Discussion of the Week: "What is the ideal Tech stack to build a website in 2024?"

In this weekly roundup, we highlight what we believe to be the most thoughtful, helpful, and/or interesting discussion over the past week! Though we are strong believers in healthy and respectful debate, we typically try to choose discussions that are positive and avoid those that are overly contentious.

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Now that y'all understand the flow, let's go! 🏃💨

The Discussion of the Week

Congrats to @jakemackie for sharing the wonderful conversation-starter "What is the ideal Tech stack to build a website in 2024? 👨‍💻"

What is the ideal Tech stack to build a website in 2024? 👨‍💻

Jake Mackie ・ Jan 22

#webdev #frontend #backend #website

Jake's setup is simple and the question is communicated directly in the title, which is probably one of the reasons it garnered so many comments! Take note aspiring writers — straight-forward titles that deliver on what they promise always work best. Good stuff all around! 👏

As with many great discussions, the meat is in the comments. Jake nicely teed up the question and offered a solid take himself, but just look at all those dang responses!

Seriously, let's look at a few...

Sitting at the top of the comment stack, we got @kaamkiya repping the vanilla way of doing things:

Kaamkiya • Jan 23 • Edited on Jan 24 • Edited

Honestly, I'm that one person who would build it entirely with vanilla JS, vanilla CSS, and plain old HTML. If I needed a backend, it would probably be built in Flask or Deno. My database... well if I could, JSON, otherwise SQLite3 (it's built in to Python).

I'm the kinda guy who just likes the plain stuff without layers upon layers on top.

Lots of folks are on board with this, but there's also some thoughtful rebuttals.

Further down-thread @arjuncodess weighed in with the following:

Arjun Vijay Prakash • Jan 23

To be honest, I'm in love with this combo!

• Nextjs 14 (full stack framework)
• TypeScript (haha, perfect js)
• Firebase/MongoDB (database)
• Tailwind CSS & ShadCN/ui (styling)
• Vercel (hosting)

And elsewhere, @jmfayard pointed out that context really matters... but also, when it's all over, the client likely doesn't care:

Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Jan 24 • Edited on Jan 24 • Edited

What is the ideal Tech stack to build a website in 2024? 👨‍💻

It depends.
It depends if you actually have dozens millions of clients with huge expectations
And if yes, then please do lots of research.

If not, then YAGNI.
It depends then if you are alone or in a team.
If you are alone, I would choose the simplest thing that work and that you are comfortable with.
If you are in a team, I would choose the simplest thing that work and that you and your colleagues are comfortable with.

Your clients very much don't care about your stack.
They would like us to also focus on their problems, and if possible, solve them.

If your keep things easy and simple, you will have more bandwith to focus on what really matters.

At the end of the day, clients have no use for your code

So, what do you think the ideal tech stack is for 2024? Don't answer here in the comments of my post, head on over to the comments section of Jake's post here and let folks know your thoughts.

What's your pick for the Discussion of the Week?

The DEV Community is particularly special because of the kind, thoughtful, helpful, and entertaining discussions happening between community members. As such, we want to encourage folks to participate in discussions and reward those who are initiating or taking part in conversations across the community. After all, a community is made possible by the people interacting inside it.

There are loads of great discussions floating about in this community. This is just the one we chose to highlight. 🙂

I urge you all to share your favorite discussion of the past week below in the comments. And if you're up for it, give the author an @mention — it'll probably make 'em feel good. 💚