I was debating with a friend about the benefits of no-code versus code tools.<p>We're both devs, and we were arguing about the best, fastest way to build a good web app.<p>There are clear best choices for no-code tools (e.g. shopify for e-commerce).<p>But are there equally obvious choices for web apps that still require devs?<p>If helpful, my personal goals when building a web app are speed, quality, and flexibility.<p>Speed: how quickly can I go from design to shipped app.<p>Quality: can a new developer quickly onboard and understand the code and how to contribute.<p>Flexibility: I don't want to be limited in what we can do. This should be a solution that can work for (most) any kind of web app.<p>I think my default would be
Frontend: React;
Backend: Google cloud functions;
Data: Firestore;
Infra: Firebase<p>But tbh it still takes much longer / more effort to spin up a web app with moderate functionality than it does to create a shopify store.<p>Maybe these aren't the best / most up to date tools. I'd love to hear what other people think is best.
I don't think your default is necessarily the easiest way to get an app up and running, and certainly because of vendor lock-in and training required for the Google platform/services, you risk limiting the pool of available talent.<p>My default would be Ruby on Rails, or Laravel, and use something like Heroku or Render for hosting where all you need to do is push to a git repo to deploy.<p>Decoupling your frontend and backend may be useful down the line for scaling, but to start a monolithic stack is going to allow you to be the most productive.