Trending Technology / Software Stacks

Trending Technology / Software Stacks

When you want to design and develop a software application / Software project for your company or Start-up, Apart from budget, time and effort, you will need to select the right technology stack to get your project off the ground successfully.

In this post, we will discuss what is the Software / Technology Stack, What are the popular technology Stack trends in the current market, Why we need to choose one of them, what are the key consideration to choose one of the technology Stack etc.

What is the technology stack?

A tech stack is a set of technologies used to build a software application. It is a data ecosystem or a combination of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, patterns, servers, UI/UX solutions, software, and tools used by developers in building and running our application. For example, Facebook’s exhaustive application stack includes PHP, React, GraphQ, Cassandra, Hadoop, Swift, and a host of other frameworks.

he technology stack is broadly divided into two: Front End (client-side) and Back-end (server-side). While backend technologies include web frameworks, programming languages, servers, and operating systems, frontend technologies include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and UI frameworks and libraries.

Current Technology Stack Trends

Following are some of the latest Technology Stack in the current market.

1. The LAMP Stack
2. The WAMP Stack
3. The JAM Stack
4. The MEAN Stack
5. The MERN Stack
6. The MEVN Stack
7. The Serverless Stack
8. Flutter for Web

The LAMP Stack

The widely popular LAMP stack is a set of open source software used for web application development, it is a classic, time-tested technology stack. For a web application to work smoothly, it has to include an operating system, a web server, a database, and a programming language. The name LAMP is an acronym of the following programs: Linux Operating System, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. The LAMP is one of the most common and popular ways to deliver web applications. It was one of the first open-source software stacks, which is still widely used. Popular open-source CMS such as WordPress and Drupal use LAMP. The stability, simplicity, and power that accompany LAMP have made it the platform of choice for developing new custom web apps.

The LAMP stack can efficiently handle dynamic pages wherein the content changes every time it is loaded. LAMP being open-source and non-proprietary, you can select components based on your specific business requirements. PHP can be swapped with Perl or the

increasingly popular Python language. Since the LAMP has been around for more than a decade, one will benefit from the advantages of a significant LAMP ecosystem.

The WAMP Stack

t is similar to LAMP with Linux, Replaced with Microsoft Windows. WAMP Stands for “Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and actually it is a variation of LAMP for Windows systems and is often installed as a software bundle (Apache, MySQL, and PHP). It is often used for web development and internal testing, but may also be used to serve live

websites.

The JAM Stack

JAM stack stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. The term was coined by Mathias Biilmann to describe a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup. Due to its static nature, JAM stack app makes scaling easy and causes little to no dev-ops overhead. The JAM stack approach can also improve app’s security posture since static sites generally have a small attack vector.

Another benefit is a lot of functionality that was traditionally processed in the backend, now takes place in the user’s browser and the fact that the technology stack is JavaScript-based is a great bonus for web developers. In a CMS-based solution, for every visitor, the web app would have to generate a number of backend database queries to gather the information

needed to generate a web page and send it back to the user. With a JAM stack app, you serve generated HTML instead of rendering documents live on the server. This ensures faster loading times, reduces security risks and is a solution that is easy to integrate with a CDN.

mean stack

The MEAN uses MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, and Node.js and that’s why it is known as MEAN Stack. Undoubtedly, the MEAN stack is the most popular full-stack solution. Being entirely JavaScript-powered, it brings numerous benefits to web developers among

which is the usage of a single language throughout your stack.

Another strong advantage is that all the underlying technologies are free and open-source and has the support of a vibrant community. If any issue arises during the development, you can always rely on its support. Since end-to-end it uses a single language, hence there is an opportunity to reuse code across the entire application, resulting in decreasing needless reinvention. The application developed under this Stack are perfect for cloud hosting, as they are flexible, scalable, and extensible. This stack has its own web server and hence can be deployed easily. Further, The database can be scaled on-demand to accommodate usage

spikes temporarily

MEAN presents a modern approach for developing fast and robust apps. Besides, all the components of MEAN speak JSON which makes the data flow smoothly between the layers. Using one language (JavaScript) both for client-side and server-side development improves the communication inside the team and helps to understand your product holistically.

MEAN allows us to use a single team of JavaScript developers who can work adaptively. While MEAN isn’t perfect for every application, it excels in various uses like calendars, mapping and location finding, and news aggregation sites.

