Java in general, in my opinion, is somewhat outdated in 2021. C# is a better language, and therefore, I think ASP.NET (Core/.NET 5) should be used over it. Node.js isn't bad if you are getting started, or if you need to prototype an app. I use Node in production because of TypeScript, but .NET is a really good framework that has excellent performance.

I don't know about material design.

You would go with Bootstrap if you want to prototype / build something without bothering about the design at all and you are OK if everything looks kinda template-y, using bootstrap out of the box components.

Go with Tailwind if you need a sleek design, a user interface where building with components will be important (because tailwind strongly favors component-based UI), and you know you will need to extend the built-in classes with your own (because tailwind is very easy to extend)

I would personally recommend tailwind over bootstrap any day of the week.

Hi Ashish,

If you need minimal work to be done from your end and like most of the components / design available out of the box - go with Bootstrap. This is the oldest and has the widest adoption and a whole range of components built out by others.

If you like Material design, this is a good choice too. Please note that Bootstrap also has a Material theme, though it is not as native.

Both of these above frameworks are bulky and has more than what you may need.

If you like to build micro-components in a elegant way, TailwindCSS is the way to go.

Tailwind is great you don't have to mess with naming things and it is so much more flexible than the cookie cutter bootstrap, but I don't know about material UI. I recommend tailwind it's super simple to learn and has great code snippets.

Put simply, you should use Tailwind regardless. It is a great addition to whatever you use because it removes the hassle of writing CSS.

Any tools that achieve your software functionalities is good. you should check if with these frameworks you can do video-call, chat etc. how the scalability is achieved and the complexity of using it with them. since you are starting from scratch you can do this kind of feasibility before starting

If I want to write server api, I will use NestJS as primary framework. It base on express | fastify so I can use anything of expressJs. SpringBoot is a java framework. I will think to write as payment transaction service. If you are Ionic developer. you will know Js / ES6. You can try NestJS / ExpressJS. - video calling: You can not create video calling feature. Some keywords: ffmpeg / coturn / webrtc - chatting: realtime (socket.io / websocket) - you can try some opensource as rocketchat. It also have video calling feature.

Theres a logt going on in the dotnet world. I currently do all my Rest APIs with asp.net core.

The Setup is very easy as the .net web sdk provides with a lot features you don't want to keep yourself concerned with. You can integrate Swagger with little effort.

Spring Boot is the lightweight of the Spring framework. I used the Spring framework before, and I fall in love with the Spring Boot. I also use .NET core, but still, I like Spring boot the best. If you have time then you should experience both. You are more than halfway in gaining experience. My suggestion is always to try to learn many things as you can.

I see what you're going through and I extend my hands to you. I felt the same frustration after almost 1.5 years of working with Django and Node.js in the parallel. And since the last one year, I've transitioned into Spring Boot. I think its fair to say, that its quite different when you're going from Django background as a framework, but otherwise. I think it's one of the robust ones out there. Scalability is seamless and you get most of the things out of the box or easily supported by dev dependencies. You should definitely check it out! :)

Hi Eva, As you have solid experience with Spring already, you should jump into freelancing with that. It would be quite stressful to start freelancing with a tech stack you don't know well. Then in the background you can keep learning/practicing an alternative and switch over when you are confident enough (eg. 0.5-1 year later). I think you should learn Laravel as you already like it and find it easier. Express has better performance but that is not required for most of the small freelancer projects.

Looking at current technological trends and rise of JavaScript, you cannot go wrong with JavaScript. - There's an abundance of libraries to get most things done - You can use JavaScript for both the frontend and the backend - this allows you potentially share your logic/models/code across both stacks - A dynamic/interpreted language such as JavaScript is great for serverless (there's somewhat of a trend towards serverless aswell - especially in modern projects) - If you like/need static typing, you can always migrate seemlessly to Typescript - VueJS is a lightweight framework (compared to Angular), it has more GitHub stars and most would argue it's easier to work with (beginner friendly). Additionally most modern webapps do not use JQuery anymore (even though a lot of legacy projects continue to do so). You don't need JQuery if you use Vue/Angular/React

Additionally it doesn't seem like performance is a hugely important metric in your scenario, so JavaScript would suffice.

Note: These are all my opinions and what I've seen in the current market when recently searching for jobs.

I think Patrik and Alex are right: if you're comfortable with Spring Boot already, you'll be more productive right from the start.

If you wish to learn something else besides, both Laravel and Express are good choices. They aren't in the same category of frameworks: Laravel is an all-in-one solution, while Express is more like "build your own stack from different parts". Which implies that you can use whatever you want as a database engine: MySQL or PostgreSQL are perfectly valid choices (in my school, we teach Express with MySQL, because SQL is still a big thing here in France, and a sought-after skill). You can use Sequelize or TypeORM which support all major SQL DBMS.

