
Show HN: StackShare – discover and discuss software stacks - yonasb
http://stackshare.io/
======
twelvedigits
This is a great idea. In general, I think there's great potential in anything
that connects developers with other developers to provide reviews of software.

Recently, I tried to research some of the new CMS/API platforms that have been
released in the last year. There was no information. I'm sure these API's have
been used thousands of times, but developer has written a review. So I'm left
making decisions off marketing pages and PR-driven blog entries.
Implementation takes hours that I don't have, I just want a trusted review.

It's really dry territory. You can do well here.

~~~
Tehnix
I'd especially love that for eCommerce systems as well. They require a bit
more of a commitment than a CMS (at least that is the usual case).

Right now, the only mature ones I know of are all PHP based :/.. I hope that's
just me missing something though.

~~~
twelvedigits
Not really. At least e-commerce has a pretty capable incumbent (Shopify).

CMS is an interesting case, though. There are 4-5 companies trying to take on
WordPress. I could go with the incumbent, but I'd love -- LOVE -- some real
dev reviews of that stuff.

Like, where's the fucking unboxing video for developer software?

~~~
ryannevius
Can you mention which 4-5 companies you think are doing a good job of taking
on WordPress? I can only think of one or two, off the top of my head.

~~~
twelvedigits
Maybe "doing a good job" is an overstatement at this time. These companies
seem to be taking shots at the CMS component of Wordpress:

[https://www.contentful.com](https://www.contentful.com)

[https://prismic.io](https://prismic.io)

[http://osmek.com/](http://osmek.com/)

[https://buildwithcraft.com](https://buildwithcraft.com)

------
cfitz
Thank you for creating this site! I am a Computer (Software) Engineering
student and love to develop web applications in my free time. I am always
looking to further my skillset and it seems this will prove really useful in
understanding the choice of infrastructure/tools/languages by large companies.

Can anyone recommend any resources to better understand the interaction
between the aforementioned choices (e.g. why would one company prefer a
certain combination of language and infrastructure over a different
combination)?

~~~
andrewjkerr
If you go to an individual company's page, you'll see references which may
include a post/article about why they chose x over y. Tumblr's tech stack page
([http://stackshare.io/tumblr/tumblr](http://stackshare.io/tumblr/tumblr)) has
an article about why they chose Scala over other options and it's pretty neat.

------
kruk
Interesting site. A valuable tool for startups and developers looking to
expand their toolset.

Please make a shortcut for "I use this", so we can add technologies without
navigating to their individual pages. I added 10 technologies off the top of
my head but I keep being reminded of other ones I use and adding them involves
a lot of clicking and back and forth.

Added to favourites!

~~~
yonasb
Thanks for the feedback, will do! Currently, you have to add them to a stack
or contribute/vote on content on their page. We'll definitely look into making
that easier.

------
cpcarey
This is great! I like being able to see so many different Utilities and DevOps
tools being used. But it seems like many of the top stacks don't mention the
application frameworks or languages that they're using. Why might that be the
case?

------
BinaryIdiot
This is neat. One thing, would it be possible to show "verified" accounts?
Meaning if someone puts up the stack that Twitter uses, how do I know for sure
this isn't someone's guess and someone at Twitter actually posted it?

~~~
yonasb
Yes! That has been a requested feature for quite some time so we added it:
[http://stackshare.io/parse/parse](http://stackshare.io/parse/parse) (more
here: [http://stackshare.io/stacks](http://stackshare.io/stacks)). A lot of
the non-verified stacks have citations, so even if someone didn't post their
stack you can see where the info came from.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Ah I didn't notice that. Nice!

------
Jhsto
I don't understand what is up with your site - this and the old LeanStack -
but when I have Ghostery enabled I'm completely unable to click buttons. Mind
taking a look at it maybe?

