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Choosing a Tech Stack

Choose a platform to build for

Choose a language

If you want to target Mobile​

If you want to target Web​

Choose an Architecture

For simple needs​

If you're ONLY going to be using Firebase Authentication & Firebase Firestore, you can usually cut out the need for a backend by relying on Firebase.

This makes it easy to get started if you feel comfortable working with tools like React on the Frontend.

There are some downsides:

  • Releasing an update can take 12-24 hours over a large sample size
  • No way of guaranteeing that someone updates to the latest version
  • Not all 3rd party APIs support requests from the browser, but this works fine on Mobile
  • Using API keys or other sensitive info from the Frontend is insecure
  • Web and Mobile Apps cannot connect DIRECTLY to a database

For more complex needs​

Examples:

  • If you need to integrate with a 3rd party API that requires an API key
  • If you are aggregating data across multiple sources
  • You need more control over the data used by your app

Tradeoffs:

  • Setting up a backend is an additional app to manage
  • You have to build your own security around your database or other 3rd Party APIs
  • Updating the backend has immediate effects

But dont do this​

You have to make your calls to Firebase or other 3rd party APIs from 1 place, and not multiple places. This will be difficult to troubleshoot and manage!