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World Congress 2022 • Jun 15, 2022

Web development: where are we, and where are we going?

Laurie Voss

The fundamentals are a myth. The future of frontend development is purely visual abstraction. Adapt to assembling apps without typing code, or get left behind.

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#1 about 2 min

Predicting technology cycles in the web development industry

Analyzing decades of survey data reveals a cyclic model of how web development technologies evolve over time.

#2 about 4 min

From wild experimentation to platform commoditization and consolidation

Economics drives the evolution of custom solutions into generalized frameworks and consolidated platforms.

#3 about 2 min

Why whining about forgetting fundamental principles is inevitable

As new frameworks gain mass adoption, veteran developers inevitably complain that newcomers ignore underlying foundational concepts.

#4 about 3 min

Migration strategies and changing the web technology stack

Developers must choose to either specialize in foundational tools or migrate to building applications using higher-level abstractions.

#5 about 3 min

Historical context of web servers and dynamic scripting

The evolution from static HTML files to dynamic applications using CGI and PHP exemplifies the technology cycle.

#6 about 3 min

Moving from physical hardware to standardized open stacks

Web hosting transitioned from local servers to co-located facilities and standardized configurations governed by simple economics.

#7 about 2 min

Content management competition and the dominance of WordPress

Thousands of similar blogging platforms fiercely competed until WordPress emerged as the primary framework for building websites.

#8 about 2 min

Abstracting complex browser standardizations from Rails to jQuery

Foundational frameworks smoothed over difficult APIs until their most useful implementations were natively integrated into modern browsers.

#9 about 2 min

Abstracting physical underlying hardware through cloud computing platforms

Cloud providers replaced physical server constraints with virtualized instances, making detailed hardware knowledge largely irrelevant for developers.

#10 about 2 min

Examining extreme package management volume through the npm ecosystem

The massive surge in download volume observed through registry usage reveals how ubiquitous centralized dependencies have become.

#11 about 3 min

Consolidating internet infrastructure through serverless architectures and Jamstack

Platform competition now centers on unifying continuous integration and deployment operations into single cohesive hosting solutions.

#12 about 3 min

Assessing React dominance and the potential of web components

Popular encapsulated UI patterns challenge early conventions, potentially leading to native component standards that run directly in the browser.

#13 about 4 min

Predicting a fully visual component driven web development lifecycle

Abstracting components into intuitive visual editors could enable complex application development without manually authoring any source code.

#14 about 4 min

Solving the global engineering shortage by automating code generation

Machine learning tools that accurately predict implementation patterns suggest a future where repetitive manual authoring disappears entirely.

Matching moments

3:49 min

Evolution and dominance of full stack JavaScript ecosystems

Michael Bromley · World Congress 2022

2:38 min

Historical waves of web development and shipping less JavaScript

Chris Ferdinandi · JS Congress

1:19 min

The shift from simple web frameworks to modern complexity

Ben Greenberg Ben Greenberg · World Congress 2022

3:46 min

The rise of modern component-based frameworks and modular architecture

Sasha Shynkevich · LIVE

3:49 min

The evolution and complexity of the modern frontend stack

JS Congress

5:12 min

The rapid evolution of JavaScript and web tooling

Lorenzo Pieri · World Congress 2023

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