- React for the front end (https://reactjs.org)
- Node.js for your back end (https://nodejs.org)
- Deploy using Adapt, which ties your front and back end together using React-like components. (https://adaptjs.org).
- (Optional) If this project is larger or commercial, definitely use TypeScript on all 3 of the above (http://www.typescriptlang.org/)
[Disclosure: I'm a maintainer of Adapt, but a strong believer in the React model and ecosystem]
Im sorry but why would someone want to use a templating language to configure infrastructure? It’s like using CSS syntax for defining an HTTP API. Doable, but... why? It’s not any easier to pick up or reason about than any existing configuration language.
On React + node, this assumes no rendering on the server, plus you’ll need to pick your own state management solution, data layer, http framework, router, and a whole host of secondary tools, which will comprise about 96% of your actual development time.
At any rate the reason why somebody might want to do this is purely because its declarative. I prefer imperative programming myself, because I want to know exact what the logic is doing from reading the code, but many people don't think that way. Many people want to know what is happening without being overwhelmed by how its happening and they need the code to communicate to them in exactly that way.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility...
As a project gets larger (more code or more devs), each dev spends more and more time figuring out what the correct types need to be when using various internal APIs. Refactors get harder because it becomes harder to know whether you've correctly found and changed each place that was needed.
And although all projects have this to a certain degree, one typical goal of a commercial project is a higher quality bar for software while still optimizing amount of effort to get that quality. (And commercial projects are often larger too.)
TypeScript helps with these issues (and others). In my opinion, it increases developer productivity for all but the smallest JavaScript projects. It's a combination of both the static typing and the tools available that help the dev immediately, as opposed to waiting for a compile or test run.
I'm actually passionate enough about the topic that I have an old blog article about it: https://medium.com/hackernoon/3-reasons-why-we-use-typescrip...
A 200 l.o.c. promise chain vs a 10 liner in Python or PHP or Ruby?
Just feels dirty to me.