This is a post I hope to reflect on in the future and see what 2023 was like.
This is not intended to be a guide on creating webapps. It is purely for my own reference, and is not an exhaustive list of options.
Serverless
Serverless apps are becoming more common, although I don’t believe they are very common in enterprise yet.
Hosting a serverless app is usually very simple, but you are locked into whatever cloud provider you choose.
Lambda
Lambda is AWS’ version of cloud functions that can be executed based on certain event types. You can create micro (or monolith) services manually in Lambda.
Serverless framework
This is basically a wrapper around CloudFormation (infrastructure defined in yaml files), but tailored for developing Lambda microservices with ease.
AWS Amplify
Amplify is a managed way to create full-stack apps in AWS. You can create GraphQL or REST APIs with Lambda without touching the Lambda service itself.
Next.js / Nuxt.js
Next.js (React) and Nuxt.js (Vue) are popular full-stack frameworks that allow server-side rendering and/or static site generation in the same codebase. Hosting for these is usually complex or very vendor-locked-in.
Serverful
There are many options for hosting serverful apps. You can choose:
- Managed
- Non-managed
- Containerised
Some managed options include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku and Fly.io. Managed options have cool features like CI/CD, automatic updates, automatic SSL and more.
Non-managed means you have to manage the server yourself, usually through SSH. Options include AWS Lightsail, AWS EC2 and any other VPS provider.
Frameworks
ASP.NET — Since .NET Core was released, we are not locked in to Visual Studio or Windows Server. Their newest thing is Blazor, which ships with a C# webassembly library so you don’t need JavaScript.
Ruby on Rails — Rails is getting old but is still very popular. It is a highly opinionated full-stack Ruby framework. It has a lot of ‘magic’ built in, but the framework and language are genuinely nice.
Laravel — Laravel is PHP’s take on the modern full-stack framework. The docs are incredible and the ecosystem is mature.
The landscape keeps shifting. I’m curious to read this again in a few years and see how much has changed.