~~~
yonasb
Sorry about that. We gather metrics on site usage so we can monitor how people
are using the site. We're looking into a fix.

~~~
PRIVACYINVASION
OK, guys, if you are watching me using your site then could you PLEASE
announce that in a very big red block on the landing page or in a way that
cookies are announced on many sites nowadays?

You should accept that usage monitoring is an inacceptable privacy invasion
for many people nowadays and we would like to be informed about that kind of
monitoring before using a site, so we can decide if we like it or not.

~~~
rowill
Do you really expect any site to not use Google Analytics in this day and age?

Or am I talking to a troll (username)?

------
khaledh
To avoid some confusion, this was actually called leanstack.io, and it was
launched back in 2013.

~~~
yonasb
We wrote a blog post about the relaunch:
[http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-
stackshare](http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-stackshare). We
should probably link to the post on the homepage though.

------
ecesena
Very cool! Right this morning I was looking at who's using django+mysql.

Can I ask you how accurate is the data and if/when it's "certified" from the
source? From my morning search I found pinterest and rdio using both django
and mysql, but this is not reflected in StackShare (missing mysql for
pinterest, missing both django, mysql for rdio -- again, I'm not sure about my
results, it's just a coincidence that I was searching that).

~~~
yonasb
Thanks! Some stacks have more info than others for sure. The quality of the
data will get better as more companies claim their pages and verify their
stack (e.g.
[http://stackshare.io/mailgun/mailgun](http://stackshare.io/mailgun/mailgun)).
For stacks that are not verified, we're inviting users to be community
moderators and contributors to these pages to beef up the citations :)

~~~
ecesena
Awesome, thank you for the details!

------
prydonius
This is really cool, I've wanted to create something like this myself for some
time. How did you go about initially curating enough data?

On another note, it would be great to see a brief description about why the
company uses a particular technology.

~~~
yonasb
Glad you asked! We started off filling it out for the popular startups, which
eventually created the desire for others to join in and do it themselves
(hence the rebranding from Leanstack.io to StackShare).

Regarding your suggestion, every page has this tab:
[http://stackshare.io/stackshare/stackshare/details](http://stackshare.io/stackshare/stackshare/details).
This feature was released today so not many stacks have the details just yet.
But we'll be highlighting companies every week and having them fill this out,
so stay tuned! Also, feel free to share your stack :)

------
BenderV
First of all, thank you. It's great!

I'm interested in the 'business' aspect of this site. How do you plan to make
profit ? How can you make people come back to the site when the stacks don't
change that quickly ?

------
igammarays
Dammit this was one of my startup ideas...oh well. Nice work btw. It might be
interesting to group companies by industry. Considering I work in education, I
would want to know what LMSs and CRMs are used by educational institutes for
example.

Which raises another thought: wouldn't some organizations want to keep their
stack secret from competitors, since a mature stack is usually the result of
years of experienced decision-making.

------
joeclark77
This is great. I'll definitely show it to my students (undergrad Information
Systems majors) who are trying to figure out what tools to learn.

------
patja
Where are the Windows stack components? For example, I don't believe Stack
Overflow runs solely on Redis for their data storage.

------
jimmcslim
Awesome idea. Top Trumps for Software Stacks!

------
ChuckMcM
Nice, I've been using [http://www.slant.co](http://www.slant.co) for this sort
of thing. Different stacks and commentary from folks on plusses and minuses.
The rating system is nice but the question I'm always trying to answer is "Can
I solve problem X with Stack Y?"

------
rip747
hmmm... doesn't seem to detect cfml as being used. other than that, very
nice!!!

I scanned the cfwheels repo:
[https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels](https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels)

picked up almost everything that we're using

------
Nowaker
Leanstack.io was extremely useful for discovering services. Needed best A/B
testing tools? I used to go to Leanstack. I don't seem to find any reason to
visit Stackshare. I don't really care whether Twitter uses Zendesk or
Freshdesk.

~~~
yonasb
StackShare has even more tools and services than Leanstack did, with more ways
to discover them. Perhaps our messaging needs some work. StackShare is still
very much about finding the best tools: [http://stackshare.io/mobile-a-b-
testing](http://stackshare.io/mobile-a-b-testing). Would love to hear your
feedback, shoot me an email if you're up for it: yonas [at] stackshare.io.

EDIT: Just noticed you're behind Virtkick. Funny enough we just listed you
last night: [http://stackshare.io/virtkick](http://stackshare.io/virtkick)

~~~
Nowaker
That's indeed extremely funny. I spotted it some time after I wrote the
original post, then started writing my auto-trolling reply to self. ;)

------
waitingkuo
Nice site. I've been the user since it called leanstack.io . It's pretty
useful!

