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Discussion on: The Front-End Development we’re used to is dying

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Dennis kinuthia

Am in agreement with fullstack making more sense in the current landscape but this glosses over why the shift from server rendered html pages + jQuery for interactivity was abandoned in favor of SPAs , ( native apps) once people got a taste of that UX they wanted it on the web which inspired JavaScript to mature and deliver. The UX delivered by SPAs is not easy to replicate and tools like HTMX might be a game changer but it'll have issues catching on with the popular fullstack web alternatives (Laravel, RoR, Django) who all have their own alternatives with differing levels of UX , the JavaScript ecosystem has also matured and delivers better UX and site performance with new tricks some of which are possible due to their ability to take full advantage of the browser .
The reasons why JavaScript took over web development is

  • ability to be run on multiple environments
  • easy to learn
  • had lots of investment around it which made it faster than the alternative interpreted high level languages
  • massive ecosystem
  • huge talent pool
  • diverse infrastructure options

All that combined with a framework for any niche application you have in mind creates and ecosystem that beats out the alternatives , anti JavaScript sentiment is counterproductive and mostly based on idealistic recollections of a past era