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The Emergence of ‘Stacks’

Back in the times when the internet was evolving, companies, big or small, fixated their focus on developing websites to give their businesses a digital identity. There was a huge demand of availing digital service and gaining popularity on the internet.

For this reason, the developers used the combination of HTML, CSS, and JS to structure, style, and provide functionality to the website.

With increasing popularity and intensive competition, the need to switch to a better and robust implementation of website emerged. That’s when some geniuses stepped in and introduced more comprehensive development stacks, most popular of which are called MEAN and MERN stack.

The term ‘stack’ was first put forward during the launch of the LAMP stack, which was the first open-source full-stack development bundle constituting the capabilities of Linux OS, Apache Server, MySQL DB, and PHP programming language.

Succeeding the LAMP stack, came into existence the MEAN and MERN stacks.

What are MEAN and MERN?

MEAN comprises of a schema-less document-oriented database-Mongo DB, a server-side JavaScript framework-ExpressJS, a front-end web application framework–AngularJS/AngularJS 2.0 and a server-side JavaScript runtime environment-NodeJS, whereas the MERN has the replacement of AngularJS/AngularJS 2.0 with a JavaScript library-ReactJS. All of the techies here can independently exist, but when used in combination, the developer can make use of their amazing capabilities and implementations in unison.

Initially, the developer was bound to have a solid grasp on the conceptual implementation of multiple languages for different tiers of the application, but gradually, with the introduction of these powerful stacks, the work simplified. Now the developers need to focus on only one language, the JavaScript. This type of approach provided a prominent enhancement in the manner the application tiers sent and received data in the form of JSON format.

And an interesting fact is that the whole of this stack thing is developed in JavaScript!

Which one’s better? The MEAN or the MERN?

Common benefits that they both share is the ease of implementation and flexibility. But there are certain capabilities that distinguish them from each other. React.JS is a library that can be integrated into your code whereas Angular.JS is a giant in itself that inculcates the complete framework and implementation details. As compared to Angular.JS, React.JS is easier to learn and faster to implement. Due to its good support for mobile applications, React.JS is the most opted-for JavaScript library for the Mobile App Development

Taking into account the mobile application development, using the MEAN approach includes availing the strong capabilities of Ionic framework whereas implementation of MERN is best benefited by the use of React Native.

The selection of MEAN/MERN stack wholly depends upon the development and functional requirement of the system to be developed. Choosing either would provide you with a proficient software according to their capabilities.

Arshia R.