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

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.

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.

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

React might be a good option if you're considering a mobile app for the future, because of react native. Although, Vue.js has the easiest learning curve and offers a better developer ramp-up time. Vue.js is great to build SPAs, very clean and organized and you won't have a lot of long-term maintenance problems (like AngularJS, for example). Bootstrap can still be used, but with flexbox there's no need anymore.

I recommend React because of less memory occupant compare to Angular, but this will depend on your organisation flexibility. When you use React you need to import different libraries as per your need. On the other side angular is a complete framework.

Performance-wise I vote for react js as it loads up quickly and lighter on the mobile. You can make good PWA with SSR as well.

If you are new to all three react will be a good choice considering, react-native will be useful if you want to build cross platform mobile application today or tomorrow. If you are talking about bootstrap styling framework than it's a choice you can style ur components by ur self or use bootstrap 4.0 framework. The complete stack mentioned above is platform agnostic u can run it anywhere you want be it cloud or on-premise.

We recommend Laravel over Ruby on Rails (Ruby) and Express.js (JavaScript/Node.js). We chose Laravel ourselves for our own internal software project, recently after comparing these same 3 software frameworks. In selecting Laravel, we chose to build our app using the software language PHP. PHP has the largest market share of all the web-based software languages (close to 80% of all websites use PHP). Also, Laravel is the fastest-growing software framework based on PHP making it a wise choice.

We also plan to integrate WordPress and WooCommerce later with our Laravel web-app. WordPress and WooCommerce like Laravel are all built using PHP. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System in the world. This will allow us to build out the front-end marketing website in WordPress. Also, we plan to offer subscriptions and sell products. For this, we will use WooCommerce. WooCommerce is the most used e-commerce platform in the world. We’ll be able to use our same Laravel developers to extend our app to WordPress and WooCommerce. By standardizing on PHP, we’ll be able to use the same software developers on all 3 platforms. PHP’s large market share will be an asset to us as we start recruiting talented software developers.

Lastly, we are gaining access to a fast-growing and awesome community that supports Laravel. Before we made our decision, I personally met Laravel’s founder Taylor Otwell along with several of his team members. After meeting with the Laravel team at Laracon US in New York City and learning more about the direction they are going with the framework, we’re confident we made the right decision.

To read the longer version of this answer where we go into more detail behind our recommendation, visit https://rackless.com/laravel-rails-expressjs

Before I recommend a tool, I think it is important to look at your requirements and capabilities - as you have looked at 3 very different tools: different programming languages, different implementation strategies and different target audience. It sounds like you don't already have a set of dedicated developers, so it is likely that your choice should be mainly driven by how easy it is to get developers that are familiar with the tools - so I'm going to list some considerations that I think you should review, starting with what I believe would be the most important for your bootstrap process:

1. Mindshare: how easy it is to get developers that are familiar with the technology and can immediately start working on your project. This is definitely where Node.js shines - Javascript is one of the fastest growing languages and Node.js played a huge part in this. I would bet that wherever you are located, Javascript developers would be the easiest to come by.

2. Fit for purpose: from your description we can understand that you are looking at a backend technology to implement some sort of REST API for a mobile app. The 3 different options you offered each fit on a different place on such a stack: Ruby is a programming language and not even a service framework - if you choose it, you then have to choose a server implementation and REST framework (and there are a lot, mostly as Ruby has a standard API for connecting a web server and application frameworks, and so this space has blown up) it used to be that Rails was the most popular, so you may choose that, but the interest in it has waned a bit in recent years; Node.js is a server framework, but it also has a dominant application framework called Express, that is geared well to your usage, so you'd likely work with that; Laravel is an application framework - it uses the PHP programming language, whose use has declined a bit in recent years, and was originally built for MVC type applications - though it has workflows for REST APIs and would probably work well for you as well.

3. Scalability: while this is probably the least significant issue at the moment (when it gets to a point where the backend service is your bottleneck, you'd likely have enough resources for a rewrite), and also the most dependent on factors that you didn't specify and are hard to estimate (such as: session complexity; amounts of data; sensitivity to locality; sensitivity to latency), it is still worthy to address it. Unfortunately, I don't have any good news: Ruby is notoriously bad at getting the best performance (the current BKM for milking performance from a Ruby codebase is to run the app on the Java virtual machine); Node.js has severe memory limitations that will make it very hard to scale if your backend needs to do a lot of work (I have a very personal and troubling experience with this issue); and PHP has as many scalability optimization strategies as there are PHP developers (this is not a good thing).

