Does everyone have a go-to stack? I feel like everyone should have a go-to stack whenever they're starting a new project. Unless of course, you're learning something new, in that case, go wild.
Listed below is the stack I'd go with if I were starting a new project today.
Typescript
Do I sometimes feel like I don't really get it? Is it sometimes a pain? Does it sometimes make you wonder why you even chose to code for a living?
Yes! But, it more than makes up for it when it stops you from shipping broken code to production. So so so many times, I've confidently written a commit message only for the linter to stop me from bringing the entire website down.
I absolutely adore TypeScript and while I am not proud of it, I've become the person who starts a TS project simply to run a couple of lines of code as opposed to going with JS.
Frontend
NextJS: I just love React and NextJS just gives you so much out of the box that I've never really had to look elsewhere.
TailwindCSS: I feel like there's no middle ground when it comes to Tailwind. At least if you're on Twitter. I am very much in the loving it camp and I'd recommend it to anyone and everyone.
This website (if it ever gets released) actually doesn't use Tailwind. It uses Chakra UI. (Why? Read the thing at the start where I talk about going wild when learning something new.) On a more serious note though, I've been meaning to try Chakra UI for a while now and this was just a good excuse to do so.
Backend
NextJS: Hey, that was what your frontend was! Yes, but this is one of the benefits of NextJS. The API routes make it real easy to build an API for your application.
GraphQL: Rest is fine, it really is. But, I just prefer GraphQL these days mostly because of the type-safety across the board and the fact that I don't have to write API endpoints.
I recently came across tRPC which looks really nice because if type-safety is what you're going for, it gives you that out of the box while saving you from all the setup that is required with incorporating GraphQL into your application.
Prisma: Without a doubt, the best ORM I've ever used. Makes it so easy to write queries that I've never really looked elsewhere ever since I started using it.
A special shoutout to Redis which I've started using a lot more recently. Not really for database-y tasks but more for short-lived stuff.