The web evolution, a personal account
Back to the Future
Bare with me as I smash some burgers, mash some movies and get punching hard, avocado in hand..
In the hit film, back to the future, Marty McFly travels back in time to return to the future, or what is the present... Only to meet BRUCE LEE! (not realy, but hang in there)
I for one, can relate to this, given what I call my “full-circle” of web development. As a young developer starting out, I learned PHP first. Slowly this evolved, and then came Python and Django. Then came, what I thought was the future of web development, Javascript. Javascript has been around a long time, but suddenly it became “frameworks”. We started using things like Backbone.js to build entire web applications. It was an exiting time and before we knew it, we had spaghetti code holding the proverbial ship together with strings under stress.
But this was exiting, this was the start of the entire Javascript framework revolution. Before long, React came into existence. This was mind blowing, an entire new frame of mind was needed to think in terms of React’s component approach. (Did you just read an entire framework of mind!??).
I have to admit, in the beginning I found this strange and not intuitive, but then suddenly, like that first time you “get” how to ride a bicycle, it all clicked. And I was stuck in the React frame(work) of mind for a long time. I forgot about HTML in a sense. Single Page applications became the cool kid. We gobbled it up without thinking, without really understanding the effects of it, it was like a burger drenched in sweet sauce, the essence of the burger, the beef, became less important, the taste was forgotten.
And like this, like having too much sauce on a burger, or anything for that matter, it takes time to actually realise what the real flavour is behind the sauce.
I actually once went through a phase where I stoped using salt, so I could appreciate the taste of meat, or avocado for what it was, and then could I only truly say I “like meat”, or I “like avocado”.
In the web world this happend after a running in with some Javascript framework issues, “cholesterol” if you may, “high blood pressure” if you will. Long story short, we decided to boot the framework. What came Next…?
Well we moved our entire application and website over to Go. Specifically using HTMX, Temple and Go. It was a strange transition. I realised how entangled I had become with Javascript frameworks, that I had forgotten about the browser, the beef patty drenched in sauce, the avocado below the mayonaise. I started tasting the beef for beef again. A punch became a punch again. A kick became a kick again. It took me a while to become comfortable again, but in time what I realised was this: “I had gone full circle”. I have returned home. BUT, there was always this thought: “I now understand why React is so awesome!” But I also realised how much baggage came with the Javascript framework. How slow it made it, how things became messy fast.
This was the wisdom found for me. Javascript frameworks are amazing, but I am happy to have started this all before it was thing. When we simply had a request to a server and responded with static HTML, already hydrated by the server, like with Django of Templ and Go. This was old stuff, nothing new! This is how it has been! Server side rendering is not new?
My biggest gripe with Javascript frameworks was there was always this disjointed setup. There was the database setup, there was the server or backend setup, then there was the frontend setup. The frontend could not talk to the DB, it had to talk via the backend via an API. It always annoyed me, and sure, it makes you look clever too have setup all that. But I had enough of it. I moved on. I wanted everything in one place, like with Django, Rails and Go.
I was weary of using Javascript frameworks again, until be built RedwoodSDK. And yes, take this within a grain of salt, you ought to! But this is my personal account. This is my back to the future.
Back to the future, back to basic HTML principles with modern technologies, modern React, based on the good old Request/Response cycle. The future.
Let me end this with one of my favourite quotes:
“Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick.
After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick.
Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.”
— Bruce Lee
Replace punch and kick with HTML, JavaScript, or frameworks, and you see the pattern. It's a life lesson!
We go deep, we complicate, we return, we learn. That cycle, that process, is the real beauty of this craft. And we are embracing it with RedwoodSDK.