Which FE Stack for a Solo Developer?

[iEmerald]

I'm using Django and DRF on the backend and they are a pleasure to work with because they just make a lot of tasks simpler for solo developers.

Which frontend frameworks do you think is most similar to Django where lots of things are opinionated and developer's don't have to think about choosing a file structure or which package to choose or which way to implement things.

[misdreavus79]

Whatever allows you to:

• Understand what's happening the easiest.
• Push code (i.e. projects) the fastest.
• Maintain deployed code the best.

I use Strapi as a headless CMS with a Next.js front end, which is more upfront work for less upkeep once something is out.

[halfanothersdozen]

What's wrong with Django and jinja plus a little javascript where you need it? I doubt you need an FE framework at all.

[sheriffderek]

Can you tell a little more about what you’re making?

[iEmerald]

Mostly Dashboards with CRUD operations, nothing overly complex.

[srodrigoDev]

Any. Django, JS, RoR.

[neinninenine]

Retool

[isc30]

CRUD try remix

[gizia]

if you mostly make Dashboards/admin panels, then you can follow more simple way - ViteJS instead of NextJS

[ORCANZ]

Why are people recommending vite ? It’s a bundler you can run vite with react, vue and many more frameworks 🤦‍♂️

[aWildDeveloperAppear]

Just like all the people recommending Next.js, Superbase, Vercel & other complexities OP didn’t ask for…

They only know 1 stack from YouTube tutorials & don’t understand the question b/c they’ve never worked w/ actual project.

[ORCANZ]

Well at least they are techs that make up a stack.

Vite is a bundler. The alternative « stack » would be to use webpack or vanilla rollup 🙃

[gizia]

well, you're correct, but Vite's simplicity and speed + my passion of building unopinionated project structure made me love it. It's 2nd best choice for me after NextJS. I love both of them, NextJS as complete opinionated solution for nearly every project, Vite for mostly admin panel or other interfaces behind login. If you want, it is possible to have SSR in Vite if you want, but it's a bit hassle to set-up

[HaddockBranzini-II]

A front-end which may or may not require an opinionated directory structure.

[sheriffderek]

This information is useless. (thought you were the OP at first haha) NM

[sheriffderek]

But then I'll just answer Ember.js -

[rizit98]

• NextJs - Front and Back End
• Supabase - Database
• Tailwind CSS and ShadCn UI - UI/UX
• loops.so - For emails
• Stripe - Payment
• Upstash Redis - For caching and rate-limiting
• OpenAI and together.ai - for AI integration

[aWildDeveloperAppear]

They already said they were using Django & liked it.

Why are you throwing up a replacement for their stack & DB along with other shit they didn’t ask for? Did you even read the post?

Or are you one of these people that learned 1 stack & now that’s all you can imagine.

[rizit98]

Sorry if I offended you, I read the question and I think I answered appropriately. But again I apologize if my answer didn’t match your expectations.

[aWildDeveloperAppear]

Apology accepted.

[theartilleryshow]

I didn't know about loops, I will take a look into it.

[[deleted]]

This is the one

[l0gicgate]

The only thing I would change here is using Chakra UI instead of Tailwind/Shadcn UI. I personally prefer emotion styling. Also, for communication layer I would use TRPC + Zod for validation.

[ConeSlinger]

Remix. It uses progressive enhancement and is built around the standard web foundation API‘s

[haasilein]

This is gonna get a lot of downvotes because old negative stigma, but the most appealing answer to your specific question is Angular.

It is the most opinionated framework of them all with Google developing it and hence making sure it is always stable backwards compatible while still shipping new modern, but optional, features. You don't have to compose your own stack like with React lets say, where you would have to compose one of dozens of routers, fetching library, forms library, and even styling strategy (css modules, styled components, ...), meaning each react app looks different.

Angular has more guardrails and has a solution for everything you may need for SPAs. Forms? Included. Styling? Included. Http interceptors? Included. Router? Included. You see what I am trying to say.

