When we talk about startups, some things are for sure: they have a wonderful team, some great ideas but not always know which technology stack is the right one. And, because of that, even the world’s best digital products find serious troubles and complications.
The decision regarding your technology stack is going to influence the speed of creating and evolving the product, the cost your company will pay for support and maintenance, and the ability and agility to never stop innovating.
What is a Tech Stack?
Yes, first things first! A tech stack includes everything needed to create a digital product, a web portal, a mobile app, or something that needs to be scaled up to serve millions of users. Same is to say that a tech stack is the perfect blend of software products, frameworks, tools and programming languages that you must use to develop those IT products mentioned above.
Its choice must be based on precise criteria and not on intuitions or simply because it’s the shiny new one. So, what’s there to consider for an informed decision?
Cost — Startups usually have a strict budget, but quality can never be sacrificed. The best thing is to embrace a recognized open-source solution. The beauty of it is that the original source code is available and open to the public, meaning it is free. Besides, there’s a community always willing to improve it, and it is customizable for each specific need.
Time to market — Startups are about speed. You need to rapidly launch your product and deliver new features over time, so you don’t risk someone else conquering your niche. There are a few features that can make a development process as fast as possible, like the availability of ready-made plugins, libraries and modules (implying less code to be written); a large community (ready to help when any problem arises or that has fixed the problems you are solving and documented the solutions publicly); a large talent pool (skills on the market); and transparent third-party integrations (making it easier to enrich the product).
Industry standards — It’s important to pay attention to the most established and commonly used technologies in your industry. While you don’t necessarily need to follow suit, it will give you an idea of what developers in the field find advantageous when building their products. Also, make sure there is enough documentation, books, and forums dedicated to them.
Scalability — The technologies you end up choosing should allow you to scale your project in the later development stages. Will it continue to function perfectly as you begin to gain traction and get exponentially more server requests? Also, account for different scenarios. It’s essential to choose a technology that is highly flexible to accept more add-ons without hampering performance.
Security — Seriously think about security when deciding between different technologies. Every digital product has different kinds of requirements, but all must be protected against cyber threats and hacking.
Key characteristics — Is the software development technology compiled or interpreted? Compiled is when the code written by developers is turned into executable machine code before runtime. Interpreted is when the code written by developers is translated into executable machine code at runtime. Interpreted languages are usually more flexible, allow dynamic typing, and, as a result, require less time for a developer to write a program. That’s precisely what a startup needs, right?
Now that you know the foremost criteria, let’s proceed to our shortlist :-)
A startup wanting to get its feet wet in the most cost-effective, reliable, and tested way should unquestionably look at Ruby on Rails as the go-to development technology to build its innovations. Ruby is a general-purpose programming language that can create all kinds
of applications, from simple websites to sophisticated software. It has been around since 1994, with multiple versions released every year.
Whenever programming languages are ranked, Python always appears somewhere near the top. This is attributed to the fact that it’s powerful, easy to learn and versatile. Moreover, Python is an essential language in machine learning and AI applications. Predictive analytics solutions, AI-based chatbots, image recognition applications can often be built with this language. However,
when combined with Django, Python can power web applications. Like Ruby, Python is an open-source interpreted language with dynamic typing created in the 90s.
As an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime, Node.js is also an open-source designed to build scalable network applications. HTTP is a first-class citizen in Node.js, designed with streaming and low latency in mind. This makes Node.js well suited for the foundation of a web library or framework.
And that’s it!
The right tech stack, together with Agile frameworks and practices, make it faster, easier, cheaper, and more efficient than ever to launch and grow a digital business. The best part? You don’t need to find and maintain an army of developers. A specialized startup product development partner is a great option for bringing your next project to life. Its name? Runtime!
Let’s talk about your specific challenges and create amazing things together.