My suggestion to you as to how to proceed can be summarized to this prioritized list of options: 1. Get a good head developer with a lot of experience and let them choose the best tool - they'd likely go with what they know, which is likely to be a good choice - and if not, when scalability will become an issue, you could rewrite. 2. Choose something (likely Node.js) and don't worry about scalability - see (1) above. 3. Use Vert.x: it is a highly scalable application and service framework that offers great performance as well as a lot of tools to solve data scalability, locality and latency, and it works with multiple programming languages, such as Javascript and Ruby.

Node.js would be the best choice among all, you can compare all 3 of them on Stackshare and you will find that Node.js is on the top on almost every aspect, and since your focus is primarily on Performance and Scalability you won't regret after choosing Node.js. Also, the JavaScript open-source community has made a lot of effort and created numerous packages that will give you the speed and smooth execution of your project you need. Though your question was regarding backend, but if you choose JavaScript(Node.js) at your backend, then you can have a cross-functional team that can work on both, frontend as well as backend because JavaScript is everywhere, React Native for Android and iOS apps, React.js for single page web apps and Node.js ofcourse for your backend. And I don't have to tell you how much easier it would be to code and manage in a single language to build your complete system end-to-end. I hope it helps.

That's a really ambitious project. So you're going to want to move as quickly as possible. That means choosing a software stack that will allow you to move the most quickly. Of the ones you've listed, Ruby (Ruby on Rails, more precisely) will give you that. There are probably other options that would allow you to move even more quickly than Rails, but developers for those more advanced stacks are much more expensive, and hard to find.

Rails can and does scale to millions of users. It's not necessarily easy, but if you're running a successful app, you'll be able to afford people to help you scale out when you reach that point. But if you choose a slower framework (or have bad developers) you won't even reach the point of needing scalability.

I would lean between Drupal and Laravel. Peer to peer selling shouldn't be too hard to set up using Drupal Commerce based modules (search for Marketplace). But if you don't find most of your requirements being met, you might want to go with Laravel. I know there are modules for Drupal that would help you achieve most of your requirements, so I would suggest doing some research there first.

It has the necessary packages for what you need, in addition to optimizing your time with what is needed.

Depends where you find more confortable, ever tech work good. the most important is the what do you are looking in you scalable project

Our base code

It has the necessary packages for what you need, in addition to optimizing your time with what is needed.

Node.js is great but if I had a choice for something like this I would pick Elixir and Phoenix. They have LiveViews and channels which be one step up then the other 3 plateforms. It will also scale better and respond faster. Last will probably far less code as well.

Node.js is the perfect tech to real-time features like chats, forums, quizzes and polls. Additionally it has great support for objects storage like Mongodb and its important for file media management.

I would suggest you to pick the right stack for the right purpose. My suggestion would be to go for Microservices approach and break your app into smaller pieces according to the type of functionality like you mentioned above. E.g if you would be expecting the high traffic on you platform, then Node.js can be used as the endpoint there to handle that traffic. Normal form processing can be done in Laravel but I would not suggest codeigniter as managing code is difficult there.

So this way you can decide do architecture you app and can use the best of the feature from all the languages. Even it would be easier for you to manage your app based on the functionality and team who will be working on that. Hope you would like my suggestions.

Node is light and scalable and has been used widely for enterprise solutions that need faster response, reliability and better performance. But at the end of the day, for me, when I start a project, I don't shoot for the stars. I build a small application with the possibility to scale in the future that will test my business idea. If the idea is getting volume then I really start thinking about how am I going to build this aiming a specific volume.

Hello , Our first version of www.voilacabs.com was programed with Code Ignitor PHP API's, and at times during peak hours when there were huge request's made the response time use to vary from 500 MS to 1 Minute, also at time's we might have to end up restarting PHP-FPM which use to bring things to normal.

Also PHP lacks features like promises queue, Asyc task, etc. which is supported in Node.js. In our V1 release we shifted to Node.js and since last 7 month's we see no lag in any API response, also all our API's are responding in 200-300 Milli Second's with about 8000+ Fleet's in peak hours. So my suggestion is to go with Node.js also you can either go with Mysql or MongoDB ( depending on the usage ) for DB choice's.

