Ask HN: What's the fastest and simplest way to prototype a web app in 2023?
32 comments
PHP.
It's unsexy, boring. It's not going to decorate your resume like Js frameworks.
But it will work.
PHP has the most mature tooling for web development.
Js frameworks tend to rot
Try yii framework. It's old boring which is good.
When I was a young developer, I didn’t wanna have anything to do with PHP because hacker news, painted it under a bad light, but it turned out that sometimes people just wanna be different for the sake of being different.when I was a young developer, I didn’t wanna have anything to do with PHP because hacker news, painted it under a bad light, but it turned out that sometimes people just wanna be different for the sake of being different
It's unsexy, boring. It's not going to decorate your resume like Js frameworks.
But it will work.
PHP has the most mature tooling for web development.
Js frameworks tend to rot
Try yii framework. It's old boring which is good.
When I was a young developer, I didn’t wanna have anything to do with PHP because hacker news, painted it under a bad light, but it turned out that sometimes people just wanna be different for the sake of being different.when I was a young developer, I didn’t wanna have anything to do with PHP because hacker news, painted it under a bad light, but it turned out that sometimes people just wanna be different for the sake of being different
If React + Node is your preferred stack, I would say NextJS on Vercel + Supabase is the closest to meeting your requirements. You'd still have a local env, but the other points are taken care of. Auth is particularly nice with this combo. Check out their docs: https://supabase.com/docs/guides/getting-started/quickstarts...
Next.js with Auth.js (formerly Next Auth). For a "batteries included" full stack, I'd also include Prisma and Planetscale for your "ORM" that easily stores your data models into a managed DB. Typescript and TailwindCSS are also highly recommended niceties.
You can deploy a template into production as simple as:
1) npx create-t3-app
2) Create Vercel account linked to your GitHub
3) Set your git remote and 'git commit && git push'
Then for DB:
4) Sign up and push button to create MySQL DB on Planetscale
5) Copy two env vars to .env
6) npx prisma db push
Then, a full stack UI can be as simple as creating a React Server Component that fetches your DB data and displays UI a la:
async function getDataFromDb() {
export default async function DataPage() {
You can deploy a template into production as simple as:
1) npx create-t3-app
2) Create Vercel account linked to your GitHub
3) Set your git remote and 'git commit && git push'
Then for DB:
4) Sign up and push button to create MySQL DB on Planetscale
5) Copy two env vars to .env
6) npx prisma db push
Then, a full stack UI can be as simple as creating a React Server Component that fetches your DB data and displays UI a la:
async function getDataFromDb() {
const data: Data[] = await prisma.data.findMany();
return data;export default async function DataPage() {
const dbData = await getDataFromDb();
return (
<div className="mt-3 grid gap-5 pt-3 text-center md:grid-cols-4 lg:w-2/3">
{dbData.map((dataParam) => <Card data={dataParam}/> )}
</div>
);
}Rails is the way to go. The productivity of the Ruby language is insane. It's battle tested for decades and you can easily scale your prototype.
If you want a simple app served on a single host you can try LiteStack [0] so you don't need a Redis/Postgres/Sidekiq instance, just SQLite.
Laravel is also good if you like PHP language.
[0] https://github.com/oldmoe/litestack
If you want a simple app served on a single host you can try LiteStack [0] so you don't need a Redis/Postgres/Sidekiq instance, just SQLite.
Laravel is also good if you like PHP language.
[0] https://github.com/oldmoe/litestack
I’d second thiis. I have prototyped webapps for a decade, and nothing comes close to the speed and agility, not to mention the flexibility, that a Rails webapp can afford. Kudos!
I’d also second Flask for a Python-based setup. Node w/express used to be quick to prototype an app, but that’s not my current choice of platform. ymmv!
I’d also second Flask for a Python-based setup. Node w/express used to be quick to prototype an app, but that’s not my current choice of platform. ymmv!
React and Node are not the choices if you want to prototype quickly.
A full-stack Rails-inspired framework that makes use of DSLs, code generators, db migrations and has validations that work from the db, through to the forms in frontend templates are the table stakes for rapid prototyping. Rails itself, Phoenix or Laravel are the options I’d consider. All three have great communities and a history of success getting more done with fewer devs than would be possible with separated front and back-end JS SPAs.
A full-stack Rails-inspired framework that makes use of DSLs, code generators, db migrations and has validations that work from the db, through to the forms in frontend templates are the table stakes for rapid prototyping. Rails itself, Phoenix or Laravel are the options I’d consider. All three have great communities and a history of success getting more done with fewer devs than would be possible with separated front and back-end JS SPAs.
Yeah, when I hear people suggesting JS for backend work I question the quality of the suggestions.
The suggestions in this thread are decent, but I haven’t seen a mention of prioritising what you know.
What’s your goal?
If as you mention you have an app to prototype and you want that prototype as fast and simple as possible, then you can’t use tech and tooling you don’t know.
Any time spent learning the new tech, is time you could have spent on the prototype.
With that lens, you can see the variety of suggestions here are what people know best.
If you goal is to learn a new tool, or to learn a new tool alongside a prototype, you have to trade off speed. It will take a bit longer.
Spend your novelty tokens wisely.
What’s your goal?
If as you mention you have an app to prototype and you want that prototype as fast and simple as possible, then you can’t use tech and tooling you don’t know.
Any time spent learning the new tech, is time you could have spent on the prototype.
With that lens, you can see the variety of suggestions here are what people know best.
If you goal is to learn a new tool, or to learn a new tool alongside a prototype, you have to trade off speed. It will take a bit longer.
Spend your novelty tokens wisely.
