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Reuben Walker, Jr.
Reuben Walker, Jr.

Posted on • Originally published at thefulcrum.dev

Working with the 4Rs of Web Development

#programming #webdev

This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum.

Revolutionary? and self-rewarding! K.I.S.S. and DIY WebDev strategy cripples tech bros, oligarchs, and autocrats

In this article we will cover a simple, DIY strategy. In particular, it's about what I call the 4Rs of web development. They are empowering, reduce frustration, and help you feel good about your work (and yourself).

Here at The Fulcrum we cover items and ideas in the Techno Anarchist Manifesto relating to KISS and DIY development for the Open Media Network and Open Social. We preach, promote, and practice keeping your work simple and crafting it yourself. It might require more effort but it's more rewarding. If you follow us, you know that.

You also know I'm prone to curse. If not, you're now pre-warned. Asides over.

You probably got this, but the 4Rs are a riff on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle for the consumption of physical goods.

And the principle of the four's usage would apply to any type of programming work to a significant degree.

And there's the added benefit that this work strategy thwarts democracy and planet destroying tech bros, oligarchs, and autocrats.

Moving on, the Techno Anarchism-based 4Rs are:

 

If you aren’t self-employed, please try to influence your clients, coworkers, and management to follow or let you follow the 4Rs within your projects.

This is not all or nothing. Every little bit helps, even following a few of them. Win the battles you can when laboring (not working) for the necessities in life.

You’ll notice I’m using the word “work” a lot. The previous advice necessitates a quick note on the difference between "labor" and "work".

The first is what you have to do to earn money to pay for whatever housing, food, utilities, transportation, etc. you need to survive. You’re part of the labor force and to some degree do forced labor. And I would advise being in a union so you can at least get paid well for putting up with it.

The second is effort you voluntarily choose to exert and which can be a reward in and of itself. If you’re very fortunate this work could also provide income. Then you would be working for yourself whether you're self-employed or not.

So, let's get to “work” with the 4Rs.

Resist

Unsurprisingly, as a techno anarchist we recommend resisting all the techshit that is infecting every element of our lives. And it's only getting worse at an exponential rate thanks to all the clueless fucks using AI for any and everything. This is especially true for programming. And even for "real" programmers who should know better.

So, resist:

 
Yanis Varoufakis came up with the term Techno Feudalism. He writes:

'“… capitalism is dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. … that role … has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call techno feudalism.

… the thing that killed capitalism is capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful that its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host.”

That capital is rent-seeking cloud capital.

Use the link above to learn more about techno feudalism, cloud capital, and how not to become a serf.

But for web development purposes, resisting techno feudalism involves not having anything to do with big tech's tooling and the benighted efforts of its sub-human oligarch owners and amoral/immoral executive management.

That includes not using GitHub, VS Code, CoPilot, Azure, ASP.NET, Edge, React JS, Angular JS, Chrome, Gemini, Ruby on Rails, AWS, xCode, Swift, Safari, Codex, Claude, etc, fucking etc.

Techno Fascism/Authoritarianism is what the tech oligarch owners/purveyors (of these examples and other techshit) do on a daily basis and hope to achieve. They're trying to maximize their raping and pillaging.

So we won't have to kill the evil vikings, let's resist and weaken them in order to drastically reduce their wealth and source of power over us. Without obscene wealth they can't lobby, bribe, or buy our shit politicians.

Please don't give them even one penny of your cash or monetization of your attention or time.

For "AI", just rinse and repeat as it is an artifact of fascism with very few legitimate uses. Pure and simple.

Sorry, but I'm going on a quick, spiky rant.

For general usage, unless you're disabled (and it enables you) or you're communicating in a second language, try not to be a clueless dipshit and don't use AI.

Nobody likes a slop merchant and the shit digital products they "create" suck on a practical level. So, please just don't go there.

And don't fucking whine "but it's useful." Chemical weapons are useful for killing people but that doesn't mean you should use them.

In any event, these "useful" tools only provide slight improvements, average results, and little ROI compared to their extravagant costs to your wallet and soul. And that doesn't include the more dreadful costs to the place where you live and your neighbors.

Most importantly, generative AI is stolen goods being fenced in online pawnshops in order to deskill the workforce and drive down the cost and power of labor. And it's knowingly destroying the environment and local communities every step of the way. If you don't care about that, I'm sorry but you're a cunt. Get off my website and don't come back.

So, fuck AI and 98.24% of anything to do with it.

Be an asshole luddite like me, not a techno fascist.

Sorry, but this shit boils my piss. :(

Ok, rant over.

Finally, please resist using some idiot's vibe code or any other non-standards-based garbage whether it's generated by a LLM or an incompetent human developer. There is plenty of time-tested, community-trusted, high-quality stuff to reuse (as you will see below).

There are also practical financial reasons for resisting all this tech bro nonsense. Expensive (in the first place), rent-seeking, and addictive corporate "solutions" will inevitably enshittify and fuck you and your long-term projects over.

