Ask HN: Best toolkit to build any web or mobile app (for developers)

3 points by robertnowell 4 years ago | 1 comment

I was debating with a friend about the benefits of no-code versus code tools.

We're both devs, and we were arguing about the best, fastest way to build a good web app.

There are clear best choices for no-code tools (e.g. shopify for e-commerce).

But are there equally obvious choices for web apps that still require devs?

If helpful, my personal goals when building a web app are speed, quality, and flexibility.

Speed: how quickly can I go from design to shipped app.

Quality: can a new developer quickly onboard and understand the code and how to contribute.

Flexibility: I don't want to be limited in what we can do. This should be a solution that can work for (most) any kind of web app.

I think my default would be Frontend: React; Backend: Google cloud functions; Data: Firestore; Infra: Firebase

But tbh it still takes much longer / more effort to spin up a web app with moderate functionality than it does to create a shopify store.

Maybe these aren't the best / most up to date tools. I'd love to hear what other people think is best.

dougbarrett 4 years ago |

I don't think your default is necessarily the easiest way to get an app up and running, and certainly because of vendor lock-in and training required for the Google platform/services, you risk limiting the pool of available talent.

My default would be Ruby on Rails, or Laravel, and use something like Heroku or Render for hosting where all you need to do is push to a git repo to deploy.

Decoupling your frontend and backend may be useful down the line for scaling, but to start a monolithic stack is going to allow you to be the most productive.