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by kayman 1743 days ago
I feel like development has come full circle. Initially, it was all server side.

Then we had to use javascript to do some frontend stuff.

The javascript became frameworks which templated some of the patterns to make the frontend dev easier (led by React and Angular)

Frameworks like Blazor and Phoenix/Elixir are bringing the frontend dev back to serverside.
2 comments
danjac 1743 days ago
There's a bit more to frontend than knowledge of a framework. I can find my way around a Vue or React codebase, and I'm reasonably competent with CSS and associated frameworks, but there's a deep knowledge of the DOM and vanilla APIs, W3 standards, accessibility, device and browser differences and so on that really make a good frontend developer stand out. Often it's the frontend dev in the room - not the UI/UX experts - who calls out accessibility and usability concerns, as they've spent years working in the nuts and bolts of UI/UX.

If you moved to full server-side tomorrow and used Phoenix/Hotwire/HTMX/whatever, these skills would still be invaluable.

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zarzavat 1743 days ago
Frontend/backend is a speed of light issue. As long as the speed of light remains constant (and I've not heard any plans to change it) there will be a need to a have some code on the client and some code on the server.
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isoskeles 1743 days ago
Can you expound on this idea a bit? I don't get what you mean, but it sounds possibly interesting.
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zarzavat 1743 days ago
The latency of a communication travelling at the speed of light from say Japan to New York, is noticeable to humans. If you've ever tried to SSH into a machine on another continent, you know the feeling.

Even if the server is nearby, there's still many things that can add latency, most of which are not controllable (e.g. wifi interference, bad routers, bad ISPs, train tunnels).

So in general you cannot move all functions to the server because it will be terrible for UX. e.g. Google Stadia.

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