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Panel

Charles Max Wood
Aimee Knight
Chris Ferdinandi
AJ O’Neal
Christopher Beucheler

Episode Summary

Today the panel discusses the effect of current development practices, such as the heavy reliance JavaScript, on the web. Chris explains why he believes that current development practices are ruining the web. The panelists discuss different situations where they see complications on the web. They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using an enterprise scale platform like React. The panel discusses Twitter’s move away from their legacy code base to CSS and JavaScript.

The panelists agree that the way things are built, since it’s so JavaScript heavy, is alienating to people who work with other languages, and in turn other areas like UI are undervalued. They talk about possible reasons things ended up this way and some of the historical perception of a frontend as not a place for ‘real’ development. Because the web is now a serious platform, things associated with the backend has been thrown at the frontend where it doesn’t belong. They talk about changes in the ways programming is viewed now versus the past.

There is a discussion about how market demands that have influenced the web and if the market value CSS as highly as other languages. They mention some of the Innovations in CSS. Chris shares his solutions for the problems they’ve been discussing, namely using less JavaScript, leaning more heavily on what the browser gives you out of the box, and avoiding dependency where possible. They talk about ways to get involved if you want to take a leaner approach to the web. Ultimately, it is important to embrace things about the past that worked, but sprinkle in new technology when it makes sense

Links

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