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Ask HN: Whats your “zen” software stack?

7 points by taurath ↗ HN
I'd love to know what sorts of software stacks "feel" right to people. Everyone has their own way of thinking, and in my experience when you find that particular method/language/framework of coding that works in a similar way that you think I've gotten this wonderful zen moment.

I'll start: For me as a web developer its recently been Node.js with a browserified frontend. Its easy to pick up a module/concept, write it as its own little machine, put it down and hook into it from the bigger structure. I can quickly zoom out to the larger view of the project and dig right back down to a problem area. I get to make a machine to handle a thing once and only once, and don't ever need to repeat myself.

What makes you giddy to work with?

10 comments

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fapjacks
I used to dislike Javascript generally as a webdev in the last decade, but after adopting Node pretty early on, I discovered that my brain seems to natively support asynchronous programming. So I use primarily Node.js at work everyday and for most of my side projects. Along with that, I like Redis for data because it's just so fast and "feels right" for me. I am absolutely head over heels for Docker, so most of the time it's that on commodity dedicated hardware. I have a fondness for AWS though, so I use that when I'm feeling lazy or when I want a particular feature they offer. I have been learning Go over the last couple of years, and having been raised on C in the 90s, it feels very comfortable for when I need to write system or network code. Nice idea for a post! I like hearing what individual people are into.
mindcrime
A recent JDK, Groovy 2.3 or so, Grails 2.4 or so, Eclipse with the STS plugins for Groovy and Grails, running on Fedora Linux or CentOS. PostgreSQL 9.x database. KDE desktop environment, bash shell. For front-end stuff, pretty much just JQuery and Bootstrap. But I'm not primarily a front-end guy, so I don't get as deep into a lot of the different javascript tools and stuff as some people. I do like Hopscotch for building product tours though.

Angular is on my "to learn" list, and I'm always working to learn more about CSS.

For data-crunching on the backend: Hadoop 2, Hive, Pig, Impala. Kafka. Storm for real-time stream processing stuff.

Other "go to" libraries / tools:

Lucene for search

Tika for document parsing

HornetQ for JMS / message queuing

Activiti for workflow / BPM

Camel for message routing

On the "to evaluate / learn" list: Spark, Samza

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zubairq
Clojurescript Om Light table Postgres
jchmura
I feel the same as you that Node seems to make sense in my brain. I find JavaScript in general really fascinating to begin with. I've been watching videos on how people have been structuring apps in Node and every new trick blows my mind. It may just be because it's the new thing, but I'm really enjoying it.
usermac
We are just now picking ours:

Apache or IIS webserver

Javascript includes Server Side Includes or SSI for templating system - write once, use everywhere

doT.js is a possible contender at http://olado.github.io/doT/

Etherpad server for content creation ( think Wiki or shared Google Docs where those invited can write, update and edit documents for later placement ).

Javascript JQuery library ( demos here http://jquerydemo.com )

Javascript html5shiv - Makes previous IE9 browsers know some HTML5 https://github.com/aFarkas/html5shiv

Bootstrap framework - http://getbootstrap.com

Brackets.io by Adobe or text editor of your choice - http://brackets.io

BBEdit - text editor ( commercial product ) - http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

Photoshop - images ( commercial product ) -

databases - ?

Nodejs - Node is a javascript framework https://www.npmjs.com and http://nodejs.org/download/

Any tips welcome.

at-fates-hands
First time I've seen someone recommend Brackets. I've been using it since some of the early sprint versions and really like it.

The Extract and split screen updates have been fantastic.

playing_colours
My "zen" stacks 1. for APIs: Scala + Spray + Slick + Postgres, Java + Dropwizard

2. frontend: React.js + Emacs as a code editor

3. quick stuff, scripting: Python + Flask (optionally) + Emacs

escherize
Emacs + Clojure + Postgres + Linux + Amazon AWS.

Really a nice place to be, with structural editing, an extremely clear and simple routing scheme, functions all the way down, picking and choosing libraries (as opposed to frameworks) as some of the best attributes of this stack.