Chris & Dave Discuss Web Development in 2015—ShopTalk #170

Can I take it to the MythBusters super explosion version?

In this exchange from ShopTalk episode 170, Chris & Dave discuss the various ways to overengineer a simple website in 2015.

"I would throw a little React in there, too"

"Some kind of node stack in there"

"Socket.io to talk to Firebase"

"...at a minimum"

"Put it on a Raspberry Pi"

"So when a new event is posted a little drone takes off"

"That is what I think would be necessary"

This is, of course, a sort of tongue in cheek assessment of web development in 2015. There's a slight—and perhaps growing—disdain for tools, frameworks, and rapidly changing techniques. Gone are the days of slicing and arranging images in a table. Gone are the days, mostly, of a main.js file containing a handful of carefully strewn together jQuery one liners. Web development today is serious business.

We have to consider display size, connection speed, delivery of assets, ways that we can package assets (what do we inline, what do we concatenate, when do we use a CDN?). How can we deliver rich experiences without compromising page speed or accessibility? What about using the same code on the server and the client (something that tools like React are making more achievable than ever). Web components? Responsive images? Responsive typography? What if I need to support IE8 (or worse)..?

These are just a few questions that keep me awake at night, anyway. It's a complicated subject, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface. Proliferation of tools and buzzwords is a result of that.

Anyways, this little snippet made me chuckle.

ShopTalk episode 170 (50:28)