Due to the pandemic, thousands of businesses went online to avoid closure and remain competitive in the market. This transition strengthened competition between companies and technological solutions that include programming languages and frameworks.
So running a web project has become more difficult. CTOs and Product Owners may feel FOMO (fear of missing out), considering the number of technology trends out there. The high price of any mistake sends a chill down their spine, especially in the case of large-scale projects.
1. Bet on Optimal Infrastructure
For the evaluation and comparison of architectural alternatives, we must consider many factors, namely: performance, scalability, capacity, maintenance costs, etc. The ambiguity here could create confusion. For example, a microservice architecture without DevOps does not always work faster. In terms of development speed, a cloud platform is one of the best options, although it involves considerable expenses. There are two types of infrastructure services such as backend as a service and platform as a service.
BaaS , also known as Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS), provides software development company with a service that connects the web or mobile application to the cloud service with the help of API (application programming interfaces) or SDK (software developer kits). By applying BaaS, a company can reduce time to market and costs spent on infrastructure management. Among the BaaS, Parse, Firebase, AWS Amplify, Azure Mobile Apps, CloudKit stand out.
FaaS (Functions as a Service) is built into Baas which is another type of cloud computing service. It provides a platform for the development, execution and management of application functionality. This model allows the creation of microservices applications.
PaaS (Platform as a Service) provides infrastructure for application development, allowing customers to design, test, and host. This platform-based service runs as software on a public infrastructure, private or public cloud service. Through PaaS, the development process becomes faster while deployment costs are reduced.
Below you can see an example of how features can be managed across various types of infrastructure. Note that functions are named generically.
2. JAMstack for monolithic architecture
The term JAMstack was introduced by Mathias Billman, CEO of Netlify, and implies the combination of three basic elements: JavaScript, API and Markup. It could be seen as a methodology or even a philosophy of fast, secure and scalable web and application development. By applying JAMstack, developers don’t bother with back-end server logic and focus on the presentation layer. Most of the functionality is maintained client-side, and other work-intensive features are done through third-party APIs. Therefore, many prominent SaaS applications and websites have already been built with JAMstack.
And this trend offers strong prospects for web and app development, combining best tools and technologies such as React, Webpack, React-router, GraphQL in a single solution.
3. Extensive use of static site generators
Static site generators (SSG) are software applications for creating HTML pages based on the template or a component and a content source. SSG could be a sufficient alternative to database-based CMS (Content Management System).
The application of SSG is an increasingly popular trend to develop new class or web applications. Static site generators allow you to get the page view in advance and serve it ahead of time, without having to wait for the page to be requested and generated. Refers to any view of the website at a time of construction. Due to advance rendering, websites developed with SSG have a higher level of security against malware.
The task of managing large-scale content projects is simplified through the application of web frameworks, from Gatsby, Gridsome and Next to Nuxt. Notably, Figma and Digital Ocean are based on GatsbyJS, which is known as a fast and fluid framework with an advanced ecosystem.
4. Switch to Headless CMS
Companies that opt for a headless CMS win by implementing scalable and flexible solutions. In headerless CMS, which is known as a back-end content management system, the “header” of the presentation layer and the “body” of the content repository are separated from each other.
Users can manage APIs and content through the interface provided in headless CMS However, in this solution the content does not receive attention in terms of how it is displayed. The main idea is to store and deliver content, allowing publishers to develop it together.
5. Uniting Serverless and Microservices
Back-end development trends have moved from monolith to microservices over the past few years. Any serverless microservice sits on the infrastructure of a serverless provider. The launch starts if the application needs it. Enterprises opt for FaaS when they are interested in high deployment speed and low investments, or if load curves are a mystery. By applying serverless microservices, you break out of vendor lock-in and can choose Lambda Serverless, Google Cloud Functions, or Microsoft Azure Functions depending on the project.
6. Access to custom APIs
GraphQL is used to provide descriptions of the data in the API. It can be taken as an alternative to REST-based architecture. Unlike REST, GraphQL is a suitable tool for requesting specific data.
Most applications need to obtain complex data to render a page. And thanks to GraphQL, frontends get the data needed in a query without undue delay which helps users to receive faster applications.
7. Web development roadmap adjustment
Considering web application development in terms of front-end shows that creating a consistent product style is the challenge. This is especially the case in large organizations where numerous teams work on products. So, to create a digital product with an attractive design, software development company need a team with deep experience in design systems.