The MERN Stack

The MERN stack is a JavaScript stack that’s designed to make the development process smoother. The MERN stack is almost similar to the MEAN stack in which React replaces Angular. MERN includes four open-source components: MongoDB, Express, ReacJSt, and Node.js. Since React uses Virtual DOM, changes can be easily enforced. React uses JSX, which is a JavaScript update that allows seamless component function. React is one of the most common frameworks used to create high-end, single-page interactive UI applications.

Since the current trend is all about improving the UI, MERN stands to benefit. However, when operating with React, developers have to deal with restricted core features because React is a library, not a framework, Therefore, most developers use third-party providers.

The MEVN Stack

The MEVN Stack uses Vue.Js as a front end framework in place of Angular in MEAN or React in MERN. This framework has shown immense popularity over the last few years. Its popularity is expected to continue as it is a lightweight solution compared to Angular or React.

Vue.js offers basic out-of-the-box functionality. This functionality can be extended using third-party services. Vue.js blends the most delicate features of Angular and React to give us excellent results and a rich collection of resources/tools along with great performance.

Fig: MEAN, MERN & MEVN Technology Stack

The Serverless Stack

Serverless Stack (SST) is a framework that makes it easy to build a serverless application using various cloud-computing tools. Serverless computing systems have all the resources and tools required to make infrastructure management much more comfortable. Up to hundreds of thousands of users can quickly be scaled overnight. AWS Lambda was one of the first serverless systems in the world. Google Cloud is another primary provider of serverless computing services.

Serverless Framework enables Front End Developers to build full-stack applications without having to manage and operate infrastructure – freeing Developers from the worry of back-end tasks like scaling servers and provisioning capacity and resources. With serverless Developers are able to –

1. Set up serverless databases in a snap. The Serverless Framework gives Front End Developers full-stack capabilities with zero back end skills required.
2. Scale effortlessly. Automatically scale up or down.
3. Save money with consumption-based billing. Only pay per request.
4. Faster Go to market. Don’t waste time configuring a Linux Distribution or patching security vulnerabilities.

Flutter for Web

The Flutter stack is a widget in Flutter that contains a list of widgets and positions them on top of the other. In other words, the stack allows developers to overlap multiple widgets into a single screen and renders them from bottom to top. Flutter for Web can be called a game-changer in the cross-platform development environment. It uses the same UI and business

logic on all platforms. With Flutter, one need not to spend time on deployment and one can fix bugs, add new features, and build UI without compromising on speed.

Why choose a tech stack to build your application/software projects?

Choosing a Technology Stack is same as you choose a deep foundation and girders for a building. The right technology stack will ensure competitive edge of your application and has a long way in the growth of your web application as it affects –

1. Performance if your application – how well it works
2. How it will work & behave in the future
3. Scalability of your application/product to cater to future growth
4. Purpose & Objective of your product/business
5. Your choice of data and storage of applications (Cloud or Local)
6. Capacity / Power of your server systems (whether it’s made for high-read operations or high-write traffic)

As software development standards and trends change continuously, it is important and very critical to remain updated on the latest technology trends in the market. By evaluating and analysing the strength & weakness of various technology Stack, we can choose the right one for our application. This will give us full confidence in developing the application and will help us in mitigating the implementation and development risk.

Choosing of right take will have advantages, while wrong Stack will lead to various drawbacks as mentioned below –

Benefits of choosing the right stack

Choosing the right tech stack for your application can be beneficial to your business in many ways. The benefits of choosing the right tech stack are:

1. The base performance of your product or software will be solid.
2. Your developer will able to code better and faster, and you’ll be able to retain the same developers for future projects
3. Your software’s codebase will be easy to maintain while choosing the wrong stacks leads to additional maintenance costs and technical debts
4. The stack will be well documented and it will be easy to fix common bugs and/or performance issues.

Drawbacks of choosing the wrong stack

Choosing the wrong tech stack can prove expensive, and you may face the following troubles:

1. A new stack will require additional time to adopt and the build time from ground up is equally long.
2. Some of the latest tech stacks have frequent update cycles that will require frequent changes to keep the app running with the latest codebase.
3. You may face trouble finding experienced developers.
4. The tech stack may become unsustainable.

How do we choose the Technology Stack?

There are five key factors that need to be considered while choosing a technology stack for your software project. These five key factors are

1. Project Scope / Project requirements and features
2. Availability of Resources and experience
3. Scalability
4. Maintainability
5. Time to Market / Development speed.
6. Security

The below figure shows how to Choose between MEAN and MERN Technology Stack

Summary

Now since you are aware of what are various technology/software stacks for developing various application, you can choose the appropriate technology stack. If you need further discussion and help let's schedule a free consultation and contact us

REF:  https://pi-infotech.com/trending-technology-software-tacks/