[flushandforget]

I think what saddens me with web programming, is constant rewrites of the same old projects, that pretty much do the same thing. As a community we'd be better to focus on a few core APIs like a web shop or a booking app.

A church or school could have a common underlying built platform. Where functions of outfits are unified, we could drop in one size fits all solutions.

In England (UK) you have about 24 thousand schools these could be aided/driven by a few competing platforms. Charities and small shops likewise.

Platform constraints can also help. Having fixed html, perhaps would let designers just swap out CSS and imagery - job done.

Much web work is a brain drain, and a lot of good talent in my eyes is being squandered on petty engineering problems, when there is still a world out there that needs putting right.

[IanCal]

Why do you need any new APIs for that? Sounds like you just need a shared template.

[flushandforget]

I appreciate that a web shop could want for more than basic html representation. Although arguably there is something already like this: http://schema.org/Product . A search API?

But yes, good templates go a long way.

[IanCal]

Hmm, interesting ideas. I particularly like the search one, it'd be interesting if I could generate a search index that conforms to a particular spec and just store it as a static file which your browser can grab.