What is a Tech Stack and How to Choose for your Project

Before choosing the right tech stack for your projects, it’s best you understand what a tech stack is because it will allow you to pick the best one for your ongoing projects. 

Deciding on what tech stack to use is the first thing that’s required whether you hire in-house resources to build your software development team or go for staff augmentation services and get started right away. 

What is a Tech Stack?

The term tech stack refers to all the technological tools being used to create a system. 

Simply put, a tech stack comprises of all the apps, tools, software, programming languages, and platforms used to develop a mobile app, web app or software.

Each system can be divided into two parts:

• Front end (things that users see on their screen)
• Back end (everything related to how the application is going to work) 

Front End

Front end uses a combination of tools to create everything that the users see when they use a website, app, or software.

Every web page, web app or website uses HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), JavaScript (React, JQuery & Angular), and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). 

These languages are considered as the foundation of coding online. All three of them are different languages and are used for different purposes. 

In simple words, you can say that HTML is the builder. You can define all the page content, which includes texts, images and web links using HTML. However, that is all what HTML can do. The results will be quite plain and it’s easy to assume that the user wouldn’t want to see a web page like that. 

This is where CSS, as I call it “The Creative Artist” comes into play. Essentially CSS is a styling tool and it cannot work without HTML. CSS is responsible for aligning all the colors, set font styles/types, and the content positioning.

Now, it’s all up-to JavaScript “the Wizard” to deliver a good user experience by offering features like pop-up air messages and auto-complete function in your username fields.

Together these three languages make up what’s called front end development today. And, all three languages are constantly evolving. However, they come in a package deal. You cannot use one and not use the other two. All three of them depend on each other to offer you the final product that you want to see.     

While, these names are quite popular, there are other names that you may also come across that are used for front end development such as SASS, LESS and others. 

Back End

Back-end development refers to all the practices and tools that are used to give a website all its functions. 

Back-end development is responsible for putting in place all the intricate processes, which users normally take for granted. It is because of these intricate processes, created by the back-end developers, that allows you to log in to your Facebook accounts when you hit the enter key after filling in the login credentials. 

Some of the main back-end technologies being used today are:

Operating systems 

The first decision to be made for back-end development is to choose an operating system. The most popular names in the global market are:

• Google Android
• Microsoft Windows 
• Apple MacOS & iOS
• Linux OS

Web Server 

The job of the web server is to analyze and provide an output to the user’s request. There are two renowned web servers being used today, Apache and Ngnix. Both these web servers are free and open source. 

While Apache is almost a decade old and offers reliability, Ngnix is being praised for its ability to process a high volume of requests simultaneously. Nowadays, developers find Ngnix to be a better choice for high-volume websites.  

Databases 

Database allows easy access, management, modification, and control of data. It enables efficiency in dealing with a high volume of data & streamline the processes. Some of the most renowned databases used today are:

• MySQL
• MongoDB
• PostgreSQL
• Firebase by Google 
• DynamoDB 

Storage 

Two most popular storage solutions used for back-end development these days are:

• AWS S3 Amazon Simple Storage Solution 
• Google’s Firebase Storage  

Programming languages

Programming languages are used to communicate with computers and bring about the results needed. And, each programming language uses a different syntax.

Some of the most well-known and used programming languages & their respective frameworks for web tech stack are:

• Java (Spring)
• PHP (Laravel) 
• Python (Django, Flask, Pylons)
• Ruby (Ruby on Rails)
• Scala (Play)  

Conclusion

Now that you know the basics of what a tech stack is, you need to understand that your tech stack needs are based on your project requirements. Each project has different requirements therefore, the tech stack differs in each situation.