Believe it or not, your tech stack can say a lot about your company. It can tell the educated eye whether you offer web-based or mobile-based applications, what kind of engineers or operational staff will be needed, and the potential features and scalability
of your digital product. In other words, your tech stack says a lot about your digital status.
Here’s how to navigate through a tech stack:
A tech stack (also referred to as a “solutions stack”) is a set of technologies used to build a website or application (i.e. a web or mobile app). It consists of two main elements, the front end and the back end - both of which contain programming
languages, frameworks, a database, and applications connected through APIs, or monitoring-type services.
In short, the tech stack is all the technologies used in bringing your digital product to life.
Basic elements of a website front end
The front end of your tech stack is the client-facing side of things. It includes the languages and technologies used to show content, style content, and define how users interact with your website. Basically, what you see when you visit any (functional) website.
The main elements that compile the front-end of your tech stack include:
- HTML: The language or framework to contain all of your great content. You can imagine HTML as the building blocks of the web that define your content and structure it in a semantic, sensible way. Examples of HTML elements
include paragraphs, images, tables, and various levels of headings.
- CSS: Also known as Cascading Style Sheets, or the ability to decide how the HTML is displayed visually. CSS can control the appearance of colours, fonts, layout structures, simple animations, and hover states, among
many other things.
- JavaScript: The language that enhances the functionality and interactions of a website or application. JavaScript is often used for modifying content (for example, switching out the text content of a paragraph when
another element is clicked), loading content in a specific way, showing modals or pop-ups, tracking analytics, more complex animations, or even building full browser games. JavaScript is a flexible language that has been developed into other frameworks,
libraries or language variants such as AngularJS, jQuery, and Backbone.js.
Basic elements of a website back end
The back end of your tech stack is the server-side aspect of the application. It supports the front end functionality that allows your website or phone app to work the way you need it to - to keep clients coming back for more.
The main elements that compile the back end of your tech stack include:
- Framework: Frameworks can help simplify development processes. They help control how data is sent and displayed server-side and include popular options such as Ruby on Rails and Laravel.
- Database: For storing code and for data querying, which include MySQL, Synapse Analytics, and Snowflake.
- Server: Either in the form of a program or a machine that holds and delivers all of your content out to web or mobile applications. Examples include AWS, Google Cloud, Apache, Nginx, or IIS.
- API Services: These are services provided by third parties, typically to allow external sources to access the data of a particular platform or server. For example, if you were building a website that shows the
statistics of your favourite professional hockey players, you would likely look to leverage an API provided by the National Hockey League to populate your site with up-to-date data.
- Automation services: These include programs like Zapier or PowerAutomate. They are versatile and can support basic tasks like user registration and login, file access and storage, and client-to-client messaging
by providing automated services between multiple platforms. Keep an eye out for companies that don’t include this component as the development process will likely be quite clunky.
Business intelligence tools are the final piece of the application development process. Think monitoring and performance tools like New Relic and Datadog, business intelligence solutions like Microsoft Power BI, and behavioural and product analytics such
as Google Analytics and Amplitude. These components will put all of the data from the hard work your team has done into actionable insights to help you grow and improve on your offerings.
Why is getting it right important?
Your tech stack pins down the type of application you can build. It impacts how customizable and scalable your offerings are, who you hire (as different stacks require different specializations) and who ends up choosing to partner with you.
The best advice for choosing a tech stack? Find a team that has experience in your area or can align themselves with your goals.
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