The FERN Stack

The FERN stack is MERN's cloud-native cousin who traded self-hosted MongoDB for Firebase and never looked back. Firebase handles auth, real-time database, hosting, and approximately seventeen other things you'd otherwise have to set up yourself. Express and Node.js do the server-side heavy lifting, and React builds the UI. It's the stack of choice for hackathons, MVPs, and that side project you're going to ship this weekend (you won't, but Firebase makes it feel possible).