HACKER Q&A
📣 romikusumabakti

What's the best backend right now?


I'm planning to build a multiplatform application (web, mobile and desktop) with a modern tech stack.

I've decided on the following frontend tech stack:

  - Web: Next.js, Tailwind CSS
  - Mobile
      - Android: Jetpack Compose
      - iOS: SwiftUI
  - Desktop
      - Windows: WinUI 3
      - MacOS: SwiftUI
      - Linux: Qt
But I'm still unsure about choosing a backend. What backend do you think is the best right now?

*assume the team is ready to learn any technology

  👤 PaulHoule Accepted Answer ✓
I still work on a lot of Java projects. As of JDK 17 Java has most of "ML the good parts" and has the same scalable, reliable and high-performance threading Java is famous for. JAX-RS provides a Sinatra style framework that makes it easy to write JSON API back ends. JDK 21 is just about to come out as a long term supported version and it will be even better. .NET is similar in capabilities, I think C# is a better language but Java has a better open source ecosystem.

I do my side projects in Python with aiohttp and think it is a lot of fun even though people tell me it is suicide (I guess if you block the thread you are in trouble)

I think "Next.js" really wants a node.js backend which has the big advantage that you can share code with the front end and back end. It's basically single-threaded but I know people who are happy with it.

The system I'd most like to try is

https://www.phoenixframework.org/

which is just great if you want to do stuff with websockets that is more interactive than what most people are doing.

I think though that developing that many different front ends would drive you crazy: is there a real reason you can't just make it a web app?

👤 Alifatisk
"The best" is kind of subjective. Best in terms of what, performance? flexibility?

You might want to check out https://awesomestacks.dev or https://project-awesome.org/stackshareio/awesome-stacks#back...

Hope those helps.

👤 ndunas
I would go with Laravel if you are familiar with PHP. Lots of out of the box goodies available.