Choosing a tech stack is one of the highest-leverage decisions in a software project. Get it right and your team moves fast for years. Get it wrong and you're either stuck with a bad foundation or spending months on a migration.
After years of building production systems, we've developed a framework that cuts through the hype and focuses on what actually matters: your team, your timeline, and your scale requirements.
The Framework: Three Dimensions
Every tech stack decision should be evaluated across three dimensions: team capability (what can your team actually build and maintain?), time-to-market (how fast do you need to ship?), and scale requirements (what does this system need to handle in 12-24 months?).
The mistake most teams make is optimizing for only one dimension. They pick the 'best' technology without considering whether their team can use it effectively, or they optimize for speed and end up with something that can't scale.
Frontend: React vs Vue vs Svelte vs Others
React 19 (with Next.js) remains our default recommendation for most projects. Not because it's the best technology in isolation — but because it has the largest ecosystem (nearly 45% market share), the deepest talent pool, and the most mature tooling. When you need to hire developers, find a library, or solve an edge case, React's ecosystem is unmatched.
Vue is our recommendation for teams that value simplicity and have a smaller development group. Vue's learning curve is gentler, its conventions are more opinionated (which reduces decision fatigue), and Vue 3's Composition API is excellent. With Vapor Mode on the horizon in Vue 3.6, performance gains are only getting better. If your team is 1-3 developers and you value convention over configuration, Vue is a strong choice.
Svelte 5/SvelteKit is the performance-first choice. Svelte 5's runes system and compiler-driven approach deliver up to 39% better benchmark performance than React and 2.5x smaller bundles. If you're building something where bundle size and runtime performance are critical constraints — a consumer-facing app where every millisecond of load time matters — SvelteKit is the clear winner. The tradeoff is a smaller ecosystem (roughly 7% market share) and a shallower talent pool.
Our rule of thumb: Default to React/Next.js unless you have a specific reason not to. The ecosystem advantages compound over time.
Backend: Node.js vs Python vs Go
Node.js (TypeScript) is our default for web applications and API services. Sharing TypeScript across frontend and backend eliminates context switching, reduces bugs at the boundary, and means your frontend developers can contribute to the backend (and vice versa). With modern runtimes and frameworks, Node.js performance is more than sufficient for 95% of applications.
Python is our choice when AI/ML is a core component. The Python ecosystem for data science, machine learning, and AI (PyTorch, LangChain, LangGraph, scikit-learn) is years ahead of any alternative. If your application's core value is in its AI capabilities, build the AI layer in Python. You can always put a Node.js API layer in front of it.
Go is our recommendation for high-performance infrastructure: real-time systems, data pipelines, or services handling tens of thousands of concurrent connections. Go's concurrency model, predictable performance, and small memory footprint make it ideal for systems-level work. The tradeoff is a less expressive language and a smaller web framework ecosystem.
Our rule of thumb: TypeScript for web apps, Python for AI/ML, Go for infrastructure. Use the right language for the job, not the one you know best.
Database: SQL vs NoSQL vs Both
PostgreSQL is our default database for almost everything. It handles relational data, JSON documents, full-text search, and geospatial queries in a single system. The 'SQL vs NoSQL' debate is largely obsolete when PostgreSQL can do both.
MongoDB is our choice when the data model is genuinely document-oriented and schema flexibility is a real requirement — not a hypothetical one. Content management systems, product catalogs with wildly varying attributes, and event logs are legitimate MongoDB use cases. 'We might change the schema later' is not.
Redis is a critical part of almost every production stack — not as a primary database, but as a caching and session layer. If your application has any kind of real-time component, rate limiting, or frequently accessed reference data, Redis sits in front of your primary database.
Our rule of thumb: Start with PostgreSQL. Add Redis for caching. Only reach for MongoDB if your data is genuinely document-shaped and schema-less.
Deployment: Serverless vs Containers vs Bare Metal
Serverless (Vercel, AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers) is our default for web applications and APIs with variable traffic. Zero infrastructure management, automatic scaling, and pay-per-use pricing make it ideal for startups and applications with unpredictable load. The cold-start latency concern is largely solved in 2026 with edge runtimes.
Containers (Docker + Kubernetes) are necessary when you need fine-grained control over the runtime environment, run long-lived processes (WebSocket servers, background workers, ML model serving), or have compliance requirements that mandate specific infrastructure configurations.
Our rule of thumb: Start serverless. Move to containers when serverless constraints actually bite you (not when you imagine they might).
The Anti-Patterns
Choosing technology based on blog posts. The technology that's trending on social media is optimized for developer excitement, not for your business requirements.
Premature microservices. Start with a monolith. Split into services when the organizational or scaling need is concrete and urgent, not theoretical.
Over-investing in infrastructure before product-market fit. If you're pre-PMF, ship fast with the simplest stack possible. You can always re-architect later — you can't always get your runway back.
Using bleeding-edge in production. Let other companies find the bugs. Use technologies that have been in production for at least 12-18 months unless you have a compelling reason to be an early adopter.
Our Default Stack in 2026
For a new web application with no unusual constraints, our default stack is: Next.js 16 (frontend + API routes with Turbopack), TypeScript (everywhere), PostgreSQL (primary database), Redis (caching), Vercel (deployment), and Tailwind CSS v4 (styling).
This stack optimizes for developer productivity, ecosystem maturity, and deployment simplicity. It handles 95% of web application requirements without reaching for additional tools.
Your stack should be boring where it doesn't matter and innovative where it does. The goal isn't to use the best technology — it's to ship the best product.