How Web development has changed over the last more than 20 years

The web has changed quite quickly over the last 20 years. More and more logic is moving from the server side to the client. Not only do you need to write more complex JavaScript code on the client, but in recent years something strange has happened: JavaScript is moving to the server, and web technology is moving toward the desktop. This is not new, but who would have thought of it 20 years ago?

The web has changed, so my technology stack has changed. It seems that my stack has changed back to roots. 20 years ago, I started with HTML and JavaScript, and then to the classic ASP that uses VBScript. In 2001, I began to revel in ASP. NET and vb.net, and used it in the product until the end of 2006 to stop doing so. At the end of 2007, I started using C # to write ASP. HTML and JavaScript are still involved, but are more or less encapsulated in third-party controls, and jquery is an alias for JavaScript at the time. JavaScript is all about jquery. The ASP. NET WebForms feels huge and not very flexible, but it can work effectively. Then--2010--I did a lot of things with Silverlight, WinForms, and WPF.

When ASP. NET MVC appeared, the web began to feel more natural than the ASP. WebForms. From an ASP. NET Developer's point of view, the web began to get better: cleaner, more flexible, lighter and more natural.

But something new has come up. Something that comes from outside of the ASP. Powerful JavaScript libraries, such as knockout, Backbone, and later angular and react. First single-page application framework (sorry, I don't want to mention crappy ASP. NET AJAX ...) ) appears, the UI logic is transferred from the server to the client. (Well, we did get a cool spa back in 2005, but we didn't think about how to use it to create a framework.) ）

Nodejs changed the world again by using JavaScript on the server. You just need two different languages (HTML and JavaScript), and you can create cool web apps. I'm not interested in Nodejs, except using it on the back end, because some tools are based on Nodejs. Maybe it's a mistake, who knows? ）

Now that we have ASP. NET Core, it feels much more natural than the traditional ASP. The so-called nature in this case means that it feels almost the same as writing a traditional ASP. This means using a stateless web job instead of trying to fix it. Using request and response is much more straightforward than the traditional ASP. Net. WebForms, even more straightforward than ASP. Nature does not mean that you have to write the same unstructured nonsense as traditional ASP.; ）

Because we already have a very cool client-side JavaScript framework. And a simplified, minimalist server-side framework, the server portion is reduced to just providing static files and data on the rest service.

It was at this time that a deep understanding of typescript became meaningful. But at this point in time, it didn't make any sense to me. I've been writing code in JavaScript for about 20 years, but I've never written so many JavaScript code in a single project. After that, I started using Angularjs in the last few years. Angular2 is one of the reasons why we should study typescript well, because the ANGULAR2 is written entirely in typescript.

A few weeks ago, I started my first real Nodejs project: A desktop application that uses Nodejs to provide users with a highly flexible script runtime. Nodejs provides functionality and UI to the user, all written in typescript rather than plain JavaScript. Why? Because Typescript has a lot of unexpected benefits:

• You can still write JavaScript

• Help to write small modules and structured code

• Help writing Nodejs compatible modules

• In general, it is not necessary to write all the JavaScript code for each module

• Just focus on the features you need to write

That's why typescript is a big help to me. Of course the typed language is useful in many cases, but--working with JS for 20--I like the flexibility of the implicit type JavaScript language, and I know it well. This means that, from my point of view, the advantage of typescript is that I can still write implicit type code with typescript and take advantage of the flexibility of JavaScript. That's why I said, "You can still write JavaScript."

Web technology has changed, my technology stack has changed, and so is the tool. All of these things have become more lightweight, along with the tools. The console is back, and the IDE turns back to their root: it's just a text editor with something like syntax highlighting and IntelliSense. For now, I prefer to use visual Studio code or Adobe Brackets, which is known as the Swiss Army Knife, based on the type of project I work on. Both are starting to get very fast, including some nice features.

Using a lightweight IDE is enjoyable. Everything is fast, because the apps I need to develop can use the machine's resources without having to use the IDE I need to develop the app. This makes the pace of development much faster.

Starting an IDE today means starting Cmder (my favorite console on Windows), changing the project folder, starting a console command to view the typescript file, and compiling it after saving. I can start another console to use tools like NPM, Gulp, typings, dotnet CLI, Nodejs, and start my favorite lightweight editor to write code! : )

Original: How Web development Changed for Me over the last years