Introduction

I have been using Next.js 14 on recent projects and I'm excited to share the streamlined stack I'm using currently. The stack below is still relevant, but I will be updating this post to reflect my current stack soon.

Throughout my software development journey, I've had the privilege of building upon the collective wisdom of the tech community. My decade-plus experience in tech spans working with diverse technologies in teams both large and small. In these settings, I often adapted to pre-established toolsets, a common scenario in organizations with a significant operational history. A number of years back, a unique opportunity presented itself when I took on the role of sole developer for a full-stack web application aimed at the climbing gym industry. This position enabled me to fully architect, build out, and integrate every segment of the project myself, a process that involved careful planning and execution at every stage. This process led me to a tech stack that not only proved effective for the immediate use case but has since established itself as the new baseline for my subsequent freelance and internal projects as well. The combination of Typescript, React, Tailwind CSS, Next.js, GraphQL, Node with Express, Redis, PostgreSQL, Cypress, GitHub, Stripe, and Docker was a culmination of years of iterative design and development experiences. In this article, I will delve into how each component of this tech stack plays a pivotal role in developing scalable, flexible, and efficient applications, adept at meeting the dynamic demands of modern software development.

Front-End Technologies: React, Tailwind, and Next.js

The front-end of my applications is effectively built using the combined strengths of React, Next.js, and Tailwind CSS, each playing a vital role in creating a user-centric and visually appealing interface.

React: Central to an application's UI, React's component-based architecture enables a modular and efficient development process. The use of React Hooks, especially custom hooks, has been pivotal when building an organized and intuitive state management system. In a recent project, crafting numerous custom hooks akin to a Redux-like architecture with useReducer and useContext was key to managing the complex state of a highly interactive dashboard. This approach streamlined state management and significantly enhanced application cohesiveness and maintainability, alongside offering ample flexibility to adapt to new features as required by end users.

Next.js: Next.js is a React framework that brings many benefits to web development. It enables automatic code splitting for faster page loads, effortlessly supports both static site generation and server-side rendering for enhanced flexibility and SEO advantages. The built-in optimization features and the proven history of tracking with modern web trends make Next.js a nearly certain choice for my current projects. The integration with Vercel for hosting further enhances the development experience by reducing complexity around deployment and scaling. Like most of the technologies in the stack I use, the documentation is thorough and easy to follow.

Tailwind CSS: Tailwind CSS has been a game-changer in how I approach styling in my applications. Its utility-first philosophy allows for rapid UI development without compromising on design quality or responsiveness. Unlike traditional CSS frameworks that often require overriding styles, Tailwind CSS gives me the flexibility to build custom designs quickly and intuitively. This approach has been instrumental in creating interfaces that are not only visually appealing but also highly responsive across various devices. The efficiency of Tailwind CSS in crafting bespoke designs with minimal effort has consistently proven its value, especially when iterating on user feedback to enhance the application's user experience. It complements React's component-based architecture and Next.js's scalability, forming a powerful trio in the frontend development process.

Backend Technologies: Node with Express, GraphQL, Redis, and PostgreSQL

Node with Express and Redis: My server-side architecture is built around Node.js and Express, a combination that offers flexibility and performance. Express facilitates easy integration with third-party services and efficient handling of request-response cycles. Incorporating Redis into this mix enhances session management capabilities. Redis, known for its efficient data structures and algorithms, provides constant time retrieval, which is paramount for managing session data quickly and effectively, ensuring high-performance user experiences alongside other features useful for handling sessions. Redis has also proven useful in my tech stack to buffer incoming requests and rate limit certain users.

GraphQL: GraphQL is a cornerstone for the backend of my applications, particularly due to its powerful type safety features and efficient data querying capabilities. It precisely tailors the backend's response to the frontend's needs. This precision is amplified when integrated with Apollo Client or similar, which controls data fetching, caching, and state management on the frontend. Together, they ensure streamlined data synchronization and maintain a type-secure environment across the application stack. The utility of this setup is further boosted with tools such as Apollo Studio, providing valuable insights through logging and bidirectional benchmarking between server and client. This provides transparency and offers metrics critical towards optimizing performance and user experience.

PostgreSQL: Chosen for its ubiquity and reputable performance, PostgreSQL sits well with my tech stack for its organizational prowess and ease of maintenance. As a relational database, it excellently manages complex, structured data, ensuring data integrity and facilitating efficient query processing. Its relational model simplifies data organization, making it well suited for my applications with intricate data relationships. All of these features alongside easy backups and recoveries, plus its strong community support and extensive documentation make PostgreSQL a very practical choice.

Additional Integrations: Cypress, GitHub, Stripe, and Docker

Cypress: My experiences in customer-facing technical roles in the corporate world have profoundly shaped my approach to end-to-end testing at a system level. Witnessing firsthand the impact of insufficient testing in large-scale projects highlighted the importance of thorough integration testing from an early stage of development to prevent regression issues and ensure functionality. This understanding became a cornerstone in my work on full-stack web development projects. Unit testing the individual React components is critical, and can be accomplished with React Testing Library. With Cypress, I prioritized end-to-end testing from the early stages to achieve code coverage under all application, server, and user states, ensuring each feature not only worked upon implementation but also remained functional through subsequent updates. This diligence was driven by a commitment to deliver consistently reliable solutions, avoiding the pitfalls of shipping a product that works in one version but breaks in the next. Cypress is an invaluable tool in my toolkit, ensuring the integrity of each release and maintaining the trust of end-users.

GitHub: In my development process, GitHub goes beyond just version control and collaboration. While CI/CD pipelines are often highlighted for their benefits in team settings, I find them incredibly practical for my solo projects as well. Utilizing GitHub Actions, I've set up automated workflows that run tests and deploy changes to a preview server on each commit. This ensures that even the simplest change doesn't slip through without being thoroughly vetted. The last thing I want is to push a change assuming it will work, only to find issues later. Automated testing with Cypress is an integral part of this process, providing confidence that each update maintains the high quality and functionality of my application without manual intervention. Like all of my dev-ops processes and logs, the available Slack integrations for these tools are invaluable from notifying outcomes in real time.

Slack: Slack's integrations have made it an indispensable tool for all of my projects. It serves as a central hub for key data and statistics from servers, APIs, clients, and other processes. Request response times, latencies, payloads, their likelihood distributions among other KPIs are regularly delivered to Slack from many sources, allowing a holistic view of how the entire system is behaving on a moment-to-moment basis. Beyond just compiling data, Slack is set up to alert me of critical changes in server logs. This feature proved invaluable when an external cloud host crashed, taking my database down with it. Thanks to these timely alerts, I was able to act swiftly, averting any user-perceived downtime. My DevOps processes also benefit from Slack integrations, allowing me to monitor automations within my CI/CD pipeline, including git requests, preview staging, end-to-end testing, and production deployment status updates from a singular window. Slack and its integrations have significantly enhanced my effectiveness as a developer.

Stripe: Integrating Stripe for payment processing is a smooth experience, largely thanks to their detailed documentation. Stripe also comes with a strong set of tools to monitor and manage aspects of the business related to sales and customer activity. These factors alongside their track record, consistent updates, clear communication, and wide adoption make them a dependable choice for payment processing integrations.

Docker: Docker greatly eases tasks around deployment and allows environment consistency as well as customization. Its containerization technology encapsulates the application and its environment ensuring that it runs as desired across different stages, from development to production. This consistency is key to avoiding headaches and IT or configurations related issues particular to a certain machine.