My pointless quest for the perfect web stack

Recently I’ve been on the blasphemes quest to find my ideal web stack. 

What I Want

Modern web applications are pushing the envelope of the experiences that can be made over the internets. I use Python/Django/Postgres/Backbone/SASS at the moment and that’s all well and good. But what I want now is a concurrent language and a non-blocking web server to serve an API. Why? Because most of my web apps now are mostly client-side using lots of javascript and backbone. I want concurrent because I want speed for powerful algorithms I will theoretically write. I want an asnychronous web server because I’m tired of the Python -> Rabbitmq -> Celery dance I need to do to offload tasks into a queue. 

I realize this list of stuff I want is ridiculous since I don’t actually know what I want to build with this theoretical stack. So keep that in mind that this is a pointless exercise, but one that I’ve been thinking about nonetheless. It’s also extremely narrow minded and not inclusive of all the stuff out there. 


WINNER:

Not necessarily what I use now, but will use next.

Clojure/Aleph -> Mongo -> Backbone -> Handlebars -> SASS

BACKEND LANGUAGE:

1) Clojure

  • Concurrent
  • functional
  • lispy
  • fast
  • Still new, smaller community
  • Huge learning curve for me

2) Python

  • A caveman could write it
  • Tons of libraries
  • Proven
  • GIL sucks :(

3) Javascript

  • CoffeeScript makes it awesome
  • V8 makes it super fast
  • Possibility of one language for front and back end
  • single threaded

DB:

1) Mongo

  • Schema-less
  • easy to query
  • restful api (not sure how useful this is out of the box)
  • possible difficulties in scaling (anecdotal, but frequent)

2) Postgres/MySql

  • Relational
  • reliable 
  • scalable
  • migrations can be a pain

WEB FRAMEWORK/SERVER:

1) Aleph (clojure)

  • The only real choice for non-blocking server in clojure
  • Websocket support
  • Works with Noir web framework
  • Socket.io not supported

2) Flask (python)

  • Super minimal
  • Simple to set up
  • It’s python

3) Express (node/javascript)

  • Lightweight
  • Readable
  • Large community and resources
  • Non-blocking
  • Easy Socket.io support

4) Django (python)

  • Batteries included
  • So many libraries makes rapid development easy
  • Get’s in your way after awhile (restrictive)
  • Synchronous unless you use Celery as a external task queue
  • Overkill for the kinds of web apps I write (Backbone, heavy client side)

FRONT END FRAMEWORK:

1) Backbone

  • Makes front-end feel like backend “mvc”
  • Namespacing keeps views separate 
  • Non-prescriptive, use it how you want
  • Sometimes confusing because there is no right way to use it

TEMPLATING:

1) Handlebars

  • Separation of view logic (as much as possible)
  • Helpers let’s you write your own template tags
  • Multiple options for using templates

2) Moustache

  • Lacks helpers

CSS:

1) SASS

  • It’s just a thousand times better than writing cross-browser pure css

And there you have it. My ideal stack that is incredibly flexible and powerful to create awesome shit I haven’t thought of yet. 

4 Notes/ Hide

  1. marcosortiz reblogged this from alexkehayias
  2. joeconyers said: Why not less? Also what about meteor / etc ?
  3. alexkehayias posted this