Full Stack Development (Weekend Edition)

I have been a frontend developer in Mobile(iOS) and Websites for over a decade now. I crave to get the taste of the backend from the past 3 years over holidays and weekends.

Being in the front end I was always inclined towards javascript/typescript in the backend. I went from NodeJS to ExpressJS to Koa where I realised the developer experience(DX) was a lot demanding and did not appear like a weekend affair.

While recently working alongside a long-time friend Prakhar Shukla. I noticed him advocating for Django (Python-based framework) a lot. Where I noticed he was able to manage a team of 2 and lead multiple products swiftly with a happy face most of the time.

I started questioning my "tech-stack" ReactJS / Expo.dev, Node/Express^Django?, Postgres, Nginx.

All self-hosted! Oh yeah, I spent last two years in Computer Networks to accumulate practical knowledge from DNS, TCP/IP, cloudflare, Nginx Proxy Manager, wireguard, docker, docker-compose, grafana, and to ubuntu server, cockpit and proxmox.

Why? I ended up eventually streaming legally acquired videos on demand from anywhere across the globe for myself and friends using Oracle Cloud because JioCinema was a horrible OTT service back then.

Coming back on the search for a web backend framework which plays nice with a weekend’s worth of time. Since a lot of my time investment went into the node, express, koa, system design, and backend systems. I realised it was not a waste of time after all because the architecture was almost the same across all frameworks. I noticed unlike in the front end at least in the backend things were mostly the same with minor differences in philosophy and ways of doing the same things.

Then with a simple introduction to Django Rest Framework the promise of DX helped me double down on giving my all free time to devote to Python & SQL > Django > DRF. The major benefits of not having to worry about pointers and references in python were just a no-brainer. Special mention of the pythonic way of doing things.

Note: Having basic clarity of things like HTTP, IP, model-based ORMs, Virtualisation, Docker, and K8s. Then clarity through Budibase and Supabase with some technicalities of tables and relationships. I am super confident to invest my free time into Python land. Plus after witnessing my colleague fine-tuning and caching while we were scaling up our systems. It just makes sense that Django framework is the best way forward for me over weekends!

Also, statistically speaking JS/Python communities are top communities to learn and grow.

The pros of going through this process?

• I might be able to write services on the web.
• I might be able to fiddle with 3rd party Python AI/ML libraries which will make ML highly accessible to me.

On the similar lines (Weekend Edition), What about the state of front end?

• I am still trying to figure out an easy way to solve the frontend overload in the world of NextJS, Svelte, VueJS, and SolidJS.
• The idea of not being bothered about the performance too much rather delivering frontend quick is possibily the key.
• I think since Vercel currently holds on to the top talents in the domain. They should be the ones solving this problem in the OSS way.