Technology Stacks: The Modern Landscape

Technology evolves faster than any other business sector. In an instant, something new emerges and becomes a darling of corporate companies. Take containers, for example.
\r\nBefore container technologies (and especially Kubernetes) came along, enterprises relied on monolithic application stacks to deploy applications and services. One prominent example of a monolithic stack is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). This stack has helped businesses expand their capabilities for decades.
\r\nBut as we said, evolution happens, and it happens quickly.
\r\nThese days, fully realized technology stacks appear just as quickly as simple applications once did. And developers are piecing together components in increasingly creative ways, flooding the market with more and more stacks.
\r\nFrom this, of course, comes our first question.

What is a technology stack?

Simply put, a technology stack is a combination of programming languages, frameworks, and tools that together allow developers to create web or mobile applications and services.
\r\nAs an example, consider the LAMP stack. This very popular stack includes:

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• Programming language (specifically a language for writing CGI scripts) – PHP
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• Web server – Apache
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• Operating system – Linux
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• Database – MySQL or MariaDB.
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With this stack, you can deploy powerful and dynamic applications for a wide range of purposes. However, this combination is not the de facto standard by which all stacks are built.
\r\nThis is especially true in today’s mobile era. Today, software engineers need to be able to develop and deploy their applications much faster than the LAMP stack allows. That is where frameworks come in. Adding a framework makes work more efficient and less redundant.
\r\nA modern stack can be broken down into 7 different categories. Each stack or service can then be layered on top of other stacks/services to create a robust and complete application or service.

Operating systems / Programming languages

This is the foundational stack on which everything else is built. For this stack, you need to choose an operating system and the programming languages required for the project. The choice of operating system mainly depends either on your comfort level or on the requirements of other stacks you will use. In many cases, the most popular operating system for technology stacks is Linux.
\r\nThe programming language, on the other hand, is determined by the project. You can use Java, JavaScript, .NET, C++, Ruby, Python, or any other language that allows you to develop the application or service.

Servers and load balancing

Here we deal with servers, as well as software and hardware for content delivery networks, routing, caching, resource management, RBAC, and fundamental services (such as compute, storage, and networking). This stack allows applications and services to receive requests from users and applications, run smoothly, and scale as demand grows. An example is AzureStack, which includes a load balancing component.

Data storage and data queries

At this level is the stack consisting of relational and non-relational databases, as well as data warehouses, data lakes, and data pipelines. Without this stack, applications cannot be dynamic in nature and cannot store data for later query or use.
\r\nThe data stack depends on data coming from sources that can originate from numerous services such as Facebook, Twitter, user data, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and (of course) databases. Once data is received, the data stack can deliver insights for business intelligence.

Server-side stack

The backend (or server-side) stack adds most of the core functionality needed to build applications for the backend of your application stack. It provides the necessary components for interacting with the database, handling user requests, and resetting passwords. This stack is invisible to end users and is the foundation of the application.
\r\nThe most common components of the server-side stack are programming languages Python and Ruby, frameworks Django and Ruby on Rails, and the JavaScript runtime Node.js. The server-side stack may also include databases (e.g., MySQL) and web servers (e.g., Apache).

Client-side stack

The client-side stack (also known as the frontend stack) is what end users see on their screens. This stack includes all necessary components for building graphical user interfaces, such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as frameworks React and Angular. Some developers prefer to be full-stack developers, meaning they can develop both server-side and client-side.
\r\nAPI stack
\r\nThis is not so much a stack in itself as it is a critical component for building truly functional stacks. The API stack allows connecting all tools across the entire technology stack. Many of these API stacks consist of thousands of ready-made APIs and are split into two layers—for services and for infrastructure.

Monitoring tools and services

As you build your stack (or use an existing one), you will also need the necessary tools and services to monitor the health and performance of components and services. You might think you can get away with only monitoring the performance of the entire application, but you may need (depending on how you built your application or service) to monitor some individual stacks. You may need to set up a dedicated monitor for the server-side stack, the data storage stack, or the operating system stack.
\r\nGranular monitoring allows you to optimize the overall stack more consistently and reliably. Moreover, the data obtained from monitoring individual stacks can be invaluable for tuning the performance of each individual part. Ultimately, such granularity allows you to tune the stack for maximum performance.

Which technology stack to choose?

This question is difficult to answer because it entirely depends on the nature of your project. However, it is crucial to choose the right technology stack from the start. If you pick the wrong path, you’ll have to start over halfway through building the project. And lost time means lost money.
\r\nIt is also important to choose a technology stack that can scale to meet your needs. For example, if you add a relational database to a stack that will be used for an application handling millions of queries per hour, your stack will not be able to scale to such demands. Instead, you should use a NoSQL database.
\r\nThere is a whole range of very popular technology stacks. Let's look at some of them.

MEAN

The MEAN stack is one of the most popular stacks for building dynamic websites and web applications. This stack is based on JavaScript and consists of:

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• MongoDB – database
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• Express.js – backend framework
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• Angular.js – frontend framework
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• Node.js – cross-platform server
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The main reason for MEAN’s popularity is that it is focused on JavaScript. This means your developers only have to concentrate on one language (instead of assembling many languages for a single project). This allows you to quickly build applications and services such as:

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• Workflow management tools
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• Expense tracking applications
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• News aggregator sites
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• Mapping and location-based applications
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• Task and calendar applications
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• Interactive forums
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The importance of MEAN lies in its ability to build scalable, cloud-native applications with an optimized development lifecycle in a single language. With MongoDB, MEAN-based applications can handle large volumes of data, making them ideal for enterprise businesses. Finally, because MEAN has a built-in web server, its deployment is fairly straightforward.

