My Webapp Tech Stack

In this post I am going to present you my personal tech stack for web development. I want to tell more about the technologies and methodologies I am using to build web applications. In that sense it would be glad if you share your stack and methodologies in the comment section.

Methodology

My technology-independent methodology and approach to software development:

• Web apps over native apps (aka progressive web apps)
• The twelfe-factor app
• Serverless compute manifesto

Technology

For every layer of a modern web application I focus on one technology.

Language: JavaScript

JavaScript has become an ubiquitous programming language for web development.

UI Framework: React

React is the most popular user interface framework. Whereas Angular dominates the enterprise domain, React is the first choice for consumer apps.

UI Components: Material-UI

Material-UI unites Google’s design principles and React’s versatile components. Designing components and implementing a visual design that adheres to best practices has become a major challenge. Using Material-UI components makes it trivial to build an attractive UI within a short amount of time.

Client State: Apollo Client

Apollo is a GraphQL implementation. The Apollo client makes it easy to manage the local state of a React app.

Backend: Apollo Server

Apollo provides the flexibility and versatility required for designing and implementing complex APIs. The schema language makes it easy to define a solid and coherent data model. Whereas resolvers offer the necessary flexibility to connect the schema to the business and persistence layer.

Database: MongoDB

The NoSQL approach has become outdated. However, if you design the schema with GraphQL there is no need in applying a schema to the database.

Platform: Zeit Now

Zeit’s Now offers serverless deployments with little overhead for configuration. It supports monorepos and makes deployments automatically globally available.

DB Platform: mLab

mLab is the most popular MongoDB hosting platform. I especially appreciate their sandbox plan.

Minor Tech

Package manager: yarn
Auth Token: JSON Web Token
App Config: dotenv