When it comes to hosting you can go with group replication which can be replicated across 3 different datacenters for your data safety. This approach will make your system largely scalable at 80% less price then amazon webservcies.

I hope that help's .

I have used both node and php in different projects. If it is true that initially node has better performance, in reality there is not much difference and feeling comfortable in the environment you use is very important. Also well written and optimized code. Php is also used by small and large companies. We have a file processing project that responds in less than 300ms with thousands of concurrent users and more than a million daily visits. And the key is to be able to develop quickly and efficiently. Personally I am much better in php than in node, so my code in php is much more clean and optimal than in node, so that's my option. I also find it easier to find php professionals than node, something very important to consider in a project. So the answer would be: choose the environment with which you feel more comfortable, because it will be with which you will have to fight every day.

Hey Mohammad,

In your case I would definitely recommend Node.js as you already seem familiar with JavaScript and that experience will give definitely help you accomplish things faster in the backend side. The best advice I've always seen is to use what you already know, or something you enjoy using, and your passion will do the rest. As some folks have mentioned, Node.js is single-threaded by default but there's a lot of resources available on how to overcome that. Both Node.js and PHP have scaled for many companies, the examples are endless. If something gets heavy you offload it to a background job, if your reads and writes are getting heavy you can do some database optimizations, use an in-memory database and/or caching layers. Most scaling problems are related to how you read/write/process data and infrastructure more than they are to frameworks and programming languages. If you do indeed hit a wall with either of those programming languages being a bottleneck then in you could rewrite that one component only in a more performant language (e.g. Go/Rust/C/C++/Crystal and so on) but that's most likely something you won't have to think about for quite a while. Focus on the stack that you know so you can acquire more users and get to launch your product, scaling problems are nice to have and can be solved if they happen.

Good luck!

Node is single-threaded by default, so you'll need to work on it. In the other hand, Node is better because you are already working with JavaScript as Frontend developer. Also, all you need is to make a prototype and Node is great for building simple API prototypes so I think the best way would be: make a nodejs prototype and test it - you'll get numbers with which you can work later. Take a look at Artillery.io and Mocha for testing. After that you can ask for someone's help in rewriting some endpoints or even make a separate api endpoint using another framework / language. Nginx would be helpful in this.

You can also have a look as Symfony. This has individual components that you can use based on the problem you are solving. In fact, Laravel users few of the Symfony components at core.

Laravel is a great solution to build web-based application using php. Of course it is matter which php version will you use, but php is much easier to develop, maintain and deploy.

Laravel has the necessary resources for you to develop a product (MVP) in which you can scale it over time. Despite saving development time.

It's a general development question, be more specific, because /dev/std... is a generic approach, not a targeted development. You want to develop PHP or Java? Both are good in their terms, but it's your decision. For PHP Laravel is a robust and exhaustive console enabled framework, featuring rich integrations with virtualization & REST. On the other hand, Spring will bring you learning curve if you are switching from PHP and so on. Try to match your needs with project requirements, it will be easier.

Laravel is lighter weight. Spring Boot quickly becomes a handful, as you'll be downloading hundreds of megabytes in dependencies for a few functions and a dynamic dependency there. There are multiple problems that are solved by "download and put it on your classpath by whatever means. Spring framework will automatically detect it and resolve the issue". It's magical when things work, but my teams have constantly found the limits of the framework's utility and starting points of their burden.

While my expertise with Laravel is more limited, I haven't seen this kind of mess in that community and God bless 'em for it.

Laravel all the way. i like the documentation, simplicity, and scalability

In my view, the upside of React is you're likely to find more existing, robust design systems (e.g. sets of components containing anything from buttons to datepickers) in the React ecosystem than Vue. UI frameworks aside, momentjs comes in when you want operate on the date(times) you get back from whatever datepicker you choose (e.g. date formatting, date match).

I've used both Vue.js and React and I would stick with React. I know that Vue.js seems easier to write and its much faster to pick up however as you mentioned above React has way more ready made components you can just plugin, and the community for React is very big.

It might be a bit more of a steep learning curve for your friend to learn React over Vue.js but I think in the long run its the better option.

