Comment by Ben Buchanan (200ok) on "What's the future of front-end web-development?"

CommentWhat's the future of front-end web-development?

Ben Buchanan (200ok)

I make some bits of the web.

Feb 14, 2019

I'm hoping we see a clearer separation of UI development and JavaScript Backend development. Currently the two are uncomfortably and unhelpfully conflated, which is how you get UI devs being asked to write complex business logic; or backend devs being asked to fix a stylesheet.

While it's entirely possible for one person to do both, it's much more common for people to focus on one or the other.

Assuming WASM has the success it seems headed towards, I think this may happen pretty naturally. Many devs writing JavaScript are only doing so because they had to; and will very quickly move back out to more-suitable backend languages that compile to WASM (technically they could do it now with JS transpilation but it doesn't have the performance gains of WASM).

But speculation is always a bit pointless ;)

Marco Alka

Software Engineer, Technical Consultant & Mentor

Feb 14, 2019

But speculation is always a bit pointless ;)

Your speculation might influence some decision-making by people in the right positions, if they read this post and agree.

That's why I think asking questions and putting my opinion out there can make a difference, even if I don't know that it did (and whenever I do know, it's a pleasant feeling that I could make a difference!)

I'm hoping we see a clearer separation of UI development and JavaScript Backend development.

I hope, that UI development itself will be separated more. I really don't like that JS is used for everything, from defining the base layout to every single component (which also involves stupid things like CSS in JS). It may make sense for some applications but certainly most of the web should be done with raw HTML and CSS only - and JS being added for extra functionality.

Build progressive web apps. And not all-JS apps.

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