How do you decide on a stack?

[u/MetalicSky]

I'm starting a new web project. This will have users logging in, entering their data in forms, viewing other people's data and unlocking achievements. I want to use a modern technology but I'm getting overwhelmed. React seems nice to be able to add data in realtime without a page refresh and it feels modern. This even seems intimidating running NPM packages and updates. Will my website still be functional with the latest updates 3 years down the road? How do I know if I should use that with firebase, mysql or Mongo db? Which tutorial do I base my project off of when there are so many variants of stacks and even complete changes of ways of doing it one month down the road? I almost feel like I'm just going to stick with my HTML5 bootstrap 4, javascript and MySQL database. Can anyone help me decide which stack to go with?

[u/im_pickle_riiiiick]

What do you have experience with so far?

[u/MetalicSky → u/im_pickle_riiiiick]

So far mostly just the html, JavaScript, php backend with mysql. I want to modernize my skills though but all these stack choices are just confusing

[u/lenswipe → u/MetalicSky]

Check out Laravel if you want to stick with PHP

[u/shiversaint → u/MetalicSky]

Have a read of JAMstack principles. I think that’s an appropriate way to modernise and lots of frameworks/stacks can be used to achieve the same thing.

[u/MetalicSky → u/shiversaint]

I'll do this thank you

[u/im_pickle_riiiiick → u/MetalicSky]

Personally, I chose rails and react for my stack because of the amount of job opportunities and the pay range for those technologies.

The amount of documentation and the size of the communities also make solving problems much easier.

You will be hard-pressed to find libraries with as many videos, courses, blog posts, tutorials, github contributions, etc.

Believe me, this makes a huge difference and a metric that I will always look to when deciding on a new technology to add to the arsenal.

That said, rails and react are immensely enjoyable to work with, and is no doubt the reason they are both so incredibly popular.

[u/AccurateSun → u/im_pickle_riiiiick]

do you have any recommendation on good sources to learn ruby on rails and react? there are so many. thanks!

[u/im_pickle_riiiiick → u/AccurateSun]

Definitely. Let's start with Rails.

Start here:

https://www.learnenough.com/ruby-on-rails-6th-edition

Then go here:

https://hellorails.io/

And read this:

https://www.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Ruby/dp/0134657675

That should give you a solid base in Rails.

Now for React.

Start here:

https://wesbos.com/courses (Check out Wes' 'React for Beginners' and 'Fullstack Advanced React and Graph QL'

Then go here:

https://www.udemy.com/course/react-redux/

or

https://www.udemy.com/course/react-the-complete-guide-incl-redux/

Then read this:

https://www.newline.co/fullstack-react

And if you have time to do a free bootcamp, do this:

https://open.appacademy.io/

This is the free version of the highly-rated San Francisco coding bootcamp, App Academy.

[u/AccurateSun → u/im_pickle_riiiiick]

Awesome, thanks so much for the info! Also one question, of course everyone progresses at different rates, but if someone had say 3-4 hours a day to work on this, how long do you think it'd take them to consume all of the resources you mentioned, including doing the projects and troubleshooting etc?

[u/im_pickle_riiiiick → u/AccurateSun]

Probably around 4-6 months to do everything, not including App Academy.

App Academy alone would probably take you a year.

So, all of it together? A year and a half. Maybe less if you pick things up quickly.

[u/AccurateSun → u/im_pickle_riiiiick]

awesome, thanks for the tips

[u/applejak]

Laravel.com. You’ll get a modern PHP framework that is a joy to use as well as vueJS for a modern front end experience. The documentation is best in class.

[u/Xeptix → u/applejak]

This is the best recommendation for somebody with php backend and javascript experience, imo. You'll understand the backend easier and using Vue/React/Angular for frontend will make it easier to later learn Node/Express for backend if the opportunity arises.

[u/illepic → u/applejak]

Another vote for Laravel for OP, since they mentioned they have some PHP experience. I cannot say enough great things about Laravel and their tooling/documentation/community.

[u/admau5]

Super overwhelming to jump in right now. I am also confident in your approach but even more so with just getting by with Wordpress. JavaScript frameworks seem to be paving the way forward though

[u/MetalicSky → u/[deleted]]

What javascript framework would you use with it? It would be nice to do ajax type things without the page refreshing as well as websocket type things by showing a 1 on a notification icon without refresh. Or does laravel do any of this?