[ldng]

Well it is a nice list but, it's a list, again.

By that I mean you either find compilation list like that or full stack framework but what a would personally find more useful would sets of cohesive tools, end-to-end.

Sure there are boilerplates out there but what I frustrating is that you hardly find "full stack" one. For instance what about a boilerplate for django + django-rest-framework + backbone.js + marionette + i18n tools for backend and frontend + manage.py-grunt.js integration + optimisation tools for css and images + ....

Yes, there are endless possibilities, the more the reason to find more of those out there don't you think ? Maybe it's me but I feel like there is either something missing, too much choice or both. I18N being often the most neglected (granted, it's harder)

What do HNers feel about that ?

[porker]

I agree. Even if I didn't agree with all the choices, to see what works well together (and have explanations of why these were chosen by the author, not an arrogant "this is my list, use it") would be great.

[dypsilon]

The idea was to have a list of somewhat high quality resources out there. It's not a complete stack you can install and use out of the box (like debian). You still have to do the work and choose what's right for your project.

If you think something is missing, please send a pull request.

[dypsilon]

I think you are absolutely right, we are now ready to build a "debian for web development". We have lot's of high quality little packages we can unite under one well tested system.

[ldng]

I did not think about it like that but, it could be possible to start building something along the lines. Like several "distributions" because not everybody has the same needs obviously.

[alok-g]

Web development newbie here: I seriously used to think that such a thing would already exist, a thing like Visual Studio that included all the guts out of the box, and including back end in addition to the front end.

[jaredsohn]

Meteor (and similar) may be the closest to this right now. With Meteor, your frontend and backend code and potentially your database can all use JavaScript and be in the same codebase, deployment in at least simpler scenarios is very easy, and modules exist to integrate other libraries with the framework.

[alok-g]

Thanks. I had discovered Meteor only recently (being a web development newbie).

What other libraries would you recommend to have everything required for making a basic web application. The end-result should include a responsive front-end, user authentication and security, reports, charts and visualizations, forms, blog, payments, and finally an ability to integrate pre-existing Java code in the back end. Apologies if something I am saying is not making sense.

[nitrogen]

It almost sounds like you want a CMS, like Drupal or Joomla.

[alok-g]

Thanks. Just looked over their websites. The learning curve is still a bit too high. I discovered Caspio [1] that seems to be the most like what I am imagining. Microsoft's Lightswitch also looked promising but again did not seem to have all needed parts.

[1] http://www.caspio.com/

[dypsilon]

If you are coming from the microsoft world you will have lots of surprises until you realize that the open source world (the unix philosophy) is completely different. You have lots of small tools which are designed to work together and be replaceable, not a huge monolithic product curated by a single entity.

[alok-g]

In that case, I just need help putting together lots of these small tools without needing countless hours to select which tools and reading their manuals to put them together. I think this is an opportunity as far as such a compilation will be useable by a relatively large number of people (which I think should be the case).

[dypsilon]

That's true, the world is not there yet though. I'm planning something like this some time soon, but life tends to get in the way.

[ldng]

That is interesting. How do you envision that for the moment ? As a "Web distribution" with it's own management system that integrate with existing backend and frontend tools ? Or more like a collection of integrated stacks ?

I think a collection of integrated stack would be very interesting. Much like we have small recovery linux distribution, server distribution and desktop-oriented distribution. Like, distrib of webservice, of webservice + frontend framework + end-to-end stack java (thinking GWT or Zk here), ...

[dypsilon]

Exactly, something like that. I think nowadays we have enough little projects to choose from, so we can create a distribution with central package management and plugin architecture (based on npm?) and a list of curated packages + documentation/tutorials on how to tie everything together. So for example there could be bootstrap + angular + express.js on node + mongodb + debian. Building + testing + deployment infrastructure should come out of the box.

Meteor is trying to create something like this, but I feel the focus should be more to integrate community projects (they say they do, but in reality they don't), not building everything from the scratch.