What development stack are you using?

12 points by stevear 14 years ago | 9 comments

I have been deep in the Microsoft camp of development for more than a decade. Occasionally when I look into what my OSS counter-parts are up to I find myself instantly confused by all the various languages and frameworks. To make matters worse a lot of the technologies seem to be fad driven (will Node.js be widely used in three years?). It is unclear to me what OSS development stacks have made it past the honeymoon period and are now in wide adoption.

As an example, if you were to ask me what the typical web development stack is for a Microsoft shop I would say:

Framework: ASP.Net MVC

Language: C#

Web Server: IIS 7.5

Data Layer: Entity Framework, NHibernate or straight ADO.Net.

Database: SQL 2008 Standard

OS: Windows Server 2008 Web (for IIS), Windows Server 2008 Standard (for stand-alone SQL), Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (for clustered SQL)

Training: Pluralsight has just about everything I need from beginner to advanced to train staff. Alternatively, highest rated books on Amazon using the above keywords also works out really well.

Technical Reference: MSDN is the go to technical reference for all of the above products once initial training is complete.

So, what is your development stack? What resources would you give your staff for training? If you were a Microsoft guy, where could you go for training on your stack?

hkarthik 14 years ago |

Former Microsoft-focused dev here. It's funny you mention fads, because I feel like most of the successful development decisions in Microsoft frameworks arose from copying previous 'fads'. Once you deep dive into OSS, you start to see where Redmond got most of its influences.

Here's my current OSS stack.

Framework: Ruby on Rails

Language: Ruby

Web Server: unicorn/nginx

Data Layer: ActiveRecord

Database: Postgres 9.1

OS: Linux (Ubuntu Server)/OSX

Editor: Vim/TextMate/SublimeText

Training: PeepCode, RailsCasts, CodeSchool, Pragmatic Publishing books, local meetups, you name it.

Technical References: Ruby and Rails API docs. GitHub.

snambi 14 years ago |

This is the stack I have been using for a few years. This is a stable, reliable stack with tools of tools, IDE support and a solid community around it.

Framework: Spring MVC, Spring Security, JAX-RS, JSP+Tiles, JQuery, Maven Language: Java Web Server: Apache Tomcat 6., Jetty Data Layer: Hibernate Database: MySQL 5 OS: Linux, Mac OS X

I am trying the following stack, which may be more flexible.

Framework: Backbone MVC+JQuery+Bootstrap, Spring Core, Spring Security, JAX-RS, Maven Language: Java Web Server: Apache Tomcat 6., Jetty Database: MongoDB OS: Linux, Mac OS X

r4vik 14 years ago |

Framework: Django

Language: Python

Web Server: gunicorn/nginx

Data Layer: Django ORM

Database: Postgres 9.1/PostGIS

OS: Linux (Debian)

Training: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonTraining

Technical Reference: https://docs.djangoproject.com/

brandoncordell 14 years ago |

Framework: Rails/CakePHP/NodeJS

Language: Ruby/PHP/Javascript

Web Server: Nginx/Ubuntu

Database: MySQL/Postgres/MongoDB/Redis

OS: OSX 10.7.3

Technical Reference: API Documentation

Dev Evironment: RVM, Zsh, Vim, Git, and thousands of lines of custom dotfiles

joshontheweb 14 years ago |

My preferred setup:

Back-end Framework: Express.js

Front-end Framework: Backbone.js

Language: Javascript

Web Server: Node.js

Database: MongoDB

OS: OSX 10.7.3

Editor: Vim or Vico

jordhy 14 years ago | |

I'm using something pretty similar:

Back-end Framework: Express.js

Front-end Framework: Backbone.js (some RonR on the rocks as well)

Language: Javascript

Web Server: Node.js/Nginx

Database: MongoDB

OS: OSX Lion

Editor: Textmate/Vim

Training: Oreilly Books, Github, API docs, Mashape docs

stevear 14 years ago |

I forgot to ask another really important question: What dev enviroment?

Obviously I'm using Visual Studio 2010.

read_wharf 14 years ago |

Almost the same as r4vik:

Django, Python, nginx, Postgres, Ubuntu. Vim in a terminal, and ssh to my Linode.

michael_fine 14 years ago |

Framework: Rails

Language: Ruby

Front end:Coffeescript/Backbone

Server: S3

Database: SQLite