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History of Web Tech: Why web is what it is

Why did Tim Burners Lee invent the web?​

  • "Information Management: A proposal": Wanted people to standardise and network on their notebooks
    • Idea of hypertext server
  • First browsers invented stylesheets, built-in scripting
    • Next innovations were inline images
    • Was there a standardization process?

How did web programming work?​

  • HTML
  • PHP invented as a standardised scripting language in 1995
    • Reasons for PHP: simplicity, ease of use and integration with HTML. Open source, connects to databases and had a large community to contribute to the growth of the language.
    • What has replaced PHP in the modern web dev ecosystem?
      • Other server side languages like Django, Ruby (+ Ruby on Rails) and Javascript (with Node.js)
    • Why is PHP being replaced?
      • Type safety, scalability, security
  • GUI wizard for frontend was invented
    • Frontpage 1996: First web GUI wizard
    • Javascript was invented as a scripting language for the netscape browser
    • CSS was invented
  • Accessibility was codified into law
  • ASP.NET 2002 --> Active Server Pages is too messy, not object oriented
    • Developed by microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic websites, applications and services
    • Sends BLOB of UI state from server to client --> Client performs action --> Updated BLOB is sent back to server to process updates --> New UI state is rendered and sent to client --> ...
  • Ruby On Rails 2004: Invention of server side programming
    • Schema migrations, automated tests, .yaml as config
  • Javascript is reborn 2008
    • Web 2.0 --> Companies can extract value from user generated content
      • They want good UIs because that attracts users
    • Google maps is reverse engineered --> AJAX: Asyncronous Javascript and XML
      • Requests in the background, update page dynamically
    • JQuery: Compress web API across browsers --> simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation across different platforms
    • Browser dev tools?
      • Firebug 2007: Invention of inspect element with console, HTML view, network tracers
    • Responsive Design and Mobile?
      • Had to create mobile specific design --> Mobile first design standardized in 2010
  • Invention of Node (javascript moves to the server)
    • Javascript is everywhere
  • Evolution of frontend frameworks
  • Sophistication explosion 2015: Instagram used webpack and npm in 2013 so
    • Typescript: Javascript with types
    • Kubernetes: We need to learn cloud orchestration
    • Webpack module bundler: We need bundling systems because typescript is compiled
  • What reduces load on web developers? 2020-?
    • What if browsers handle framework / build jobs
      • HTTP3, web transport
      • Type erasure: run typescript in a browser without compiling
      • CSS nesting: Bake SASS into the browser (e.g. nest selectors)
    • Metaframeworks? So many frameworks we use frameworks to manage our frameworks.
      • NextJS, SvelteKit, Astro, etc.
        • SvelteKit: Supports both serverside (ASP.NET) and clientside (Javascript) rendering
    • Cloud Edge Delivery