Web App Tips

[kentcdodds]

Web App Tips

[kentcdodds]

I'll get to you as soon as I'm able! Should be early this week :-) I do have a few thoughts.

[aliig]

Awesome. I'll just keep doing some tutorials in the meantime.

[aliig]

Also, if you have any thoughts about whether to use a starter/framework like MEAN.io, Hackathon, Strongloop, angular full stack generator, etc.; your opinion would be welcome. The suspense is killing me, I can hardly wait to get started. :)

[kentcdodds]

Sorry this has taken so long for me to get back to you.

First, let me preface this will the fact that I'm a JavaScript developer through and through. I'm more comfortable with JavaScript, I really enjoy JavaScript, I understand it isn't suited best for all scenarios, but it has worked great for where I've used it so that's what I use.

Also, I personally haven't done a ton of backend work. That's also valuable preface info...

So, if I were building an app like the one you describe, I would probably use the MEAN stack. That is, if I just wanted to push it out fast. If I had time, I would try to learn Koa and I would use React (for more info on that, see #7). Koa looks super awesome.

I like OpenShift a lot, though I may also look into DigitalOcean. I would register the domain with iwantmyname.com.

I'm a fan of MongoDB. Though, if I had time, I might look into PostgreSQL or RethinkDB because I've heard they're cool.

For CSS, I would probably use Stylus. But if I had time, I'd probably look into PostCSS.

For bundling my JavaScript, I would definitely use Webpack. Though, if I had time, I'd probably stick with webpack :-) Also, get all of your dependencies from npm. It'll improve your life.

I think that's everything I'd need to get started.

P.S. I think you actually might be able to accomplish what you're trying to do with Firebase. Look into that a little bit. If it suits your needs (it very well might), then you don't need to worry about a backend at all (which would be totally awesome) and you could just deploy your app on Firebase :-)

[aliig]

Great answer, thanks for presenting options for each. I'll be looking into each of these today and see how I feel about the learning curve for each one. I'd heard of some of these, but many I hadn't heard of or considered like Firebase or React/Koa, which seem pretty promising.

Thank you for the detailed answer, I appreciate it!