Optimizing Your Tech Stack for a Hobby Project: A Developer’s Guide
Embarking on a new web development project can be both exciting and challenging, especially when selecting the appropriate technologies and structuring your project effectively. In this article, we’ll explore ideal choices for a modern, TypeScript and React-based frontend, paired with a robust backend, and share best practices for project organization to streamline development and deployment.
Selecting the Right Technologies
Frontend
For the client-side component of your web application, utilizing TypeScript combined with React is an excellent choice. TypeScript adds static typing to JavaScript, enhancing code quality and maintainability, while React provides a flexible framework for building dynamic user interfaces. Together, they form a powerful duo for creating interactive and scalable web applications.
Backend
When choosing a backend framework, especially if you want to deviate from commonly used options like Python, Node.js presents a compelling alternative. Within the Node.js ecosystem, Fastify stands out as a lightweight and high-performance web framework, offering an efficient way to build RESTful APIs and server-side logic. Its modern architecture and focus on speed make it well-suited for hobby projects and scalable applications.
Project Structure and Organization
Monorepo vs. Multiple Repositories
A key consideration is how to organize your codebase for development, testing, and deployment. Two common approaches are:
- Monorepo: Managing both frontend and backend code within a single repository.
- Multiple Repositories: Separating frontend and backend into distinct repositories.
Advantages of a Monorepo
– Simplified dependency management and versioning
– Easier coordination between frontend and backend development
– Single source of truth, reducing synchronization issues
Challenges of a Monorepo
– Larger repository size
– Slightly more complex build and deploy processes
Given your goal of minimizing hosting costs and reducing complexity, a monorepo managed with tools like Lerna can be beneficial. Lerna is a popular JavaScript tool that facilitates monorepo management, handling versioning, dependency linking, and scripts efficiently.
Deployment Considerations
When deploying your project, platforms like Heroku support monorepos, but require specific configurations. You might set up separate build scripts for frontend and backend within the monorepo and deploy them as a unified application, or manage them independently if needed.
Pricing and Hosting
Hosting both frontend and backend within a single repository on the same platform can be cost-effective. Be mindful of resource usage and plan your deployment accordingly
