How Did Web Development Get So Freaking Complicated?!
I still remember the thrill of peeking under the hood of a website back in the 1990s. I wouldn’t be where I am today without “view source”. Beholding HTML for the first time, realizing that you could simply write some easy-to-understand markup in a text field, upload it to a server, and Boom!
You’re on the World-Wide Web.
But then we needed to learn how to style our web pages, and then we needed to learn how to store and retrieve content from a database, and then we needed to learn how to write code to transform pages on the fly based in user input, and then we needed to learn how to test, and lint, and scale, and abstract, and code review, and deploy, and…
Damn. Building websites just ain’t fun anymore.
We have nobody to blame but ourselves. We let this happen. We stopped setting the baseline of web development at “edit a text file” and somehow turned it into “let’s recreate Facebook”. We started acting like you need to have a Ph.D. in cloud-scale software infrastructure just to render a freaking form button.
And then, to make matters worse, we started telling people they shouldn’t even try to use “vanilla” web technologies anymore. HTML is just a “build target” for some other abstracted UI framework. CSS “sucks” and you should use [Insert Styles Library Here]. Using JavaScript to access the DOM directly or construct simple web components is a waste of effort and you must use [Insert JavaScript Framework Here].
This is a ridiculous state of affairs.
If someone starts telling you that to become a good web developer you shouldn’t rely on vanilla web technologies whenever possible (and the libraries which most closely adhere to the principles of true web specs), they have steered you wrong. It’s time to reset the clock and get back to the basics.
- HTTP (ah, so RESTful)
- HTML (the semantic kind)
- CSS (the modern kind)
- JavaScript (think spices, not the main dish)
…along with no-nonsense libraries & tools which promote developer happiness and avoid vendor lock-in.
That’s what THE SPICY WEB is all about. Bringing you a new development methodology that’s actually been around since the beginning of the web. Starting from first principles. Building up knowledge and understanding layer by layer. Reveling in the mindset that we reach for abstracted frameworks and build tooling when and where needed and not as a default. Because the defaults we get now in modern evergreen browsers have become astoundingly good.
Welcome to the WWW revolution. In the making since 1990.
Vanilla has never tasted so hot.
It’s entirely free to get started. And when you’re ready for more, our brand new courses are here to take you even deeper down the rabbit hole. These launched very recently, so it’s safe to say you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. 😎
Who’s behind all this? Read on!