The Great Pendulum
2 days ago
- The author observed industry trends over 17 years, noting initial popularity of PHP and JavaScript, then rise of Django, Rails, and Coffeescript.
- Static typing and monoliths fell out of favor but have become popular again, indicating a pendulum swing.
- The industry overshot client-side rendering (React/SPAs) and is now swinging back with server-side approaches like HTMX and Hotwired.
- Several pendulum swings identified: static vs dynamic typing, monoliths vs microservices, cloud vs on-prem, compiled vs interpreted languages, server-side vs client-side rendering.
- The author hopes that over time, pendulum amplitudes decrease and the industry finds equilibrium, but acknowledges a tendency to overshoot.