>>974715 (OP)
The thing with most JS frameworks is that unless you feel like playing dependency checker, you kinda have to go all in with Node. Thankfully, you can use an SQL database (at least MySQL and Postgres) so that's always a nice thing.
I actually like Django a lot, but responsive applications are kinda wonky unless you do everything through REST. It's meant for static sites. It's good at that. It shouldn't be forced to do something it wasn't meant to.
Also, if your mostly familiar with front-end JS development not tied to something like React, anything Node related is going to make you want to shoot yourself for a good few weeks. It really feels like some sort of abomination of a hackjob all around. It's still where the majority of the support is right now.
>Lots of experience configuring LAMP stacks but not sure if that is still a thing in 2018.
It's not the cool hip thing, but given the despite being a fractal of bad design, PHP by itself does lend toward an okay-ish responsive experience.