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Python has Django. PHP has Laravel. Ruby has Ruby on Rails. But where is the full stack framework for JavaScript?
Arguably many popular frontend frameworks are now full stack — Next.js, Nuxt.js, Remix, Svelte and others. But in 2020, there were few — if any — truly full stack JavaScript frameworks. And that’s when twin brothers and software engineers Matija Šošić and Martin Šošić decided to create one.
“Now, everything is moving to JavaScript because it’s getting prevalent and it’s easier for developers to use the same language on frontend and the backend,” Matija Šošić told The New Stack. “This is why the industry is now moving towards a full JavaScript solution. But there hasn’t been, let’s say, a unified framework for the complete stack, which is just on JavaScript. So this is what we wanted to fix.”
They applied to Y Combinator, a startup accelerator and venture capital firm that invests in and supports early-stage technology companies; it’s known for launching companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit. They were rejected, but in that rejection letter, they found their encouragement to try again:
“A DSL [domain-specific language] for web app development is one of the holy grails for programmers interested in building tools for other programmers.”
Who doesn’t want to build a holy grail? It was too enticing not to try again. The brothers applied two more times before their project was accepted.
Out of that emerged Wasp, a full stack JavaScript framework and an eight-person company to support it. (Wasp is available on GitHub.)
The brothers now work full time on Wasp. Matija Šošić is the co-founder and CEO of Wasp the company. His brother, Martin, is also a co-founder and the chief technology officer.
Brothers Martin and Matija Šošić, left to right, after acceptance into the Y Combinator program. Photo contributed by Matija Šošić.
“In the recent 10 years, basically we don’t have a singular solution, but we have a bunch of small solutions, of which everyone is handling one specific piece of the problem,” Matija Šošić said.
There are frontend JavaScript frameworks — the brothers used Backbone, Angular and React on the client. There are also backend JavaScript frameworks — they had used PHP to Java and Node.js. There are also databases with an object-relational mapping (ORM) and in between are state management solutions and an API layer, he pointed out. (Editor’s note: Meteor is a full stack framework for real-time applications and some frontend frameworks such as Next.js, Nuxt.js with Vue and SvelteKit for Svelte now support backend implementations.)
“You have specialized pieces for each part of the stack, but you as a developer are left with the work of stitching everything together and making sure all these pieces can communicate effectively, [in a] scalable and secure way,” Matija Šošić said. ”This actually requires a lot of kind of domain expertise, specialized knowledge. And also, it requires a lot of work to just get it done.”
Failing to find one full stack framework and experiencing “framework fatigue,” in 2020, they decided to build one, with other full stack frameworks for other languages serving as their models.
Called Wasp, the beta framework already has nearly 16,000 stars on GitHub and has more than 4,000 developers in its Discord.
“What we are trying to do is basically recreate this singular experience of Ruby on Rails and Laravel, but for the modern JS ecosystem,” he said. “That means, in the end, we handle much more things for you, which result in less code and less experience knowledge needed by the developer themselves.”
But they were also motivated in part to build something that was abstracted away from the specific language.
“Ruby Rails was great, but again, we are now moving away from Ruby,” he said. “Today it’s JavaScript, and it’s going to be JavaScript for much longer, for sure. But even with that, can you make something which is not dependent solely on JavaScript? That’s kind of the other part of the motivation for Wasp.”
Technically, Wasp is a domain-specific language (DSL), a computer language specialized for a particular application domain. This means it’s designed to solve problems within a specific area, rather than acting as a general-purpose language that can be used for any kind of programming.
In this case, Wasp is a DSL for JavaScript. But the Šošićs have learned not to call it that, because it tends to confuse people, even developers. They tend to assume it’s a different language from JavaScript, which isn’t the case.
“We had actually been presenting Wasp [as a] new programming language for web applications, but that sounded to developers as a new Python or new C++ or new Java, which are all general programming languages,” Matija Šošić said. “For them, that initial messaging felt like they have to drop their existing JavaScript knowledge, or whatever they used, like React [and] Node.js, and they have to learn our completely new stack, which is obviously very daunting.”
“What we are trying to do is basically recreate this singular experience of Ruby on Rails and Laravel, but for the modern JS ecosystem.”
— Matija Šošić, CEO of Wasp
So they call it a framework because that’s how it actually functions, he explained.
However, the fact that it’s a DSL means it works with other technologies. Specifically, Wasp relies heavily on React, Node.js and Prisma for the ORM.
“Ninety percent of your work is going to be writing those technologies,” Matija Šošić said. “Wasp is just a simple glue between those parts, which makes all this heavy lifting I was describing.”
The language is just an implementation detail that helped them cut down on the boilerplate and make things faster, he added.
React was chosen for two main reasons — it was the technology the brothers had the most experience with at the time, and it was widely used.
“For us, it was logical, we knew it the best, and we can reach the widest market,” Matija Šošić said. “Again, with the nature of Wasp, we are designing it to be agnostic of the UI framework or library. … But for now, we are focusing on React and Node JS, because they were kind of the most mainstream technologies to start with.”
Using React and Node unlocked another benefit — enterprise adoption.
“Everybody knows how to deploy React and Node. This is also why we have been seeing enterprise adoption, because for them, it’s super easy to deploy React and Node,” he said. “There is no kind of third-party infrastructure that you would need, which is a big blocker for the enterprises.”
Prisma is a small framework for a database and it’s easily used through JavaScript, he said. It supports Mongo, Postgres and other databases, so it aligned well with Wasp.
The Wasp team also offers two tools that simplify development:
Matija Šošić recommended developers explore Wasp because it’s a full stack JavaScript framework. Overall, the Wasp framework takes about 30 minutes to start using, according to the Wasp FAQ.
“The big enabler is that enterprise developers can very easily run it internally,” he said. “Because in the end, Wasp is just a simple React and Node.js application, which is mainstream for deployment to almost any environment.”
Editor’s Note: Updated March 27 to reflect that Matija Šošić said state management in the 10th paragraph.
