Ask HN: Which front-end stack is the most productive?

2 points by figured 9 years ago | 6 comments

I am an experienced back-end developer, 15 + years.

We are developing a B2B service, essentially an integration play (right in my wheel house). But we need a simple website for the clients to login and see the relevant information.

My question is, what front-end framework would this community recommend?

I have no preference for languages or architecture, I am only concerned with developer productivity and security.

A reactive design will be fine for now, native mobile will come later. This is not a consumer product.

I was thinking about starting with React.

smt88 9 years ago |

Strongly recommend React and also strongly recommend TypeScript. Finding a good boilerplate to get you started with both of those is not the easiest, but there are some:

https://github.com/rokoroku/react-redux-typescript-boilerpla... (Redux for state management)

https://github.com/rokoroku/react-mobx-typescript-boilerplat... (Mobx for state management)

Redux takes a few hours to wrap your mind around, but the documentation is great. As long as you just spend a few months reading their terminology, you'll have no trouble getting going.

Also highly recommend WebStorm or VS Code for this project.

smt88 9 years ago | |

spend a few minutes* not months!

dukedylan 9 years ago |

Without a doubt the easiest way to start would be with next.js. Segment.io has even built a scaffolding tool to create a next.js project https://open.segment.com/create-next-app

Siilwyn 9 years ago |

It's interesting to see people recommend their favorite libraries and frameworks. While all of them add abstraction and complexity which can hurt productivity. Instead I would recommend to get an MVP running using small modules where obviously needed. Then review the codebase to pick needed libraries.

soapdog 9 years ago |

folks, lets be honest here. There is no right answer to this question. It depends on too many variables.

react, vue, ng2, whatever they choose will work and will be mostly the same. We argue about trivia and do flamewars but all those solutions are more similar than different.

iamwil 9 years ago |

I've liked Elm.