The Rewrite, Part 1: Selections


The door is open to for a complete overhaul of the backend so I’m enumerating backend/API functional and behavioral needs.

After a year of contracting with small companies, I took a full-time position at Choozle. The tech stack is an “interesting” assortment of home-grown PHP with a recent and refreshing addition of React.

For technical and business reasons, we decided to consider re-architecting the current PHP monolith into “something else.” We have the freedom to change everything, yes, Everything. Language. Architecture. Server setup. DB. Yep, everything.

Rather than copying and pasting from HackerNews “Best Techstacks Ever 2017”, I started to think about the behavioral and functional aspects of what we really need. I use the term “we” because I’m trying to think of what our entire tech team needs not just what I would prefer. What follows is a short, requirements focused list of things that I see us benefiting from. As a senior engineer/developer, I see my role as working within and alongside teams to move ideas from concept to reality in short timescales. Ideally, I’d like for us to ship alpha products in 3 weeks, and beta in 6 weeks*.

* Side note: I believe this 3 week metric encompasses non-technical aspects (team structure, experience level, etc). Let’s assume we’re set up for success on those fronts.

Deployment Environment:

Frontend:

Web tier:

ORM:

Other things:

Questions:

Edits: added other things section.