We are living in an era, where technology is changing in a blink of an eye. We have seen the advent of social media, Cloud computing, IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in the last 10 years, all these technologies have changed the world we are living in.
We have revolutionary mobile apps, smartwatches, wireless earphones, fitness trackers, AI-enabled devices, electric cars, and whatnot.
Taking the queue from this rapid paradigm shift, even the web development and mobile app development has been changed completely and it’s a different ball game altogether now if we compare it with what it used to be a decade earlier.
The development technologies for Mobile apps and Web Development have shifted from back-end development technologies like Java, and PHP to front-end technologies like Angular JS, Node JS, and React JS. There is a gradual improvement in all these technologies, which helped us to improve the coding efficiency and reduce the code size as well.
Software development trends and technologies are changing at such an astonishing pace that as a Developer, it is extremely important to remain updated on the most popular trends that are ruling the market.
Use of Stack for Web and Mobile app development is growing like anything and deciding to choose the right technology stack for your software product is very critical for your business success and profitability.
In this article, we will be presenting some facts about the most used Stack and their pros and cons, which will certainly help you to select the best Stack for software development when you hire a development company.
Technically speaking, a Stack is a collection of Operating systems, tools, languages, databases, scripting languages, web servers, frameworks, APIs, etc. that come together to develop an entire software solution.
According to Layman Guide, a stack is a group of software programs or technologies that work together to achieve a common goal, i.e., Software development. It includes closely related software applications, which can ease the workflow, and ultimately helps in the completion of certain tasks.
Let’s Have a Look at the Most Popular Stacks used for Software Development.
The MEAN stack development is an acronym for MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js. It is one of the most popular tech stacks in the market. It is an end-to-end JavaScript stack that enables the usage of a single language throughout the stack.
We can reuse code across the entire application which decreases the efforts required in the reinvention of the entire code.
The MERN stack is an updated version of the MEAN stack, it uses React.js instead of Angular.js. It is also a JavaScript stack used for the efficient and rapid development of software components.
MERN uses JSX, which is a modification of JavaScript and it enables seamless component work which is very much liked by the developers.
It uses React to build the front-end web applications, which is among the most popular Libraries used for building high-end applications along with interactive User Interfaces.
This stack uses Vue.js as a front-end development framework. This framework is immensely popular amongst the developers as Vue.js offers rapid development and effectiveness compared with Angular.js and React.js. Vue.js offers some basic functionality that can be further extended using third-party services.
In a way, we can say that Vue.js provides the best features of both Angular and React which gives an astonishing performance along with a super-rich set of tools. It uses ExpressJS, to manage all the server-end-related operations.
It has the following components, that can be used to design effective frontend and backend components and improve the functionality of your website or app drastically.
The LAMP is a classic and one of the oldest stacks of technologies (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). It is at the forefront of the Open-source software stacks, a market leader that started it all and it is still loved by developers for its reliability and flexibility.
It offers amazing stability, and simplicity coupled with power, which makes LAMP the most suitable platform for developing applications.
Its popularity is unmatched, as several popular open-source web applications like WordPress and Drupal are based on LAMP. It is known for its path-breaking ability to handle dynamic pages.
LAMP is an open-source stack, it allows developers and organizations to choose different components based on specific business requirements.
It offers flexibility to use MS Windows to create a (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack or Apple’s MAC to create the (Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack to develop applications suitable for these respective platforms.
LAMP offers flexibility to choose Perl or Python over PHP to develop a wide variety of applications. It has a robust platform, which is best suited for developing and hosting large-scale applications.
It comes with the biggest developer community coupled with huge numbers of libraries and tools, that gives huge support and resources for application development.
Now we have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the above stacks, now we will be discussing a few critical parameters that need to be taken into consideration while choosing the right Stack for our organization.
We must choose the right Technology stack basis on the current stage of your organization. If you are a start-up, then your primary goal must be launching the product and solutions as quickly as possible.
In such a situation, any technology stack would be a good fit for you if it allows you to launch a working prototype in the shortest possible time.
This is the most important parameter to keep in mind while choosing the right Technology Stack. If you need a website with huge interaction capabilities, then Drupal and WordPress (LAMP) will be used.
If the project requires a frontend user interface with complex interactions, then Angular or React will be a good fit. The organization should understand project goals and its business objectives before choosing a specific technology stack, else it could cause financial loss.
The availability of developers who will develop the applications is a big deciding factor in choosing the right technology stack. An organization should choose a stack that enjoys the support of a thriving developer support community.
Stack-based on commonly used programming language should be chosen as it will help the organization to add additional programmers wherever it is required.
This is among the primary factors to decide the right technology stack for the organization. The cost of a developer depends on the kind of Stack an organization is using, also if the stack contains open source components then the cost of development and maintenance will be reduced gradually, also such components can be upgraded and changed without any restrictions.
This is a parameter that is quite crucial for any organization, as it is their primary objective to develop and release their products and get the feedback of the end-users to make any sort of improvements.
Any Technology stack which offers rapid development of the app will be the best fit.
An assessment of the proposed product is necessary to ensure we use adequate Stack that helps and organization to scale the Software vertically and horizontally.
As we said earlier that there are multiple parameters that need to be assessed before making a decision to use the right Stack, however, we have to look at this decision from a developer’s perspective as well.
It depends upon the development and functional requirements of the proposed system that need to be developed. If you have multiple developers working on an Enterprise solution then Angular.js is the primary choice, hence MEAN fits the bill, renowned organizations like HBO, NASA, Nike, and YouTube use MEAN stack development for their web solutions.
MERN stack makes User interface rendering easy via its React.js library. It uses a single language for both client and server end scripting, hence there is no need for context switching, which is a major relief for developers.
Several big organizations such as Netflix, Uber, and Flipkart choose the MERN stack and their web solutions are based on React.js.
If you want to make an application with MVC capability and better server-side interactivity, then MEVN is the right choice.
It provides robust features of both MEAN and MERN, that help us build high-performance and lightweight apps like e-commerce platforms, social networking platforms, and gaming portals.
If you want to make a complex enterprise solution with huge customization, with a lot of flexibility and cost-effectiveness, along with robust security, then LAMP & MEAN or MERN is the right choice for you.