Key Factors to Consider while Choosing the Right Tech Stack

Featured Image Caption: Technology Stack

Jump to read...

The programs, software, hardware, tools, coding languages, services, and operating systems employed by any company to create an application are collectively termed as Tech stack.

Also, when developers have to choose any job role, they take into account, the technology stack that they’ll be using. In one of the surveys performed by Stack Overflow, for 54% of participants, the primary criteria to accept a job offer was the frameworks, programming languages, and other technologies.

Importance of Tech Stacks

How will an application get operated is highly determined by a tech stack because it can either boost scalability or cause limitations. It decides the ease of the user with an application and the number of people who can access it at a single time. With the right tech stack, developers can tailor an application in such a way that it is not achievable with a single tool.

The correct technologies in your stack will surely assist your employees and lead to business growth. When you adopt powerful and next-level tech stacks across your ecosystem, your journey gets smoother down the road.

Below are a few of the points that you need to think about while deciding upon the right tech stack.

1. The type of project:

It is one of the key factors in selecting the correct tech stack.

Small Projects – When the project has to be completed within a short timeline then the working prototype can include technologies like WordPress and Drupal.
Mid-level Projects – To create a mid-range application such as a banking portal or a Government site, using programming languages such as C# and Python could be a perfect choice. These languages present multiple functionalities and faultless integrations across many platforms.
Complex Projects – To build up a complex project such as social networking site or eCommerce marketplace, going for JS frameworks like Node or React and hosting services such as AWS is a better choice. These web stacks can hold huge processing loads, trims down latency, and yield a responsive app.

2. Proficiency and knowledge of a team:

If your developers don’t possess enough of the appropriate industry knowledge then a lot of issues may arise while writing codes. So, it’s better to pick up a web stack that can be handled by your team. A tech stack should be easy-to-understand with an intuitive design, rich documentation, and a vast developer community.

Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach can also be used with certain technologies, where developers perform the testing first and then go for coding. Moreover, it is better if the developers are experienced to work with the TDD approach. With this, the project quality can be enhanced and the process can speed up.

3. Achieving the best Time to Market (TTM):

A successful and on-time release of a product, gives a huge round of applause from clients, though sometimes it can be a challenging job. The best and effective way to deliver a project on time is to have a stack that offers several functionalities to an app. e.g. Ruby on Rails has excellent open-source libraries that help to reduce TTM.

When a project requires third-party solutions, go for a stack that provides seamless integrations. The blend of robust tech stacks and expert developers can greatly advance your TTM with which you can release faultless products on time.

4. Scalability of an app:

Once your product is launched in the market, the number of users will grow and your app should be capable enough to manage this growth surge. This can be achieved with a tech stack that helps with your app scalability.

App scalability has to be implemented in two ways namely horizontal and vertical. In horizontal scaling, the app is run on many servers to control the traffic influx. While in vertical scaling, programs are inserted to process the data. When the app has scaled both ways, product collapse can be avoided. Releasing MVP initially will provide you a fast audience response according to which scaling can be done for the best results.

5. Code maintenance:

If the code is highly intricate, developers will take a lot of time to process it. Whereas debugging would be an issue if it’s too brief. To overcome these problems, prefer an easy to code, maintain, and reusable programming language. This way you can stay away from unwanted bothering of code maintenance and fixes.

6. Costing:

There are many open-source technologies where advanced features can be accessed for free. These are helpful when the budget for your product is low. However, you should look for a web stack to access paid cutting edge tools, if your budget is higher enough.

7. Security offered by the web stack:

Check if the web stack offers the required security. Also, make sure if the security protocols get updated at regular intervals. Select the tech stack that offers refined authentication and authorization methods where code doesn’t leave behind any point for hackers.

Tech Stacks used by Few of the Key Global Companies:

Every company has its unique tech stacks and developers decide what’s essential on the front-end i.e. client-side and that for the backend i.e. server-side. These tech stacks (front-end at first followed by back-end) are then developed to meet the requirements of the specific departments.

For start-up companies, it may take more time to select and adjust or optimize the tech stack. On the other side, an enterprise should make judicious choices while choosing and scaling technologies.

Facebook Tech Stack

Applications and Data: React, PHP, GraphQL, Cassandra, Memcached, Flux, HHVM, Tornado, Relay, Hack, Presto, RocksDB, Prepack, Prophet Buck, Beringei, McRouter, Yoga, Haskell, C++, Erlang, MariaDB, HBase, Hadoop, Swift, MySQL
Languages and Coding: Apache HTTP, Linux, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX, CSS, ReactJS, JSON
Utilities: BitBar, Framer, Docusaurus, Stetho, Origami, Pop, ENorm
DevOps: Jenkins, Datadog, Jest, Phabricator, Chef, Nuclide, Infer, LogDevice
Business Tools: Campaign Monitor, Confluence

Airbnb Tech Stack

Applications and Data: JavaScript, Nginx, Java, MySQL, React, Redis, Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Ruby, Rails, Sass, Amazon RDS, Amazon EBS, Amazon Elasticache, Hadoop, Airflow, Druid, Presto, Airpal, Native Navigation
Utilities: Amazon CloudFront, Twilio, Twilio SendGrid, Amazon Route 53, Braintree, Visual Website Optimizer, Lottie, Urban Airship, Nexmo, Aerosolve, DeepLinkDispatch
DevOps: New Relic, GitHub, Sentry, Webpack, Vagrant, Kibana, Logstash, Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, Chef, Jest, Enzyme, SmartStack, Apache Mesos, Business Tools, G Suite, Slack, Superset, InVision, Asana, React Sketch.app, Assemblage
Analytics: Google Analytics, Campaign Monitor

Slack Tech Stack

Web Client: JavaScript, Electron, ES6
Mobile Devices: Java, Objective C, Kotlin, Swift
Backend/API: Hacklang, PHP, HHVM, Consul, HAProxy
Data Storage: MySQL, Memcached, Vitess, MCRouter, Spark, Presto, Airflow, Hadoop, Kafka
Search Service: Java, SolrCloud
Real-Time Messaging/Communication: Java, WebSockets, Go
Services: gRPC, Thrift, JSON-over-HTTP, Elixir, Node, Kafka, Redis
Server: Kubernetes, Terraform, Chef, Hosting, Prometheus, ELK, AWS

There are several industry-ready tech stacks too which come up with their own features. MEAN, MERN, and LAMP are some of the examples to mention here which are very useful in this rapidly evolving technology world.

Once you adopt the right tech stack for your company, also make sure that there is a steadfast strategy for the execution of your tech stack. For the same, you need to think vigilantly about your tools, the business solution offered by them, and any replication of tools utilized.

Conclusion:

Avoid the use of time-consuming, costly, and clunky legacy tools which could form an awful tech stack. Rather, choose a tech stack that really makes a difference for successful business growth.

By Nicholas Winston
who writes articles on technical topics while working in a custom software development company – CapitalNumbers.com. In addition, He is an avid reader who loves to binge a variety of books and informative articles.

Member since January, 2021
View all the articles of Nicholas Winston.