My Stacks: Tools and Services I’m Using

In technology companies, there’s a term called a technology stack. Or a tech stack.

A tech stack refers to the suite of tools and services these companies used to run their businesses. I like to document and share my stacks as well. However, I don’t restrict writing only about technology stacks. I’d also include stacks used in non-tech areas in my life in this page.

Reasons for Sharing My Stacks

My reasons for sharing my stacks are two-fold:

When I share my stacks and the reasoning behind them, I am forced to examine those reasons. That leads to improvement either by eliminating redundancies or discovering weaknesses.
What I share might elicit feedback from other people about their stacks. Knowing about other people’s stacks can help improve my stacks.

So I welcome feedback. Do share your stack in the comments box below.

As an organising rule, any stack description exceeding 400 words will have its own standalone page which I will link from here.

Common Benefits I Look Out For When I Build My Stacks

Given I have limited time and energy, I have mostly set two key principles when it comes to making decisions.

Total Costs must be as low as possible
Total Benefits must be high as possible

I’ll probably have a separate page detailing these two principles. For now, it is enough to say that the way I configure my stacks is to conform to these two principles.

Blogging:

Domain Registrar – NameCheap.com
DNS management – NameCheap.com
SSL – NameCheap.com
Software – WordPress
Hosting – EasyWP.com
Theme – Author Theme from WordPress Themes
SEO Plugin – Yoast (Free)
Tracking Blogging Progress – Google Spreadsheets

Benefits I Value

Can easily maintain my blogging habit

Features I Choose

Easily compose draft ideas directly from my phone when the inspiration strikes
I don’t want to fiddle with server administrative tasks
Simple to configure SEO because I’m a newbie in SEO
Hosting, SSL, updating of the blogging software should be as automated and low-cost as possible
Tracking my blogging progress

For details about my blogging experience and how to sustain the habit, check /how-to-new-blog

Click here to go back to the stacks index.

New Web Application Project:

Language – Python 3.6 or any latest stable version that works with latest Django LTS
Framework – Django 1.11 or any latest Django LTS version
Database – Postgres
Environment Management – Docker
Cookiecutter – My own cookiecutter
Version control – Git at Github.com
Serverless – Lambda at AWS via Zappa

Benefits I value

Run less software
Minimal grunt work like setting up configuration and installing commonly used plugins
Speed in spinning up new projects
Allow on-prem, or serverless setup

Features I chose

Potential to easily move to serverless infrastructure
Allow on-premises setup as well
I don’t want to fiddle with configuration too much
Must be Python and Django only because I want to be most fluent in that stack

For related pages, check out /run-less-software