Ask HN: Got a job in a rapid prototyping team, what tech stack should I use?

2 points by mxuribe 8y ago ↗ HN

A little background first...I recently got a job on a small I.T. team (within a large enterprise) whose goal is to test business hypotheses by thinking up and rolling out rapid ("digital") prototypes. These prototypes could be a web app, mobile app, or even "gluing" together IoT devices and services, etc. It sounds like an awesomely interesting opportunity with quite diverse challenges - both from software and hardware perspective. I used to be a web developer (2000 - 2006), and since then have been some variation of a project or product management overseeing web/digital/tech products (typically for large, conventional enterprises). While I may not always actually need to code up the prototypes for this job, there will no doubt be times where I will have to "get my hands dirty". Not that it should matter, but my time as a web dev back in the day had me focused on classic ASP, vbscript, sql server, ms windows, etc. (because that is what the enterprise standardized on)...however lately for my side projects, I use php, mysql, linux, and little sprinklings of python here and there.

So, my question: Can anyone recommend a stack of technology that I should familiarize myself with, which may help me with any of this prototyping work for this new job? (It could be some set of software, web framework(s), an IDE, an SDK, a programming language, an environment, etc.)

2 comments

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DigitalSea 8y ago ↗

For prototyping it is hard to look past Aurelia for the client-side Javascript framework and Firebase for the database/authentication aspect of the app. I think a prototyping stack is different to a product/production stack, but those are two I would recommend purely from the perspective of they have a low learning curve and you get a lot upfront without any work.

mxuribe 8y ago ↗

Thanks for your recommendation! I've heard of firebase but never played with it; so will give that (and aurelia) a look.

And, you reference a good point: after a successful prototype, I would be handing it over to a different (though adjacent/partner) team who would adapt and deploy the prototype to wider production. So, my team and I can focus on only the prototype. Thanks again!