MEVN

MEVN is similar to MEAN, but Angular.js is replaced with Vue.js. Why? Vue.js is considered an excellent choice for both frontend and backend development and allows you to easily deploy user-focused dynamic web applications. MEVN stands for:

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• MongoDB – database
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• Express.js – backend framework
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• Vue.js – frontend framework
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• Node.js – cross-platform server
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For any developer who needs rapid deployment of frontend web applications, MEVN is the stack to use. Thanks to Vue.js’s ability to work with third-party services, it is flexible enough to offer the best of both the Angular and React worlds. With Vue.js added, your web applications will achieve stunning performance.
\r\nTwo main advantages of the MEVN stack are using JavaScript throughout the development lifecycle and a clearer separation of client and server sides. And since Vue.js is easier to use than Angular, your developers will find it easier to learn this stack.

MERN

This is another stack similar to MEAN, but the frontend framework Angular.js is replaced with React. Since React is one of the most popular frameworks for building single-page mobile applications, you can be sure that MERN is one of the best stacks for building applications in the mobile space.
\r\nMERN stands for:

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• MongoDB – database
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• Express.js – backend framework
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• React – frontend framework
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• Node.js – cross-platform server
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The advantage of MERN is similar to that of MEAN, as it uses JavaScript throughout the development lifecycle. And because MERN uses an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, the development process should be familiar to your engineers. With React and its asynchronous behavior, incredible performance can be achieved in frontend applications. Finally, React is used on the most popular websites in the world, such as Facebook and Dropbox, so it can meet the needs of companies of any size.

LAMP

We already mentioned the LAMP stack, but it definitely must be included in this list because this stack is very common and immensely important. The LAMP stack consists of:

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• Linux – operating system
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• Apache – web server
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• MySQL (or MariaDB) – database
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• PHP – CGI language
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The LAMP stack is often the foundation for deploying WordPress sites. You can swap out different components. For example, you can replace Linux with Windows to create a WAMP stack, or with macOS to create a MAMP stack. You can replace PHP with Perl or Python. But no matter how you assemble this stack, it is one of the most popular web server stacks on the market and is used by millions of websites worldwide.

Meteor.js stack

This is another open-source web development stack. Meteor.js is fully focused on JavaScript, making application development much more efficient. With Meteor.js, you can develop desktop, mobile, and web applications and even integrate them with various frameworks and tools. The only downside of Meteor.js is that it works only with the NoSQL database MongoDB, so your developers must know this tool to succeed with this stack.
\r\nThe advantage of Meteor.js is that you can write applications with much less code than in other stacks. Meteor.js also allows you to build highly scalable applications. Other advantages include:

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• Incredible ease of use
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• Seamless communication between client and server
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• Real-time testing tools
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• Outstanding debugging capabilities
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• A large number of packages and libraries to work with
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Serverless

You might not think of this as a stack, but it is. But what is serverless? Essentially, it’s giving up server management. Cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure offer serverless solutions. And all these third-party hosts offer complete stacks that include everything you need to build and deploy.
\r\nThere are three main benefits to going serverless:

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• Cost efficiency
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• No need to worry about hardware provisioning
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• Scalability
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The serverless stack is an extension of AWS CDK and includes a live Lambda development environment, support for setting breakpoints and debugging in VS Code, support for deployment across multiple regions and environments, includes higher-level constructs, and supports JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Python, C#, and F# with zero configuration.

JAMstack

JAMstack is not as popular as the other stacks in this list, but it is becoming increasingly useful for modern web development.
\r\nJAM stands for:

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• JavaScript
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• APIs
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• Markup
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JAMstack is specifically designed for building websites. It's important to understand that in JAMstack, development is completely separated from hosting. This allows you to build sites in the environment of your choice, and then any changes made to the build are deployed to a static site generator or CDN. Once the build is deployed, a new site is created.
\r\nJAMstack is a great option for quickly building static sites and even automating that process (similar to CI/CD). It's important to understand that for each section, you can choose the components you like best (e.g., React for JavaScript, Elastic for APIs, and Gatsby for markup). This makes JAMstack quite flexible.

DIY

This is one of the best features of technology stacks. You may not find a ready-made stack that meets your project's needs. You know exactly what you need to build, but none of the stacks give you everything you need.
\r\nThat's when the "do it yourself" approach comes in. With a large number of available technologies, you can assemble a completely new stack to create exactly what your project needs. Maybe the project needs a LAMA stack: Linux, Apache, MongoDB, Angular. Or perhaps it's all about a JAN stack (JavaScript, Apache, Node.js). You might even base your project on a LAN stack (Linux, NGINX, Node.js).
\r\nThe beauty of technology stacks is that they are not set in stone. In fact, there are no limits to what stacks you can come up with. But if you go this route, it's crucial that you know what you need the stack for, that its components can work together, and that the stack provides reliability, uptime, scalability, and flexibility.
\r\nIf you build your own stack and discover halfway through the project that it doesn't work, you'll be back to square one. In the world of modern computing, taking a step back is like an explosion. Your developers and your company must keep moving forward. If you decide to go down the DIY stack path, do it right, and it will serve you well for a long time.

Conclusion

Technology stacks have been around for a very long time. But over time, they have evolved into specialized tools that make developers' jobs easier and allow them to deploy scalable, user-friendly applications that users can interact with to engage with your company.
\r\nThe most important thing to understand is that technology stacks allow developers to use pre-built software, saving them from reinventing the wheel every time they start a new project.
\r\nThanks to all these technologies, application development is experiencing one of the fastest and most extensive growth periods in history. With cloud, containerized, web, and mobile application development, technology stacks are more important today than ever before.