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The next big thing in web development: WebAssembly. More specifically: the end of Javascript, HTML, and CSS. I remember when Gmail first came out, there was a
by apeace 4y ago
The next big thing in web development: WebAssembly. More specifically: the end of Javascript, HTML, and CSS.
I remember when Gmail first came out, there was a major revolution in how webapps were written. All of a sudden it was all about AJAX! There have been several of those major ebbs and flows, where the whole industry decides that a particular way to do something is the preferred way, and so everybody does it. Entire cottage industries are then developed to train up some programmers on how to do that thing.
And usually, those transitions happened because some big company rewrites a bunch of their stuff. I'd say the most recent one of those is Facebook creating React and doing all their stuff in it. We're still riding that wave.
But, browsers have more or less completed their transition away from being some kind of "document" viewer and into being a fully-fledged execution environment and rendering system. WASM lets you run stuff fast. There are already libraries for languages like Go and Rust that purport to let you compile your app to desktop, mobile, and WASM. Truly one codebase.
I think a big company will come along and do it, and then everyone will do it. Personally, I can't wait for the transition. I never really liked web technologies, despite having worked with them for about 20 years now.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago> More specifically: the end of Javascript, HTML, and CSS. The opposite is happening, JS/HTML/CSS are becoming the standard for desktop apps rather than something else replacing them on the web. > But, browsers have more or less completed their transition away from being some kind of "document" viewer and into being a fully-fledged execution environment and rendering system. WASM lets you run stuff fast. There are already libraries for languages like Go and Rust that purport to let you compile your app to desktop, mobile, and WASM. Truly one codebase. We don't need WASM for this, we already have things like Electron, React Native, and Flutter.
- apeace 4y ago> The opposite is happening, JS/HTML/CSS are becoming the standard for desktop apps rather than something else replacing them on the web. Yes, I am predicting that trend will reverse. I'll need to remember to check this comment in 10 years! > We don't need WASM for this, we already have things like Electron, React Native, and Flutter. Electron: slow. Flutter: uses Dart, which lots of people don't want to learn or don't like. React Native: yeah this one is pretty good, unless you are just not a huge fan of JS/HTML/CSS/JSX/etc. Or if you want frontend/backend to be in the same language, but don't want the backend to be in JS. I am betting that programmers will prefer making applications in other popular languages the more it becomes possible, and that the impetus for the big shift will be a big company going that direction.