popular languages to choose for starting a new app development are:

In those options, you can select several frameworks to wrap up your code; the most popular are respectively:

3. Database

The data layer of the system is usually a database. There are two types to consider: relational and non-relational. In the first case, information sits table columns, whereas data is arranged in rows. Between them, there are connections called relations. Four engines cover most of the market:

The non-relational variant uses several models to store data. The main ways to keep information in these databases are key-value pairs, documents or graphs. Systems used nowadays are most likely:

4. Environment

The last important thing to choose for our tech stack is an environment where we will place everything. A few years ago, the choice was simple, where all that was needed was to select a server supplier or buy/use your own server.

Now, more and more products migrate toward cloud services. Many developers choose the cloud to host their applications. The reason for the popularity is the accessibility, relative ease of configuration and affordability of basic plans. The most popular cloud solutions are:

Web applications are not the only elements to have their own tech stacks. While developing web or mobile apps, there also exist choices as to which technology should go into a stack.

Mobile apps will also probably include a backend, data and environment element. But you will need to select what we will use to make the app. For example, if you want to develop an Android app, you have to choose if you’re going to use Kotlin, Java or Xamarin.

With desktop apps, the situation will be a little bit different. In most cases, the technology selected to present content to users will also be responsible for business logic. As a programming language, you can, for example, use Java or C# and as a technology Swing or WPF.

Final Thoughts on Choosing a Tech Stack

So, what are the best possible selections for a tech stack? There is no simple answer. Many conditions have an impact on what you should or want to use.

It depends on your budget. Some technical solutions are not free and require payment. It could be more favourable to spend time on research to source a free and applicable service.

You should also consider the experience of your team members and their preferences. Every developer has their preferred tech stacks to achieve the best results.

Be sure to take specific legal constraints into account. For example, in countries such as France, certain circumstances mean sensitive personal data cannot be kept outside the country, referring to some cloud solutions.

Lastly, it would be best if you looked at what you want to achieve with your future product. For example, some demonstrations may not demonstrate a good looking, fully responsive web app. In that case, it still needs to be fast and secure. In this case, you should focus more on selecting server-side technology and devote fewer resources to perfecting the front end.

Your possibilities for setting up a technology stack are endless and exciting. However, if your project needs a capable hand, feel free to reach out. Our team of developers can provide development, analytics, and operating support on a wide range of projects.