With more and more businesses moving on to e-commerce especially due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is safe to say that the future for web development and web developers is looking very bright. With this rise in web development, there is also a rise in the trends and ways that web development is being done. Anyone who wants to program or build a web application is now being faced with a dilemma on choosing the best technology that will help bring their vision to a fully functioning web site or web application.
When deciding on a technology stack, there are many options to consider, for instance you can either opt for customizing ready solutions (CMS) or even invest in personalized custom software, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
Although it is essential to be aware and in knowledge of all trends regarding your field of choice and career, it is also prudent that you don’t always jump the bandwagon whenever you see a new technology or web development trend. So to make things easier, we are here to talk about some of the web development trends you need to know about in 2021
Is JavaScript the future of Frontend?
In the web development world, Frontend programming has always been considered easier than backend (although that idea is changing now). There are a variety of markup languages, styles, and an assortment of client-side scripts that web developers can use in their programming. At this point in the timeline of web development it is safe to assume that HTML5 and Sass/Less aren’t going to experience any major changes in the future.
So that leaves us with JavaScript and whether or not it will become the most used or top language in frontend programming?
It seems like that just might be the case after all. Thanks to the increasing popularity of Hypescript Typescript, it might even overcome the very language it was founded on. Nowadays clients are demanding error-free and typesafe frontend coding. Clients want a free of hassle website, a website that won’t break in case there was some bug or edge-case scenario that the programmers didn’t foresee. It might even help cut down the costs and expenses of extensive testing but that doesn’t mean that testing is totally avoidable. Like most languages Typescript is also not without its flaws.
On the other hand, there are some newer and safer as well as efficient ways to write up front end scripts. Languages such as Dart or Elm are foreseen to become mature rather gradually and we believe that these languages will stay popular in the web development although not as popular as JavaScript, regardless if you abhor red ink and want to type up a error proof frontend code then you are free to choose either of the two.
WebAssembly is a new coding language that be run easily in modern web browsers, it is a somewhat low-level assembly language that has a rather compact binary format and can be run with near-native performance and aid in providing languages such as C/C++, C# and Rust with a compilation target that makes it easier for programmers to run these languages on the internet. WASM can prove to be a effective solution of web-based tools like Figma, which was considered to be the domain for desktop software only in the past years.
Going back to JavaScript and its variety of libraries it is safe to assume that there will be mainly two paths for building a web application frontend, founding on React and Angular. Vue has already been lagging behind and it is highly probable that this trend will continue in 2021 as well.
We are also looking forward to the future development and work being done on the library we know as Preact. With its increasing popularity we hope that this solution will gain more attention from developers, considering that website loading time will still be a significant issue in the future.
Although considering JavaScript the main cause of concern at the moment seems to be connecting the language to Safety. The most trendy package manager NPM was recorded to have broken 1 million packages in the year 2020, and the numbers are only growing bigger with time. With the pace they are going it is only going to be a matter of time, until someone manages to run something malicious and uses it on a significant part of the web developer’s machines.
To sum it all, we have talked about some future trends in web development that you need to look out for in 2021. With the main focus being on front-end trends, selecting an efficient and effective technology stack is not only easier but it also results in a more scalable update code. Consequently helping developers avoid wasting valuable time in rewriting the entire product to a new technology. Hence, this is why it is wise to pay attention and keep up with the hottest trends in web development if you are interested in or planning to build a website or web application any time soon.
