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Ask HN: Web Stack for Side Projects?

2 points by anoojb ↗ HN
I’m a PM. Most of my day is spent writing prose and meeting with customers.

However, I miss writing code and I have a few ideas for web apps that I want to try building this winter break.

Most of my time as a developer was spent writing backend C#, but I have enough familiarity with Python and JS to be dangerous.

What kind of tools should I try out to make these web apps? My goals are: pickup marketable skills, scratch an itch, have as much fun as possible in the limited time I have to code.

7 comments

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jacobobryant
Highly recommend https://htmx.org/. Makes it easy to create "good enough" UIs with minimal effort, and while spending most of your time writing backend code. Pair it with whatever the recommended C# web framework is. I'm using it for my own solo dev projects/startup and enjoying it a lot.
anoojb
Thank you. Are there JS frameworks that help make HTMX shine?
jacobobryant
Not really--the whole point of htmx is basically that it helps you get by without using a JS framework. It works great if you use it with a traditional server-side framework like rails, django etc.
deepsy
If you're familiar with the javascript ecosystem, I'd recommend looking at Remix or NextJS.
_448
> Most of my time as a developer was spent writing backend C#, but I have enough familiarity with Python and JS to be dangerous.

> My goals are: pickup marketable skills, scratch an itch, have as much fun as possible in the limited time I have to code.

Then try Wt: https://webtoolkit.eu

Here is what it is capable of: https://webtoolkit.eu/widgets