Choosing the right stack for your web application

I'll be a contrarian here: don't use mega-frameworks (Django, Rails). Instead, use micro-frameworks. Stay away from ORMs (I'm looking at you, Django). A skilled engineer can get a product comprised of small packages up and running in the same amount of time (and sometimes less time) as one built using a mega-framework.<p>(Imagine, using a python example, gEvent + zeroMQ + pystache + db-of-your-choice. You can do almost anything.)

Here's a shortcut, pick the one you and your team knows well enough to get the job done as fast and as reliably as possible. Programmer productivity beats technical sophistication every time.<p>Also, if you're worried about "scaling", know that almost all web app scaling issues are related to caching strategy, database queries, database structure, and using a queue where appropriate. Rails vs Django vs node vs PHP Framework X vs Java/Scala vs .NET won't change those problems for you.

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