5 Thoughts About the Jamstack & Modern Web Development in 2021
#0: The What-Stack?
I've been an avid follower of Jamstack news since I first discovered it. It came on my radar last year as a buzz-word-worthy acronym for a web development philosophy: the JAM stood for Javascript, APIs & Markdown.
As I understood it, it was essentially simplifying some of the bloat creeping into the modern internet, particularly for smaller projects, but most certainly not limited by size. It remains easier for me to wrap my head around the JAM principles when I look at small blogs, ecommerce sites, portfolios, etc, but like the internet at large, there really aren't boundaries.
The appealing part to me during my foray deeper into the craft of web development lay in how sites were built from the ground up using de-coupled pieces.
All that is an oversimplification, but it's how I've wrapped my head around it. The acronym has since been dropped, and the term Jamstack remains as a philosophy rather than a strict definition of its components.
#1: Static Site Generators
These are the reason I came across the Jamstack at all. Static Site Generators let you build out a website and then generate it into static components, much like the early internet. With the addition of APIs, though, you can end up with fully functional, lightweight, and super fast sites.
As I have been learning a little bit about a lot of things in the software engineering and web development worlds, I have been thirsty to understand the underpinnings of how web sites and applications are made. I'll leave the ones and zeros to computer engineers, but I do like working on my knowledge base from close to the ground up. When I dove into HTML, CSS and Javascript, I begin to come across static site generators as a lightweight tooling to build extremely fast, responsive, and capable sites.
My business runs its online arm via a Wordpress e-commerce enabled site. We don't even utilize the blogging aspect, and we have a ton of plugins activating different tools that are important to us like analytics and e-commerce features.
As I begin to build out some sites using Hugo, a static site generator, I saw the opportunity to both learn some ground-level tooling as well as piece together web sites using only the tooling I needed for the project. If I needed an online store, I could just link up Snipcart with a little code and an API key. If I needed a more accessible content management system, I could do the same with Forestry rather than have to code everything in Markdown files.
Peeking under the hood and building things with Hugo has been a fun addition to my coding journey as well as my insatiable desire to just find new ways to do things.
#2: Price Efficiencies
I've been playing on the internet and building websites since the early 2000's when I was stumbling around Dreamweaver scratching my head. My longest stint with a web service was with Squarespace in the 2010's, and I got tired of paying hosting fees on a site I was really not doing much with.
I was flabbergasted when I found solutions like Github Pages and Netlify which allow for basically free hosting on small projects and pages. Pricing tiers on Netlify kick in for advanced features and permissions, but for somebody like me, learning to code, develop web apps and deploy projects onto the internet now became a little more delightful.
I fully expect and want to generate sales online one day, and when that time comes, I'll be happy to shell out whatever costs it takes to do the job at hand, but for the many projects, trial runs and apps before then, it is a breath of fresh air to not have the burden of a price tag attached to testing ideas.
#3: Accessibility
It is refreshing to be learning a skillset that not only requires no formal education, but indeed props up and celebrates those in its community who come from myriad backgrounds and educational levels.
I have a business degree which has served me well, and which I am grateful for, but when it comes to coding, I am incredibly grateful for the wealth of knowledge available. It's easier than ever to find how-to tutorials on practically any topic. In fact, I can't think of a time where I couldn't find a specific answer to my questions. It's usually just a matter of searching persistence and reading documentation.
I was an early user of MOOCs including Khan Academy and Codecademy to name a couple. And today, the proliferation of those types of educational platforms has been staggering. In terms of Jamstack specific education, it has been quite easy to access videos and blogs on very specific, niche things as I build my own personal toolkit.
#4: Creation & Entrepreneurship
This is what has drawn me toward the internet generally and web development via the Jamstack specifically. Nothing energizes me like building something from scratch. Be that a piece of music, a novel, a drawing or a website, I love building things.
I love the craft of it for the sake of art, and I love the opportunity to make a living through creating things. Each year, the ability to succeed seems to grow both in popularity and in accessibility. The Jamstack has opened my eyes to the infinite possibilities for solo-founder and small teams as well as the vast permutations of tech stacks available to go from ideation to functioning business.
P.S. Follow Me
I write about technology, education, podcasting, business and the internet on LinkedIn. Follow me as I carve out my own place in the e-commerce landscape. I hope to be making a living on the internet one of these days. For now, my day job is in the wonderful coffee world where I oversee a chain of specialty coffee shops and roastery.
#technology | #entrepreneurship | #webdevelopment | #jamstack | #solofounder | #javascript | #api | #markdown | #gohugo | #modernweb | #business
Very nice article! Like you, I only became aware of Jamstack principles after learning about the existence of Static Site Generators. I was first drawn by good reviews to Eleventy, but I could not fully wrap my head around and abandoned it for Hugo. For me, Hugo has had a pretty steep learning curve, but at least I could see what it was trying to do for me and just learn how I could get there. I did that by downloading a LOT of themes and looking at the code. I now plan to convert all of the sites I manage for my employer to Hugo (especially the Wordpress sites, which I had no part in creating and HATE)! ??
Great article! Jamstack is evolving from what- stack to the-stack so fast! We wrote about this here too https://agilitycms.com/resources/posts/the-meteoric-rise-of-jamstack
Get Good at Spreadsheets ??
3 年Thanks to ?? Brian Douglas, Anthony Campolo, Quincy Larson, Noah Hein and the myriad others paving new paths into the modern web. I have been enjoying creating content about the web as much as creating things for the web, and have been inspired by these guys and many others as they have done a stellar job doing the same. Thanks!