Our great sponsors
-
-
-
SurveyJS
Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.
-
-
I tried TypeScript, a great improvement for front-end development, but hard to use with popular Node / Express / MongoDB code. I also discovered JSDoc as a pragmatic alternative, especially for improving legacy code. I tried Preact as a replacement for React. I tried the infamous Tailwind CSS library. I tried JAMStack, failing to upgrade to eleventy 1.0 without breaking changes. I tried a lot, and I tried to set up scalable projects without using Webpack, which had been a constant annoyance in the past years as well. So far, so good.
While some people, either jokingly or out of ignorance, claimed PHP to be dead, the PHP community (specifically PHP-FIG, the PHP Framework Interop Group) pioneered the transition from a pragmatic, but chaotic, scripting language, to a modern, type-safe, programming language with coding standards, static analysis and great tooling. JavaScript followed in the same direction, still more chaotic and unsafe despite updated core syntax, unless you choose to use nothing but TypeScript (which in turn, renders most existing tutorials and code snippets useless). We might never see a JavaScript Framework Interop Group, as that would be too "opinionated" and JS folks just love to argue about best practices and coding styles, but at least most of TypeScript's feature should become part of JavaScript's core specification.
I tried TypeScript, a great improvement for front-end development, but hard to use with popular Node / Express / MongoDB code. I also discovered JSDoc as a pragmatic alternative, especially for improving legacy code. I tried Preact as a replacement for React. I tried the infamous Tailwind CSS library. I tried JAMStack, failing to upgrade to eleventy 1.0 without breaking changes. I tried a lot, and I tried to set up scalable projects without using Webpack, which had been a constant annoyance in the past years as well. So far, so good.
While I am still a fan of JAMStack and modern JavaScript development, including Node.js and TypeScript, I have many years of full-stack experience using classic stacks with server-side rendering using PHP and relational databases. And there are still many customers relying on this stack as well.