Tech stack – how to choose software development technologies for your company? Tips and strategies

Are you in the process of creating or transforming your software? It means that you have a lot to think about in terms of the technologies that your business idea will rely on. The decisions you will make are going to influence your:

• application’s performance,
• application’s scalability,
• development speed (including time-to-market),
• ability to find the right developers to take care of your software.

As a software company, The Software House is constantly refining its own technical stack. We’re going to tell you a bit more about it, but first, let’s start with the basics – what is a technology stack?

What is a tech stack? Tech stack of companies

Technology stack meaning refers to all the major technologies that make up your software that your organization relies on for its bottom line. When your product includes a web application and/or mobile application, chances are, it includes:

• frontend framework,
• backend programming language/framework,
• database,
• programming languages,
• infrastructure provider.

Thus, there are many possible software stacks in web app development. You can read more about specific stack technologies that can be chosen for each of these elements in the web development stacks article, in which we go in-depth about the kind of technologies companies and developers often use in tandem.

Let’s see a technology stack example – what is the tech stack of The Software House? According to Adam Polak, TSH’s Head of Node.js:

How to choose my tech stack?

When choosing a tech stack, there are a couple of important factors to consider. It depends on:

• What you want to build – some technologies may be more suitable for specific use cases than others. Read our Node vs PHP article to find out if you should be more partial to one of the popular backend technologies.
• Current trends – technologies come and go and it may not be wise to commit long-term to one that is being abandoned. Check out State of Frontend report to learn more about trends in frontend technologies and tools.
• Availability of developers on the market – sometimes, it may be wiser to go for a technology that offers a good choice of talented candidates. Read our articles on searching for React, Angular, or PHP developers.
• Your developers’ own ambitions – good software companies let their developers grow their skills in a way they see fit. Oftentimes, these initiatives result in changes to the company’s tech stack:

“I think it’s all about trends and having a chance to try new things. At TSH, we have this great opportunity to build a lot of internal projects, making it possible to test different technologies in a somewhat secure environment. For example, we could play with Svelte during the development of TypeRunner. The other examples are Hasura, Deno or Strapi, even though we don’t have projects using it, we still have our thoughts after internal R&D.

When it comes to languages, I think we can all agree that JS is a somewhat safe choice because of its wide usage :)”, says Adam Polak.

Tech stack’s evolution

Once chosen, your tech stack may be still subject to changes. Sometimes, they must be revolutionary, such as switching from an outdated/legacy technology. However, most of the time they have a more evolutionary character:

“When we decide to stop prioritizing some tech, we look at a few important things. What is the community behind a specific technology? Is it growing or not? How long does it take to master it? Will it take ages before our developers could make good use of it, or maybe it’s so easy that you can use it right away? How fast can we develop with it? Will it make development easier for us or not? Is our client using popular tech stacks?

Based on this information, we can decide if it is worth it to keep using a specific solution, or development tools.” explains Adam Polak.

And will the general market trends influence the tech stack evolution at The Software House?“

Currently, we are a JavaScript/TypeScript + PHP company – those are TSH’s most used languages/technologies. I don’t think it will change much in the next 1-2 years. However, it might gradually change. Right now JavaScript is still rising, while PHP is probably at its peak and slowly going down.

Let’s be honest, JavaScript is everywhere – Internet of Things, Web, Mobile, Desktop, Wearables, different web apps – so I doubt we will change it for something else anytime soon. The biggest change might be in the frameworks and technologies related to JavaScript – Deno is an interesting choice, and so is WebAssembly.

Tech Radar – the technology radar for our and your company

Want to learn even more about The Software House’s company tech stacks, compose tech stack examples and even get hints for your own organization?

Check out our Tech Radar here! It’s a simple app, which groups the technologies used by TSH by how important they are and how frequently we use them.

“TechRadar gives our clients a unique opportunity to look at our typical tech stack and trends that we are interested in. It includes many examples of web devevlopment stack technology. It allows them to easily compare their current technologies and see how good a match we are for them. What’s more, it also gives them a chance to look at new trends in software development,” explains Adam.

Tech stack – summary

Are you now ready to shape your own tech stack? Remember that:

• There are a lot of factors that you need to consider before choosing the right technologies. Think long-term in order to future-proof your web applications.
• Taking a look at how software companies do this may be a great way to learn more about tech stack trends.
• If in doubt, trust experts who are going to help you choose just the right technologies for your needs.

Technologies stack are just one of the many aspects of software development you need to remember about. Try consultations with The Software House to learn more. Initial consultations are free of charge.