Express is widely used, but if you're seeking the JavaScript equivalent of Spring Boot or Laravel, you probably want to look at NestJS. The only potential downside is that it's still young, maintained by a small commmunity, compared to those behind Spring Boot and Laravel.

Bottom line: using a stack tech, that you enjoy and are comfortable with, matters. Spring Boot + Vue.js seem perfectly fine to me. But do forget jQuery if you're using Vue.js, React or Angular, because it will definitely bring more harm than good!

I would definitely recommend you to go with Spring Boot + AngularJS + jQuery. Reasons: 1- You have an experience of 4 years with the above-mentioned stack. 2- As you mentioned that you wish to work as a freelancer, your stack is the perfect one for finding good bids with a little less effort than that of PHP + Laravel + Vue.js.

Hi as someone who employs and select developers i agree with a lot almost sayed but think of what are your strengths and where you are or better where your customers are. If you search for big enterprise projects spring boot is ok sql is must and html css as well. if you want to go more to internet related companies (like airbnb, what sup, facebook ) or similar (and not asia) then react is a must node js as well. The libraries tools etc which are used you need to adopt fast. If asia then VUE is a must. but if you like small projects with individuals or like wordpress or similar then you can learn php but i think in 2020 it is wasted time. Same for python in that area. and i also see that we often have problem that developer at least must understand docker docker compose better as it works with kubernetes ,.. just my 5 cents

As a developer myself, I would recommend you not to restrict yourself to JAVA, PHP or any other language. New Tools/languages keep coming every day. If you do plan to move to freelancing. PHP has a lot of options in the freelance space and a lot of competition too.

Learning PHP is as simple as learning any other language. It depends merely on your interest.

Personally if you can code, you should not restrict yourself. I have had to code in many languages, PHP, Perl, shell script, Python, Java, Javascript, Ruby etc... I would keep your developing skills and logic, algorithms etc.. and increase your knowledge and experience in the different languages.

I agree with you JAVA is a lot more time consuming. But it also has its enterprise level scope.

At the same time learning a new language should not be a barrier for you to stop exploring what's out there and keeping your skills up to date. Learning new technologies should be your primary focus and getting project out of your stack helps you build a good reputation.

There are many options for you to pursue. Having an open mindset will help you move forward. If you look to learn now, you are setting yourself up for a brighter future.

in order to stay employable, I'd work with something you can deliver with. if I'd be your client and you'd have to get comfortable with a new stack, I would 100% not pay you for this startup time. learn new stuff in your free-time. or set aside time for learning.

that said, if you want to reorientate, php (even though i personally hate it) is extremely wide spread. but so are java and nodejs. so I'm not a fan of that argument... i recommend building something in each language, and see what you enjoy more. for me it was nodejs, because I already enjoy frontend JavaScript, and appreciate the ecosystem and community.

regarding expressjs and mongodb: yes, it is a goto solution for a lot of tutorials, because its as simple as it gets. especially wben using something like monk. BUT if you want to use mysql, posgres or similar, check out TypeORM, Prism or another ORM-like solution. you can use any db with express, and there's plenty of abstraction layers, which make your life easier. but i noticed that expressjs does a lot less "holding hands" compared to .net core (c#), or laravel (php). can be a pro or a con.

I like fullstack freelancers who stacks are clean as one of below

1. PHP (laravel ) + Jquery + Bootstrap

2. Python(Django) + Angular JS or VueJS

3. NODEJS + REACTJS

Hey There, I would recommend going fullstack javascript since you already have experience with javascript on the front end it would be very easy to pickup node and express js. You can use sql with node and express if you please, but mongo is pretty easy to get going with.

Please, try to work with your comfortable stack, here is some recommendation

Factually talking about systems, we gotta make two bold headlines about each one: Bootstrap has been around for a while, has a vast community and much probably will not be gone in a while. Tailwind in the other hand, is the trendy framework starting from the past year. Referring to UI, I really prefer Tailwind, however I can't ignore the fact that a lot of libraries that emerged felt short in the end after a few years (a point where Bootstrap kept his status).

You are able to use both them together but I advise you — it will be a mess. And you gotta hope that you won't have any kind of conflicts between class naming and other general styling.

My recommendation would be to use one and only one. Perhaps rebuild the UI with a specific framework in mind, otherwise you will start to workaround things of both frameworks to contradict each other - and your team (if you work with one) will hate you.

You might have heard about bootstrap 5. Bootstrap is now totally jQuery free. i have tried foundation and bulma too. but eventually fall again for bootstrap, as it is most convenient and stable. i use bootstrap with less or sass.

