All areas of infrastructure software change rapidly, but perhaps none of them quite as quickly as the web development stack. The rate of innovation in other categories of infra can be limited by a few things, including relative technical depth (e.g. databases) or reluctance in depending on new players (e.g cybersecurity). Web dev tools, on the other hand, can be built quickly, have a strong tendency towards open-source, and can be adopted, tested, and if necessary dropped within a day.
Hey Sam, awesome post about the Jamstack and the modern web dev stack. The shift from pre-rendered to server-side rendered and back again is probably in its 3rd iteration now. This is a case where history repeats itself, maybe not exactly, but pretty close. I'm excited to see what edge compute will bring for dynamic rendering...
Your technical landscape diagram is also interesting, and the reason I'm responding. I think there's a category of up and coming products that's missing here. It's not entirely clear what the name of the category is (possibly "integration & orchestration"), but the purpose is:
1) The products and tools that make up the web dev stack need to be integrated with one another and with tools that are outside of the web dev domain (mar-tech, legacy systems, bespoke systems, etc.). This is costly, risky and does not provide business value. Products in this category provide organisations an alternative to doing this themselves. It allows developers to loosely couple integrations to the front-end but it also helps non-developers with managing pages.
2) Non-developers (marketers, merchandisers, business users, practitioners, etc.) need the ability to configure and control certain aspects of web applications. This includes things like layout/presentation logic, personalization, search functionality, content, etc. Provide non-developers some autonomy without compromising the developer's experience.
I work at Uniform this is what we do. Uniform helps with the orchestration of the systems that lead up to the Jamstack site but without telling developers what type of tech to use. Uniform is basically providing the bridge from the web dev toolkit to the world of applications that power web applications, and doing it in a way that enables business users and developers to not depend on each-other. They might even become friends again :)
I hope this makes sense! We could have a chat about this in more depth if you want. Find me on Twitter @timbenniks :)
Hey Sam, awesome post about the Jamstack and the modern web dev stack. The shift from pre-rendered to server-side rendered and back again is probably in its 3rd iteration now. This is a case where history repeats itself, maybe not exactly, but pretty close. I'm excited to see what edge compute will bring for dynamic rendering...
Your technical landscape diagram is also interesting, and the reason I'm responding. I think there's a category of up and coming products that's missing here. It's not entirely clear what the name of the category is (possibly "integration & orchestration"), but the purpose is:
1) The products and tools that make up the web dev stack need to be integrated with one another and with tools that are outside of the web dev domain (mar-tech, legacy systems, bespoke systems, etc.). This is costly, risky and does not provide business value. Products in this category provide organisations an alternative to doing this themselves. It allows developers to loosely couple integrations to the front-end but it also helps non-developers with managing pages.
2) Non-developers (marketers, merchandisers, business users, practitioners, etc.) need the ability to configure and control certain aspects of web applications. This includes things like layout/presentation logic, personalization, search functionality, content, etc. Provide non-developers some autonomy without compromising the developer's experience.
I work at Uniform this is what we do. Uniform helps with the orchestration of the systems that lead up to the Jamstack site but without telling developers what type of tech to use. Uniform is basically providing the bridge from the web dev toolkit to the world of applications that power web applications, and doing it in a way that enables business users and developers to not depend on each-other. They might even become friends again :)
I hope this makes sense! We could have a chat about this in more depth if you want. Find me on Twitter @timbenniks :)