Choosing the Right Tech Stack for Your Product
Every week there's a new framework, database, or deployment platform promising to solve all your problems. The reality: technology choices have long half-lives. What you choose today, you'll live with for years.
Decision Framework
1. Team Competency First
A "superior" technology your team doesn't know is a liability. Optimize for what your team can operate, debug, and extend at 2 AM on a Saturday.
2. Ecosystem Maturity
Libraries, documentation, community answers, hiring pool. A mature ecosystem reduces the "bus factor" and accelerates development.
3. Operational Simplicity
How many moving parts? How many failure modes? What's the on-call burden? Simpler stacks are easier to scale — not just in traffic, but in team size.
4. Vendor Lock-in Assessment
Can you migrate off this platform? What's the cost? Proprietary services accelerate initial development but can constrain future options.
Our Default Stack (and Why)
- Frontend: Next.js + React + TypeScript — mature, performant, great DX
- Backend: Node.js/Express or FastAPI — language consistency, rich ecosystems
- Database: PostgreSQL — ACID, JSON support, proven at scale
- Cache/Queue: Redis — simple, fast, versatile
- Infrastructure: AWS/Vercel/Docker — flexible, portable, well-understood
- AI/ML: Python (PyTorch, scikit-learn) — best ecosystem for ML
We deviate when requirements demand it — not when trends suggest it.
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