Understand the Next Phase of Web Development - Steve Sanderson - NDC London 2024

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AI Summary

Summary: Web Development Talk

Introduction

• Speaker: Steve, a developer architect at Microsoft, focusing on web technologies.
• Audience: Primarily web developers.
• Topics: Current web industry trends and future directions.

Web Applications

• Evolution of web UI:
  • Early ’90s: Server-rendered HTML using CGI, Perl, PHP.
  • Web 2.0 (~2005): JavaScript usage increased, libraries like jQuery emerged.
  • Client rendering frameworks: Backbone, Knockout, Angular introduced structure.
  • Modern client-side rendering: React popularized component-oriented architecture.
  • Current trend: Moving from client-heavy to server-and-client rendering.

Frameworks and Server-Side Rendering

• Frameworks like Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, and Blazor are focusing on server-side rendering.
• Server-side rendering is preferred for performance and compatibility with low-end devices.
• Progressive enhancement allows for client-side interactivity where needed.
• Streaming server-side rendering allows for rendering pages before all data is fetched.
• Enhanced navigation/form posts provide fluidity similar to client-side SPAs.
• Interactive Islands: Parts of the page can be interactive while others are server-rendered.

Web Assembly and Wazzy

• Web Assembly (Wasm) allows running code in browsers regardless of language.
• Wazzy (Web Assembly System Interface) enables Wasm to perform server tasks.
• Wazzy Preview 2 introduces the component model, allowing cross-language interoperability.
• Components are sandboxed and communicate through defined interfaces (wit files).

Practical Demonstration

• Built a Rust web server that calls a .NET component for timestamp and response content.
• Implemented a static file server in C# that serves markdown files.
• Used Go to format markdown into HTML.
• Showcased the potential for a cross-language package ecosystem with Wazzy.

Conclusion

• The web development landscape is evolving with a focus on performance and flexibility.
• Wazzy is shaping the future of server programming with its cross-language capabilities.