------
dexterbt1
This and the then leanstack.io is actually close / already fulfills #54 idea
in [https://github.com/samsquire/ideas](https://github.com/samsquire/ideas),
great and very interesting stuff.

------
sehr
I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been created before, really cool idea!

~~~
gk1
[http://leanstack.io](http://leanstack.io) is very similar.

EDIT: Oh, leanstack.io now redirects to stackshare.io... So I guess this is a
rebranding.

------
aliakhtar
Cool idea, but there seem to be a few duplicates for Java. When I search
'Java', I see 3-4 duplicate results, only the first one has any companies
listed, and the rest seem to be empty?

------
josegonzalez
Seems like the scanning may be broken. I just tried it with
[https://seatgeek.com](https://seatgeek.com) and it says the site isn't
public.

~~~
yonasb
Eh, sorry. Should be fixed now. Try pasting in the URL

------
jimmyislive
Nice work yonas... here's my side project as well, doing something similar :)

[https://packageindex.com/#!/](https://packageindex.com/#!/)

All the best Yonas...

------
hackertoolbox
Great job! I wouldn't have created
[http://hackertoolbox.com](http://hackertoolbox.com) if I knew this. Time to
kill myself!

------
techaddict009
One feature I would request is search. Say I want to see all stack which have
Ec2 or digital ocean in it.

Rest this will seriously be helpful to us.

Edit: Its already there but not directly.

------
sarciszewski
Oh, neat. This will save me ~5 minutes of recon time if I ever need to do a
pen-test for any of the companies that are submitted here. ;)

~~~
glenngillen
I've also been finding it useful to identify companies for product validation
testing by seeing who uses various underlying components that are within my
core demographic, combined with LinkedIn/moves.io to find someone to speak to.

------
rmsaksida
The front page's "Sign in with Github" doesn't work for me on Chrome/Linux
(Chromium 37 on Ubuntu 14.04).

------
swah
Joshu had the very interesting
[http://www.stackparts.com](http://www.stackparts.com)

------
BorisMelnik
Had a similar idea and an awesome name "What the Stack?"

Wish I would have went with it seeing how awesome this is.

------
TheAceOfHearts
Doesn't let you submit a new site on mobile :(. Nexus 5 with latest stable
Chrome.

------
mateuszf
"Browsing" button on the main page doesn't work for. Firefox on OSX.

~~~
yonasb
Sorry! Do you have javascript disabled? If so, you'll have a very hard time
using the site because of how we're tracking events.

~~~
mateuszf
I never disable javascript. Also no Ghostery.

------
nichochar
This is basically leanstack right? Whats the catch, rebranding?

~~~
sergiotapia
We explain the relaunch and new features here:
[http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-
stackshare](http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-stackshare)

------
hliyan
Is there a way to embed this inside a company website?

------
volker
No RSS feed... really?

~~~
Tehnix
I didn't know people still used that. What would you want out of the RSS feed
from this site? (Actually curious :3..)

Edit: Ah, didn't see the trending updates before now. Altering my question a
bit: is there a lot of ppl on HN using RSS?

~~~
volker
Oh... look how many people switched just to feedly after google shut their
service down.

What I want to have out of a feed? Getting the updates/new stacks without
daily checking the page.

------
rubiquity
When did IaaS/PaaS/SaaS products become part of the "stack?"

~~~
glenngillen
When did it not? I've been interviewing people for the past few weeks asking
them about their stack and they all invariably say at one point "running on
(aws|heroku|azure)". The [PaaS wiki
entry]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service))
itself says it's providing a "solution stack" as a service.

