How do you select technology stack for your projects?

In the past few days, I've read thousands (and I'm not exaggerating) of documents about various tools and technologies that become a part of various technology stacks commonly used. One thing emerged is that each technology / tool / programming language has its own shortcomings and it's actually a challenge to come up with the 'right' tech stack for specific projects.

When you are building for scalability (on the web) - you got to consider a ton of factors. Your technology stack, I believe, directly affects the infrastructure cost that you're going to need.

Then there's a problem of getting skilled engineers to achieve specific tasks. For example, I might opt for the latest kick-ass language that promises to solve most of the common problems; but then it becomes super difficult to find experienced engineers who can fix problems.

What are technical as well as non-technical aspects do you consider before choosing the technology stack for your project?

Replies

  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    I've been waiting for responses on this one 😀 . Wondering if there's been any incidence where you felt you made a wrong choice with technology stack?

    #-Link-Snipped-# , #-Link-Snipped-#
  • Manish Goyal
    Manish Goyal
    It all depends actually sometimes it is budget of client

    For e.g if client ask me to develop a chat application then one can go for native jquery and ajax stuff if budget is low as it can work on simple shared server but if client has budget for VPS and dedicated server then one can go with node.js which is obviously better than latter

    2nd I always choose language where there is less learning curve and better documentation for e.g laravel is better as per experts but I didn't find much documentation available, then I also check if there are any ready made plugins available for a certain framework (Laravel, Cakephp) for my requirements for e.g cakephp has ready made payment plugins, user plugin available
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    Thank you for your response, #-Link-Snipped-# . I'm actually learning to avoid reading about advantages / disadvantages of one popular tech-stack over others. I think learning curve and overall suitability of stack for the desired project is what matters ultimately. Looking forward to more experiences, comments and views on this.
  • Jash Mota
    Jash Mota
    Kaustubh Katdare
    I've been waiting for responses on this one 😀 . Wondering if there's been any incidence where you felt you made a wrong choice with technology stack?

    #-Link-Snipped-# , #-Link-Snipped-#
    I think facebook is one such site. They're mainly using python now...
  • simplycoder
    simplycoder
    #-Link-Snipped-# Apologies for late reply, I hope I am not too late.
    I think any decent technology is good enough for project, provided the team is skilled in it.
    think it is very important for the team to be skilled in whichever technology they use.

    I would like to share a experience here, which I came across.
    There was a project which was developed using NodeJS as solution.
    The team had no expertise on Node or JS in general , they utilized online snippets and put up a solution which burnt in no time. They had no clue of node architecture or of javascript.
    Since the project was crashed, the programmers, started to blame Node, short comings of Node and how it was not suitable to the`project needs` and that the business should dictate the technology and not other way around. Now we all know these statements aren't really true.
    For me the only logical conclusion was, the skill sets which team possessed and technology selected wasn't the best combination.
    I am certain if this solution was developed in technology ,which was well versed with the team, things would have been much better.

    In conclusion I would say,In my opinion the only wrong technology selected is the one in which the team is inexperienced.
  • Ashraf HZ
    Ashraf HZ
    simplycoder
    In conclusion I would say,In my opinion the only wrong technology selected is the one in which the team is inexperienced.
    Agree. Start off with technology that the team is more comfortable with. Over time you can start learning new stacks and frameworks, and transition to them based on requirements and needs. Besides, some of the largest websites have a combination of technologies, not just one (e.g LinkedIn).
  • rahul69
    rahul69
    Well I would say, select a group of technologies which fulfill your project requirements, then select the one based on familiarity of your earlier experience and the one which is stable in the market.
    It is better than choosing a shining new technology and then face multiple difficulties (lot of learning curve, licencing costs and unpredictability of support in future).
  • Prasad Ajinkya
    Prasad Ajinkya
    From a main line adoption point, go with stacks which are known to be stable - since you are building for production and don't want beta features within the stack to wreck havoc in your product.

    From a total cost of ownership point, go with stacks which are popular with the crowd - so you have access to a pool of talent which actually knows your stack.

    From a maintenance point, go with stacks which you know very well - so you can foresee problems that might happen in the future.

You are reading an archived discussion.

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