I use both of these regularly. If you're going to have to use Bootstrap due to your js dependencies, stick with Bootstrap. I actually prefer Tailwind, but trying to use both of them and make them "play nice" feels like making things more complex with no real benefit.

EDIT: Sorry for the late response, I just noticed how old this is. StackShare sent me this in an email for some reason so I assumed it was relatively fresh.

NestJS is an excellent framework (they both are). I would say the fact that you're working with Angular makes NestJS a great match, unless you're splitting front and back end between developers. But even in that case I would still go with NestJS for a new project.

Regarding the single threading point, take a look at PM2 which helps to run Node in multiple processes (we use it with NestJS) https://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/cluster-mode/

Also regarding web server performance in general this is an interesting post showing how Node with outperform Java in a web situation (be careful though, best to check a few posts to make sure these aren't totally biased benchmarks!): https://www.tandemseven.com/blog/performance-java-vs-node/

Node.js has only 1 real thread per process; Java JIT will mostly run faster than JS one; So if it happens to be not only I/O... Why do you need most popular, not simply popular? Does Node.js have tech advantages?

I'll preface this by saying I haven't ever done work on the Microsoft stack, so take this with a grain of salt.

Community support: Java tends to have a more active community (and much more diverse universe of new open source projects) than .Net (related to below).

Difficulty level: I'd say the Java/Spring stack is more difficult because Java developers tend to use more community projects and have to know which ones to choose in which circumstances (e.g. what logging framework to use? What database connection pooling library to use? What testing framework to use). That being said, most decisions you have to make have choices that are vastly more popular than others. My impression is that .NET guys use stuff from the standard library almost exclusively. If it's not provided there, it's a problem they never thought to solve or maybe write their own (usually the former).

Career prospects: I'll get hate for this probably, but Java/Spring has more jobs than .Net. .NET Core even more so because it's new. Most .NET jobs out there are going to be not Core, and not on anything other than Windows. LinkedIn search for jobs in United States shows 97,103 for Java and 36,448 for C#. That's not to say some individual city might not have more .NET than Java, but by and large Java is bigger. Also, .NET is not dying at the same pace as say Ruby on Rails (sorry Rails fans). I'd say it's ticking very slowly lower, maybe even holding steady. I wouldn't say you're screwed career-wise if you choose .NET. C# is also pretty similar to Java from what I've seen, and I know professionals that have transitioned to Java (though interestingly, I don't know any that did the reverse). Several companies have basically no .NET footprint, for example, Amazon, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all have Java, but basically no C#.

Specialized fields: Neither Spring or .Net are going to be a thing in a field like data science. That's exclusively Python (some R) for the most part. The only exception being that there is some Java in Hadoop, and Scala in Spark (which runs on the JVM). But I think those are generally more for data products being created, and not data science work. I'm also under the impression this is increasingly less the case than historically. Some other specialties might make Java useful, for example Android development.

In short, Java is the COBOL of the modern enterprise (which is both a good and bad thing). I recommend it to anyone over .NET, but not for technical reasons. It's for reasons related to the questions you asked. There are actually reasons I think CLR and C# are actually better from a technical perspective than Java (unsurprisingly, since they had the benefit of hindsight). But that's not what you were asking about...

Spring boot helps you creating microservices in hours, not days and there is a very active community around it with amazing integrations. Check one of the tutorials maybe. At least here in Germany, the job market will be better for Spring Boot as well, there are a lot more companies using Java then C#.

ASP.NET Core is pretty new while spring boot is very old but with a different name. Spring boot is just a pack of spring packages which make your life easier. I also believe that java community is way stronger than c# community... You can do your job in both frameworks and it's up to you what you choose after-all you're going to work on the project/lead it ... but whatever you choose.. after a few days of investment stick with your decision because in both frameworks you'll encounter challenges :)

I’ll echo what others have said here with a few twists.

I have experience with both platforms including Micronaut, a relatively new kid on the block. It all depends on your near term goal. If it is to make money, sure Java jobs pay more generally because there is more hassles when dealing with the entire ecosystem. Like someone said earlier, you have to make a decision at almost every stage of the development cycle from the IDE, dependency resolution framework, logging, serialization, microservice framework etc. There is just too much choice which some may argue is an advantage while others may argue is a distraction and productivity killer. At the end of the day you can build solid systems with both frameworks.

Coming to ASP Core, yes I also agree that options are more streamlined. You’ll be using Visual Studio or Visual Studio code. For dependency management, you’ll be using Nuget. But I disagree with one of the comments above about the lack of choice. In some aspects .NET actually has more choice believe it or not for example choice of ORM. There is entity framework, nhibernate, dapper etc. For J2ee, hibernate reigns supreme although you have JPA. For dependency injection you have many IoC containers like unity, castle Windsor in .NET while you have Guice and maybe a Spring based implementation.

