Coding in 2019

I’m excited to say that web development is starting to feel a lot like software development… finally!

Some Background

I first began programming around 20 years ago. Initially, using a Visual Basic like IDE called Borland Delphi using the programming language Pascal. This introduced me to things like functions, variables, private and public, and the concept of compiling. Compiling meant that generally if the build completed, things would work (and continue to work) assuming I didn’t upgrade to a new version of Windows.

Around this time I also began to familiarize myself with the world wide web. This was before CSS was a thing and where javascript was very basic. So I would use notepad to make an index.htm file and go from there. Remember the <marquee></marquee> tag?

From there, I eventually got into Flash - first for making animations, then games, and then full websites. This was cool because browsers support was all over the map and everyone had flash installed. And there were no iPhones yet…

Next, when Flash was all but dead, I got back into HTML and learned CSS and Javascript (+jQuery). I also got very proficient in PHP.

Then the frontend started to change. We saw frameworks like Backbone come about which started to shift a lot of the backend logic to the frontend. This and along with the rise of APIs meant we started seeing more static sites and single page applications that would interface with an API to serve content.

We saw workflow tools like Grunt and Gulp make it easier to work with Coffee Script and SASS. We saw AWS S3s and Github support static site hosting.

Yes, the web is looking brighter.

Where we are now

Although this will likely change by the end of the year, this is where I see web development now.

Frontend

• Frameworks: Angular, React, and Vue
• Languages: HTML / Pug, CSS / SASS, JS / ES6
• Workflow: Webpack, Bable

Backend

• Python (Flask or Django)
• NodeJS (AdonisJS, Sails)

Hosting

• Google Cloud + Firebase
• AWS

CMS

• Wagtail (Django)
• Contentful (SAAS product)

Interfaces

• Restful API
• GraphQL

Honorable Mention

If you are building a static site, please check out Gatsby. It’s awesome (and it’s what this blog is built in!) Gatsby uses React and has a lot of good boilerplates.

My Preference

Right now, I’d say my favorite workflow is using Vue.JS on the frontend. The backend really depends on the project’s requirements but I generally go for Django + Wagtail + Django Rest Framework. Wagtail is an excellent CMS and it can be interfaced directly through a restful API. For hosting, I’m loving Google Cloud (especially Firebase).

Conclusion

What I’m getting at here is that we have amazing open source tools available to us that essentially result in a compiled application. If you have a linter setup, you can receive errors as soon as you save a file. Webpack takes everything and compiles it to a single file (including css and smaller images) - meaning a simpler deployment and faster page loads for your users.

I love how 2019 is looking as a web developer… finally!

Written by Tyler Savery who lives in Toronto and makes things for the Internet. Follow me on Twitter! And check out The Young Astronauts!