I am working on a project requiring backend development. I am a front-end developer who has shown interests in the past in learning back-end and have already learned quite a few concepts, but have never put them to use. I am wondering if I should focus on learning PHP and MySQL for my project or learning what I believe to be a more traditional and widely used path of React, NodeJS + ExpressJS, and MongoDB. My application consists of a climbing tracking tool where a climber can log their ascents on various climbs along with the grade and struggles and strong points they had on the climb. This can then be stored as data and be used to recommend various training plans to the climber as well as provide various data. The backend would involve fetching the user’s responce and using some sort of method to store their data.
I have learned a decent amount of React and a fair amount of PHP. I have never used any sort of SQL or noSQL database and have very slightly tinkered with Node & Express (not enough to remember). I currently use VSCode for my development enviornment and use Vercel for hosting (but I could switch).