My chosen stack is React (DaisyUI, deployed with cloudflare) + Node (Hapi is batteries included, deployed using GCP cloud run). One benefit of this stack is that there's no cloud vendor lock-in. The only drawback thus far is that Hapi with Typescript is not that well documented and of course higher latency than dedicated infra.
I'm still unsure about what 'serverless' database is optimal (cockroachdb, neondb, planetscale, mongodb) so I went with what my last profitable side project used - mongodb.
At some point I'd like to compare the performance of psql jsonb to mongodb, I've watched some talks a few years ago stating that psql with jsonb outperforms mongodb. I wonder if that's still the case in 2023.
I've experimented with golang before as I wanted something easier to scale than node + minimal dependencies but then I realized I am just writing my own web framework so I settled on Hapijs, it's faster than express and has less dependencies, it was/is run in prod at Walmart.
I'm still unsure about what 'serverless' database is optimal (cockroachdb, neondb, planetscale, mongodb) so I went with what my last profitable side project used - mongodb.
At some point I'd like to compare the performance of psql jsonb to mongodb, I've watched some talks a few years ago stating that psql with jsonb outperforms mongodb. I wonder if that's still the case in 2023.
I've experimented with golang before as I wanted something easier to scale than node + minimal dependencies but then I realized I am just writing my own web framework so I settled on Hapijs, it's faster than express and has less dependencies, it was/is run in prod at Walmart.
Laravel is highly batteries-included (e.g. on the auth front) and works with Vue or React now - it includes a module called Inertia that connects the Laravel server-side with the Vue/React client-side. Caveats: Laravel is in PHP and is quite mature, so there's quite a bit to get used to.
If you know Python, maybe Pycob could suit your use case? https://www.pycob.com
pretty funny how every comment is a different stack lmao. here’s my sprinkle: python/FastAPI and Svelte JS
Surely that's to be expected? I mean, we all know different languages, frameworks and have different experiences.
PHP / Laravel. Its not a contest. Its easy to write and setup. It has auth, security, templating and all you need.
My open source project is mostly aimed at this. Happy to help out early adopters (find me on twitter @mcapodici)
https://github.com/mcapodici/firestarter
1. Check
2. Check: I started using github spaces developing this
3. Check
4. Uses Firebase, trading off open sourceness for convenience
https://github.com/mcapodici/firestarter
1. Check
2. Check: I started using github spaces developing this
3. Check
4. Uses Firebase, trading off open sourceness for convenience
Probably bubble or a similar platform.
If nocode is out of the question then I don't know because it all looks like a convoluted mess to me. I'm actually going to watch this thread with interest to see what others suggest. I'm on a somewhat similar quest at the moment.
If nocode is out of the question then I don't know because it all looks like a convoluted mess to me. I'm actually going to watch this thread with interest to see what others suggest. I'm on a somewhat similar quest at the moment.
The title should be "What is the fastest and simplest way to host a web app in 2023?".
Not sure about Render, but the others you mention do not appear to be wholistic. They either focus on the frontend exclusively, or are intended for development, not production use cases.
What about your data layer? You need something that provides that and my guess is that will drive your decision about what platform you choose more than anything else. That, and cost.
Not sure about Render, but the others you mention do not appear to be wholistic. They either focus on the frontend exclusively, or are intended for development, not production use cases.
What about your data layer? You need something that provides that and my guess is that will drive your decision about what platform you choose more than anything else. That, and cost.
I am really enjoying elixir/pheonix/liveview -- feels super fast to poc stuff out and also is not throw away as the system scales unbelievably well.
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You can get pretty far with an interactive Figma clickdummy. When you want to build a prototype, your main motivation might be to get feedback from users. A clickdummy might give you exactly that and save you a lot of time.
Django -auth out of the box. DRF or Django Ninja provide easy apis.
Throw it in a container and then deploy anywhere
PHP/Symfony
Similar question: What about a serverless webapp?
That is, a fat client with the server only serving up static content.
That is, a fat client with the server only serving up static content.
next.js + trpc + pocketbase
leanest stack i've played with in the past 3 years
What kind of web app are we talking here? In terms of feature set and complexity.
Ruby on Rails 7+
Auth0 is relatively easy to implement with NextJS, like it should a couple of hours at most. Auth0’s own UI is reasonably clean and easy enough to setup.
For fp enthusiasts
Elixir Phoenix framework
For fp haskell purists
Haskell warp yesod servant
Elixir Phoenix framework
For fp haskell purists
Haskell warp yesod servant
Redwood.js
Consider RedwoodJs
Or Nx
Rails, nextjs
Rails or NextJS, right? I don’t think you’d need to use them together.
Can’t speak for Rails, but NextJS is a solid recommendation. Deploy it on Vercel or Netlify, use Supabase or something like that for the backend. Simpler than setting up on a traditional cloud provider like AWS and still gets you everything you’d need for most web apps.
Can’t speak for Rails, but NextJS is a solid recommendation. Deploy it on Vercel or Netlify, use Supabase or something like that for the backend. Simpler than setting up on a traditional cloud provider like AWS and still gets you everything you’d need for most web apps.
1) Gives you the ability to write a frontend and backend with good flexibility preferably React & Node.
2) Doesn't require a local environment, but still allows me to work on VS Code.
3) Allows me to have a live URL and connect a custom domain.
4) Batteries included, but most importantly a solid and easy to implement authentication paradigm.
What's the best thing right now for this. I'm just looking for a very low or zero-config infra and fast time to production.
I see many options like Vercel, Replit, Render, etc, but I just want to understand if there's a solution or stack that maximizes for efficiency, speed and low configuration, while allowing to scale up if needed.