I chose to use Vue.js a few years ago mainly for the easy learning curve. I have no experience with React, so I won't make any comparison here. Regarding available components, I never felt locked in because of Vue when looking for components. It happens that a component I wish to use is not available as a Vue component (and nobody published any Vue wrapper for it), but in such cases I was able to quickly hack a Vue wrapper component. In the end I don't think a decision to choose one framework over another should be made solely because of the number of components available. (And not all components in either framework is maintained, bug free, documented or easy to use)

I would also go with React. The learning curve can be a little more difficult but as soon as you got the concepts it's really easy to create things. As everybody has mentioned the React community is huge and it keeps growing, anything you may need for your project there are super high probabilities that you will find it.

React is great, Vue.js is also great. But I'm personally using React, because React is changing the way I look at how JavaScript should be. This is a really big plus for me. Vue is good, but it's just another alternative. Also, too many big companies are using React, that means you can trust it for big projects.

I'd have to concur that I'd advise React. In addition to the reasons mentioned, the developer pool is significantly larger (and also slightly more expensive) for React. In time, engineering costs will even out as more and more teams adopt it. The community support is fantastic, and the available components significant.

Would start with Vue especially if you want to progress more quickly and don't want/need to spend time learning React just for the sake of it. You can always pick up React later if necessary. I would caution about using "more readily available React components" just because they exist.

Having developed in both Vue.js and React, I agree with your assessment of Vue. It does feel light and easier to understand and therefore learn. Seeing that Vue has some genetic roots with React, I would say start your friend out on Vue. If they need to learn React later, that should give them a good foundation. If you have a Pluralsight subscription, look for my course on Vue.js and feel free to use the demo project as a starting point.

Anything that interacts with the Internet, websites, applications, etc., while it may be more complex to build, will be easier to maintain in the long run. React offers more flexibility, a much larger support base for knowledge and opinion, and is just as stable asVue.

To make the best comparison in my opinion, think of React as the Android OS and Vue more like iOS. While Vue may be advantageous in some cases, it is limited by constricting parameters. On the other hand, while React may be more complex and incorporate more open-source/third-party constructs, it is supported by over 50,000 npm packages and allows for the use of JSX. Which I might add, once learned, becomes second nature to employ and offers more flexibility.

Both have their pro's and con's; however to agree what has been mentioned here before; Using Vue.js will be easier as it's learning curve isn't steep; plus learning Vue.js will teach you fundamentals which (in a sense) can be applied to React as well. Community support for React is indeed very big, but Vue.js is also still growing. Component wise, I wouldn't worry to much about that, writing your own components is also a good tool for learning a language.

I would recommend both of them since Vue is a UI library and helps you to design beautiful website while react allows you to handle backend problems like comment management and onspot reloading more efficiently also react includes useState and react is a framework while vue is a library

Virtual dom and JSX. Vue is just a baby to the race. React has it's mobile platform version as react native . so it would be easy for you and you wont reinvent the wheel again for mobile apps.

We did a comparison between React, Vue and Angular and while found each capable of supporting our needs, we ended up using VueJS because of its ease of use, the ability to use templates, large and growing community and good documentation. After developing on it for a around 4 months we re-evaluated and agreed that we had made the right choice and continue to migrate our products/platform to it.

It all depends. Vue.js is smaller, and from what I saw (benchmarks) faster. It's also slightly more intuitive and easier to grasp. React is more popular, and the adoption rate is much higher.

Again, it all depends.

If I may, my personal choice would perhaps be either React or Svelte.

It is hard to say which is good. I've used both. Vue is easier. But I feel more comfortable with React. That is why I chose React.

As others have stated there are more canned components available for React, but your observation about it's complexity is an important one. There are architectural aspects of Vue.js that lead to cleaner more concise solutions. As React apps get bigger they become a little unwieldy. Depending on your requirements you need to weigh those competing concerns. Our team is using React, but I am beginning to question that choice as time goes on. Another consideration is that Vue.js is becoming more mature as we speak. Also as others join the project, react developers should be productive in Vue.js within days. Just my 2 cents...

VueJS hands down. Which components do you need? Have a look at Vuetify, mature project, plenty of components ready to plug and play. If on the other side you need more customization, have a look at tailwindcss. VueJS is much cleaner and IMO will overtake React soon. It's simply a better React.