SoTB26: It's 10PM: Do you know where your JavaScript is ?
This talk was presented by Zach Leatherman, who also created 11ty.dev
This talk is a historical survey of web technologies as told through the creation of an image comparison component.
This talk was super interesting. I never studied computer science formally, so a lot of the historical and technical specifics were new to me. Of course, I've encountered the issues presented in my day-to-day work, but I was unfamiliar with the specific vocabulary.
I gained a lot of context on the web development ecosystem. It's so interesting to watch the trends ebb and flow, especially over the last 15 or so years. The speaker did a really great job of boiling things down for a smooth 30 minute talk. He's obviously quite opinionated about the overuse of JS and client-side rendering that React introduced. But, I can't say I disagree with him. Lately, I've been streamlining my sites to use the least amount of client-side JS possible. My personal site, (anule.space)[https://anule.space], uses only HTML and CSS and a smidge of Javascript. This talk definitely validated my decision _.
Furthermore, it's important to maintain a level of skepticism towards the 'hot new thing'. I believe that the ability to be skeptical comes from experience that forms one's technical opinions. This year, my goal is to really solidify my technical opinions and choose a path. Will go through the references mentioned and build a deeper knowledge base on this topic.