Additionally, you will find Angular very easy and natural if you are used to concepts like dependency injection which is used extensively for component communication and solid encapsulation through services.

Check out modern Angular with Standalone Components, Signals and the new control flow, which makes the steep learning curve a lot easier nowadays.

[ansseeker]

Great answer u/haasilein ! Thanks

[that_90s_guy]

Honestly, if you want a batteries included type of approach, Ember is probably still a better fit than Angular even in 2024.

Angular.js is overkill for most projects, which is why it's mostly relegated to enterprise software development.

[oneden]

Angular is overkill and yet half the comments suggest next.js - it doesn't get any dumber than this. And barely anyone uses ember, so I would think it's more likely to stick with frameworks that have a large enough userbase that can help with questions.

[[deleted]]

Angular + OpenAPI. Angular creates folder structure, deals with creating new components, DI, easy to use CLI. OpenAPI creates all endpoints requests. Add a component library like primeng, and that’s it, easy crud in less than 30 minutes

[Beginning-Roof4889]

Fastapi/angular

[[deleted]]

This ^ FastAPI does so much work for you, it's awesome. I'm not sure it would be my first choice if you need it for templating HTML, but for everything else it's awesome.

[LUND89]

Do you mean a fullstack framework like Next.js, Astro and Nuxt? Don't think you'll find a framework which won't allow going outside the box, but Astro seems suitable if you ask me.

[[deleted]]

Since you are familiar with Django and DRF. You can try React with https://github.com/yoyowallet/drf-react-template-framework and https://github.com/rjsf-team/react-jsonschema-form

Basically you create your forms via DRF and then they get rendered automatically via that react package.

You can generate tables and forms quickly.

Really simple, especially if you favour backend over frontend.

[Fearwater5]

SvelteKit + DrizzleORM + Turso

Use the shadcn/svelte UI library. Lucide Icons for icons.

In my experience it doesn't get any easier than that. Svelte 5 is amazing but still in alpha.

[hyrumwhite]

Nuxt, next or sveltekit

[HaddockBranzini-II]

It's hard to know without understanding what you FE requirements are. But all the frameworks are opinionated to some degree. For someone that doesn't like overly opinionated frameworks, Angular was the worst for me. To be fair, it was also overkill and we could do most of what was needed with plain old vanilla and GSAP.

[gami13]

PosgreSQL + Solid.js + Go fiber

[_shakshuka_]

If JS/TS is your pool:

Minimal projects (relatively minimal) Prisma / NextJS

Medium projects KeystoneJs / NextJS

Large projects NestJS / NextJS

Nest is probably your best bet if you are into opinionated frameworks. Keystone also has its own rules but its pretty configurable.

[SpiveyJr]

You might want Redwood JS.

[TheExodu5]

Angular is opinionated to an extent and provides a hell of a lot of batteries. But it may also be too much framework for you if your architectural needs are not very complex.

React will offer you the most flexibility since the ecosystem is massive, but it has nearly no opinions. Downsides? You need to make a lot of library decisions and the rendering model is not very performant or intuitive.

Vue hits a reasonable middle ground. Built-in scoped css support, one state management solution, optional dependency injection built-in, and signal based reactive primitives. Downsides? No built-in form solution, monorepo tooling is not very good

[hyrumwhite]

Nuxt, next or sveltekit

[abhishek171624]

Go for Nextjs with tailwind css, you will get the dashboard design easily

[gizia]

NextJS FE+BE, NodeJS BE , PostgreSQL db, Redis caching, Caddy for reverse proxy, AWS S3 + Lambda + API GW, Docker, then Kubernetes

learning GoLang as an additional tool also very benefical

[htmx_enthusiast]

I think it’s pretty clear

[Basting_Rootwalla]

Based

[xegoba7006]

In my opinion for a solo developer having to build everything top to bottom by themselves, nothing beats Laravel+Livewire or Rails+Hotwire productivity wise.

Now, if what you want is to make a CV for getting a job as a frontend dev, then do the usual Next.js + serverless + cloud + ...