Style guides in this case allow companies to find and use the necessary libraries and documents. The guide is code that is maintained under version control. Therefore, compared to any simple document, it is clearer and easier to maintain. In web development, the application of design systems has become an optimal approach for cooperation between teams and management, resulting in better focus.
8. Facilitate Complex Solutions
Implementing AI solutions in applications requires a large amount of computational resources. These tools are beneficial but expensive. In addition to standard rates, providers charge transaction tax fees. And any new tool in the architecture increases overall costs. Some of the need for complex tools can be avoided and teams should take this into account.
It is notable that solving ML challenges does not always require a neural network or a GPU. A combination of simple models and tools along with appropriate Python code is sufficient for these tasks.
Regarding legacy application modernization, the “outside-in” to perform the task and the old code is wrapped in the new one. The alternative for legacy systems is the “inside-out” which involves incorporating the beginning of the new SPA (single page applications) in the HTML document that contains the previous one.
9. Research new opportunities carefully
Low-code or no-code platforms are gaining attention. They are suitable for solving specific challenges in very limited areas. Low-code platforms allow businesses to develop applications and processes with the help of a visual interface and simple logic instead of intensive coding.
Software development services intensively create unique solutions or apply a larger framework as a single spa. Import Maps, a new standard that helps in both cases, is now available. In both cases, a new standard could be useful.
Importing maps for micro frontends results in precise separation of concerns. The JS code points to the part to import and the script tag in the HTML shows where to load the interfaces from. The server is used for HTML generation, so dynamic settings can be applied during rendering. Today, Chrome keeps importing maps. Anyway, the SystemJS polyfill makes wider use possible.
10. Exploitation of business tools
Sentry is the optimal tool for many teams that require front-end error reporting. Errors detected on different end-user devices are classified and processed through built-in functions: error rejection patterns and grouping tools. Thanks to the addition of Sentry in the CD pipeline, debugging becomes more convenient and efficient because it is easier to find out which software errors are related. Sentry is Saas, but guarantees public access and is free for smaller use cases.
MLflow is an open source platform tool consisting of separate components, namely: a collection of runs, a collection of metrics and projects, and a registry to store and discover them in a central repository.
MLflow supports open standards and could be combined with various ecosystem tools. MLflow is available on AWS and Azure and is improving rapidly, making it suitable for modern projects. The main concern related to MLflow is a massive unification into a single platform, including model scoring and serving.
CI servers and development tools turn the range of simple cloud-hosted services into complex code-defined pipeline servers that support fleets of construction machines. An extensive list of options is already available, so the introduction of GitHub Actions was perceived quite critically. Anyway, GitHub Actions allow developers to handle small projects.
The integrated tool is located in the source code repository. The community has rallied around this feature, leading to user-contributed tools. These tools are being deployed through the GitHub Marketplace.
Git code and history are available for export on the alternate host, but the development workflow in GitHub Actions does not have the same feature. Additionally, developers must determine if a project is large enough to apply a standalone pipeline tool.
Future of web development
.NET 5 represents a significant step forward in integrating .NET Core and .NET Framework into a single platform. Organizations should begin developing a strategy to migrate their development environments, a fragmented combination of frameworks depending on the deployment target, to a single version of .NET 5 or 6 when it becomes available. The advantage of this approach will be a common development platform, regardless of the intended environment: Windows, Linux, cross-platform mobile (via Xamarin) or the browser (with Blazor). While polyglot development will continue to be the preferred approach for companies with the engineering culture to support it, others will find it more efficient to standardize on a single platform for .NET development.
Google has given another recent award to web developers in its Flutter 2.0 version. Until now, Flutter has mainly supported native iOS and Android apps. However, the Flutter team’s vision is to support building apps on all platforms. Flutter for Web is a step in that direction because it is suitable for building apps for iOS, Android, and the browser from the same code base, achieving business goals.
Creating forms for the web remains one of the perennial challenges of front-end development, particularly with React. React Hook Form can replace previously used Formik. React Hooks already existed when React Hook Form was created, so you could use them as a first-class concept: the framework is registering and tracking form elements as uncontrolled components through a hook, which significantly reduces the need to return to render. It is also quite lightweight in size and the amount of boilerplate code needed. Therefore, developers have at their disposal a modern tool to provide a seamless user experience for any enterprise web project.
