[khaledh]

I've tried many stacks*. My current favorite is Django + PostgreSQL. Every time I use Django I get surprised at how productive it makes me. The built-in admin is fantastic (easily customizable), and almost any question I have is answered in the docs (which is also fantastic) or by the community.

I don't do front-end; just server-side Django templates. Every time I try to build something on the front-end with JavaScript (either with a framework or vanilla), I get tangled in a huge mess.

* Server side: Node.js, ASP.NET, Django, Rails, Phoenix.

* Client side: React, Vue, Angular, Redux, Mobx, etc.

[photojosh]

And as the OP says maybe 10+ users, you can likely get away with SQLite for even less setup. We're using this Django+SQLite combo for internal tooling.

> Every time I try to build something on the front-end with JavaScript ... I get tangled in a huge mess.

What's been the least messy in your experience? I'm still using jQuery and moreso these days just raw JS to add the tiny bit of useful interactivity, eg dynamic search fields.

[wiktorcie]

I'm mainly backend guy (python), but used to do a bit of jQuery/bootstrap and basic js. Recently discovered quasar framework with vuejs and I'm amazed how productive it makes me.

[khaledh]

Admittedly, I'm not inclined towards front-end dev, so it might be me. But I noticed that a lot of devs also dread the messy JS ecosystem nowadays.

If I had to choose, I'd just stick with vanilla JS for whatever _little_ dynamic behaviour I want to add.

I'm also planning on trying out Stimulus + Turbo [1] for serving server-side HTML to the client dynamically.

[1] https://stimulus.hotwire.dev

[reidjs]

What’s the most straightforward way to setup Django with a frontend framework like React?