The web we left behind by Kyle Jacobson (ESNEXT 2020)

Observations from someone who has been building for the web for 20 years.

We keep engineering more complexity and then using complex solutions to abstract it away for a while until we build new complexity on top of the new abstractions. If we zoom out enough, the overall pictures looks less like overall simplification.

It’s interesting to view “progress” through this lens (screenshot from talk): a pile of abstractions, each hiding the previous layer’s complexity. Either way, Kyle’s sentiment resonates with me quite often:

I'm not tired of building products for the web. I'm tired of being a modern JavaScript developer...Most days, I don't seem to be very good at my job.