They are many monetary rewards for avoiding the use of proprietary code, platforms, and systems tooling. Use opensource (but not necessarily free) tools for more financial recourse. I'm sure you're intelligent enough to be able to successfully manage the investment.

Reduce

The second R involves reducing (if not eliminating) the use of overly-complicated clusterfucks like frontend frameworks, most backend frameworks, and development platforms. And it avoids misapplying languages like JavaScript or Python in the first place. This applies to both proprietary and opensource tech.

So, no React, Angular, NodeJS, Tailwind, Bootstrap, Atlassian, Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, corporate cloud tech, AI IDEs, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, etc., etc., etc. for us and our web development work.

Please use the simplest tool(s) for each task you have to accomplish. There is no need for 95% of this command-line, CI/CD, deployment, dependency, permissions, builds, API accessing hell.

And trying to use one size fits all, enterprise-scale solutions for the smallest tasks is about the most ineffective thing you can do. Plus, simple is more secure as well.

The best stack is no stack. Strategically stock your toolbox with long-lasting, effective, and simple tools for achieving the best results for your unique work.

You'll find it less frustrating and alienating if a little more time-consuming.

Our minds need exercising and skills need using to stay sharp. Again, this is good for our mental health as developers.

Reduce your use of over-engineered horseshit and your projects will work years from now and most importantly just work period. Today.

Reuse

Please don't reinvent the wheel. There is nothing that is new under the techno sun. Just use standards-based development's existing tools and techniques for guaranteed success. The best way to do things, is to use things, that already do things the best way. That's the third R.

So, reuse/use:

  • Web Standards
  • HTML and CSS
  • Vanilla JavaScript and PHP if needed
  • Code Snippets
  • Web Components if needed
  • Opensource Tools
  • Protocols

 
You can easily research, find, and reuse standards-based solutions to your challenges because standards are well documented by their very nature. Use what works.

Vanilla code is easier to learn or source for more complicated tasks. This is because it's also well documented and there is lots of readily available training. It's easy to upskill yourself because much of that training is time-tested, evergreen, and free. In other words it uses the fourth R. ;)

You should also save and reuse your customized code snippets or use those available via helpful code libraries. Store them wherever you want as long as it's free from being scraped. Please don't feed the slop engines and monetize the slop merchants.

If truly needed, vanilla web components are the shining example of this strategy. Plug and play saves the day for projects that legitimately need extra functionality.

But, most of the time you shouldn't even need the majority of these components. Don't use a tap screw where a thumb tack will work. In fact, you should even try to avoid vanilla JavaScript, PHP, and databases whenever you can.

There are dozens of simple, readily available, and easy to use opensource tools (see the link above) for web development that selflessly serve the community and need your support.

Please use them.

And when you do, finance them with small monetary donations or indirectly finance them with code or in-kind contributions. Please, assist them via promotion at a minimum.

They will pay you back ten fold.

Other than FTP, web protocols are something you rarely need to touch, but if you do need them, use them natively rather than via obfuscated platforms or tools. Remember, even if you're working on a sophisticated PWA, let's avoid clusterfuck tech.

Recirculate

The fourth R involves showing and sharing your work and knowledge so others can benefit from your rewarding experiences.

Share quick tips on open social and write how-to articles or produce videos for your community. That is the essence of participating in the Open Media Network. It's even a form of informal documentation.

Giving back builds karma and empowers more developers to build more websites and PWAs for everyone to use in place of techno feudalist platforms. It's a virtuous circle. And it feels good to help others.

Now, the best form of recirculating is building on/improving existing opensource tools and (of equal importance) formally documenting those efforts.

On that note, please maintain and update your documentation just as much as you do the code. Shit outdated docs defeat the purpose of DIY and recirculation.

And this could be part of the 1.76% of AI usage that might be justified. That's provided it's opensource AI, locally trained on your information, and hosted on servers or personal computers you totally control.

Alright, enough with the asides. Let's finish this exploration.

Wrapping it up

So, using the 4Rs isn't rocket science. It's just purposely following a simple and sound strategy by building simple sites and apps (yourself). And doing it with simple tools. But their use furthers an incredibly important goal - debilitating oligarchs (whether feudalists or fascist/authoritarians) and the autocrats they buy.

Please resist the tech overlords, reduce your consumption of their techshit, reuse proven tech that already exists (in your unique way), and recirculate your improvements, creations, and discoveries.

Again, this is not an all or nothing strategy. Like following techno anarchism itself, every little bit you do helps a little bit of everything.

If we follow the 4Rs within our web development and PWA work, we can go a long way in defeating techno feudalism, techno fascism/authoritarianism, and tech-bro-ism in general while keeping a smile (or smirk) on our face. We'll also create better projects.

Let's get to work with the 4Rs, be proud of what we build, improve our mental health, bring back the web we used to love, and set an example for other programmers!

 

 

CTAs

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