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Christian Heilmann: Let’s make a simpler, more accessible web

Christian Heilmann gave this talk at Typo3 Developer Days. I’m linking it up because it strikes an already stricken nerve in me. The increasing complexity of web development has an inverse relationship with the decreasing number of entry points for those getting into web development.

I love how Christian compares two hypothetical development stacks.

Then

index.html

Now

Get the right editor with all the right extensions
Set up your terminal with the right font and all the cool dotfiles
Install framework flügelhorn.js with bundler wolperdinger.io
Go to the terminal and run packagestuff –g install
Look at all the fun warning messages and update dependencies
Doesn’t work? Go SUDO, all the cool kids are …
Don’t bother with the size of the modules folder
Learn the abstraction windfarm.css – it does make you so much more effective
Use the templating language funsocks – it is much smaller than HTML
Check out the amazing hello world example an hour later…

He’s definitely a bit glib, but the point is solid. Things are more complex today than they were, say, ten years ago. I remember struggling with Grunt back then and thinking I’d never get it right. I did eventually, and my IDE was never the same after that.

It’s easy to get swept up in the complexity, even for those with experience in the field:

This world is unfortunately becoming lost or, at least, degraded — not because it is no longer possible to view the source of a webpage, but because that source is often inscrutable, even on simple webpages.

— Pixel Envy “A View Source Web”

Christian’s post reminds me that the essence of the web is not only still alive but getting better every day:

Browsers are constantly updated.

The web standardisation process is much faster than it used to be.

We don’t all need to build the next killer app. Many a framework promises scaling to infinity and only a few of us will ever need that.

He goes on to suggest many ways to remove complexity and abstractions from a project. My biggest takeaway is captured by a single headline:

The web is built on resilient technologies – we just don’t use them

Which recalls what Molly White said earlier this year that there’s always an opportunity to swing the pendulum back:

The thing is: none of this is gone. Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return. Better, yet: we can restore the things we loved about the old web while incorporating the wonderful things that have emerged since, developing even better things as we go forward, and leaving behind some things from the early web days we all too often forget when we put on our rose-colored glasses.

We can return. We can restore all the things. So, tell me: do you take the red pill or the blue one?

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