Noah Pauls

A foundational and inspriational read for developers trying to embrace the web. the whole thing really builds up to the rejection of single-page apps as a preferred web architecture, instead pointing to progressive enhancement as the best way to realize the ultimate promise of the web.

Chapter 4 is especially relevant to me; I started tinkering with the web at a time when a SPA was the recommended way to build a content-focused blog. What an odd detour the web development world has taken over the past few years.

I was challenged by the section on the web as a platform:

Thinking of the web as a platform is a category error. A platform like Flash, iOS, or Android provides stability and certainty, but only under a very specific set of circumstances—your software must be accessed with the right platform‐specific runtime environment. The web provides no such certainty, but it also doesn’t restrict the possible runtime environments.

Platforms are controlled and predictable. The World Wide Web is chaotic and unpredictable.

The web is a hot mess.

This is a semantic distinction more than anything, but it's important to understand to break out of the "websites as apps" frame of mind. Postel's Law means that the web, by it's very nature, allows far more variability in input than a traditional programming platform.

Perhaps calling it the web "medium" is more appropriate. That's how I like to think of it nowadays.