Frontend Development

Part One - Javascript

Javascript is an unusual computer language that has evolved. It started life to provide functionality for the Netscape Browser in 1995. It sounds like a scripting version of the Java language. It is not. Although it appears to have syntax similarities, its architecture is completely different.

It has evolved and has progressively inherited the crown of complete domination of the frontend development arena. With the advent of ES6 some years ago, and being able to write modular Javascript, the language came of age. The use of many different frameworks and libraries have evolved swathes of web component libraries. These frameworks are really just Javascript. They are ways of achieving pretty much the same thing. And not just in the browser, but also in the app environment as well, for both frontend and backend. Javascript frontend frameworks are generally written in Javascript.

"Reactive" Frontends emulate the model of a "desktop application" where simple actions result in reflected updates to the database. This evolved in the late 1990s when Microsoft invented AJAX in 1996 in the Internet Explorer browser. It is a method of updating parts of a 'webpage' with small fetches of data, or updates to data. This must occur fast, and seamlessly to the user.

Web UI conventions and accessibility must be considered and implemented. Design must be flexible so that you do not need to touch the logic in order to change the design.  Separation of concerns is essential. An emergent technology that has evolved frontend development is Web Components which are elements of code, presentation and design that work atomically, which essentially means that changes to one Web Component do not affect other Web Components, and their functionality is thus encapsulated.  Web Components embody the separation of concerns that unleashes stability to a web application.

Next... exploring Web Component Architecture