Also C# is technically a better language that Java. That’s not questionable as has also been stated above. Many things are done right obviously by avoiding some of the mistakes made in the underlying architecture surrounding the Java programming language. That’s why Microsoft created c# to begin with. The language is a lot cleaner and allows you to focus on learning core principles and nail down fundamental OO with emphasis on good design. I find too many distractions in the Java ecosystem which takes me away from understanding the core problem I am trying to solve.

So as you can this is not an easy decision and as someone has stated there’s work to do regardless of what technology choice you make.

If your sole purpose is to make a higher base salary, sure pick Spring Boot. If you want to quickly deliver something and iterate, pick ASP Core. I personally use c# for all private projects and proving concepts even though my employer is a Java shop. It allows me to stay focused on solving the problem and not constantly wrestle with issues such as Gradle dependency resolution glitches in IntelliJ.

Given that you can transfer skills from .NET to J2ee I recommend guys to pick up ASP get a couple of services to get a feel web development as you can still get jobs in Java even with that experience. Companies don’t care these days. In fact a lot of companies are going to Go so there’s that too.

Depends on your immediate term goal.

I have used bulma in several projects. We could not customize with the websites very well. Also when we need "quick solutions" Bulma is not suitable (I mean basic animations, to-top buttons, transparent navbar solutions etc. For these solutions, you need extra js codes).

Everybody knows about Bootstrap (heavy but popular).

Now we start a new project with UI kit, I like it. Pros: It is fast and lightweight and imho it has very good UI. Cons: Small community. Documentation.

Check this link for kick-off. https://github.com/zzseba78/Kick-Off

Maybe it is helpful.

Been checking out Bulma, myself, and really dig it. I like that it's a great base level jumping off point. You can get a layout going with it, pretty quickly, and then customize as you want. It definitely sounds like it's the one you're leaning towards but a big factor would be who will be using it most? Your boss, yourself, others? Whichever you like best, you'll prob be most productive with but if in the end your boss says it has to be UIkit, then best to be open-minded and give it another shot. Sometimes you may not jive with new tools in your stack, at first, but then they can become tools you learn to love. Best to you in your decision! Take care & keep safe.

You can also check TailWindCss

I've moved away from the concept of UI kits. Not that many support CSS grid. A lot of the icons are easier to use in SVG. I've had success in the concept of design framework and design tokens. I build my brand identity in Figma, and extract in Diez. Then Diez integrates into React and SASS. Much easier because design is decoupled from software in a central authority, and software updates automatically from design changes.

Honestly - pick whatever you are the most comfortable with. You can achieve almost the same effects with different tools, so why not use something I like using?

I used UIKit and Bootstrap many times. I love Bootstrap for fast, easy layouts to web apps. Clean code, easiest and fastest way to write layouts for front end if you learned something before about Bootstrap. Now in React I use React-Boostrap too. About UIKit I can say its nice idea. It's easier than Bootstrap. This is good option for trainee developer to learn how u should create layout of your website, but for me UIKit have not enough functions. If you need to create something complicated, u have an error in your mind. You must create amazing code combinations for UIKit where in Bootstrap in the same ideas you have easy solutions.

Actually it really depends on your needs, there are 3 types of UI frameworks you can use:

1. A complete set of UI components like: https://react-bulma.dev/en/getting-started.

   Pros:

   Having a lot of pre-built UI components saves a lot of time

   Cons:

   need to learn the react framework and the bulma styles, and it's harder to customize to your needs

2. A pure css framework, like Bulma, where you write all the components yourself.

   Pros:

   A lot of flexibility to build the components you need

   Cons:

   You are bound to Bulma classes and markup.

   Takes more time since you need to build the components

3. A utility class framework like: https://tailwindcss.com/.

Pros:

Most flexible, mix and match classes as you like and build your own markup

Very easy to customize to your needs

Cons:

Might take time to get used to and takes more time since you need to build the components

If you choose options one, then it's just a matter of deciding what style you like (material,ant, bulma) and go with the library that implements it If you go with pure css and build your own components, I can't recommend tailwind enough, I've been finding myself building entire pages without writing a single line of css.

And if later on, the designer wants to make a change to some color, or size, I just need to change one value in the config file, and the entire app is updated.

It's probably worth investing some time for your team to learn Node.js. There's very little overhead, especially with a framework like ExpressJS, so if your team is familiar with JavaScript it should be a quick process.

It handles I/O really well out of the box, and has a strong community with great open source libraries. Since you're using React on the front end, there's also some benefit to being able to use JavaScript throughout your stack.