Christian Heilmann: Let’s make a simpler, more accessible web

Christian Heilmann gave this talk at Typo3 Developer Days. I’m linking it because it strikes a chord with me that is already sensitive. The increasing complexity of web development has an inverse relationship with the decreasing number of entry points for those entering web development.

I love how Christian compares two hypothetical development stacks.

Now

Get the right editor with all the right extensions
Set up your terminal with the right font and all the cool dotfiles
Install framework flügelhorn.js with bundler wolperdinger.io
Go to the terminal and run packagestuff –g install
Check out all the nice warning messages and update dependencies
Not working? Go do SUDO, all the cool kids are …
Don’t worry about the size of the modules folder
Learn the windfarm.css abstraction – it will make you so much more effective
Use the funsocks templating language – it is much smaller than HTML
Check out the awesome ‘Hello World’ preview an hour later…

It’s a bit slippery, sure, but the point is clear. Things are more complex today than they were, say, ten years ago. I remember struggling with Grunt back then, thinking I’d never get it right. I eventually did, and my IDE has never been the same since.

Even if you have experience in this area, it’s easy to get caught up in the complexity:

Unfortunately, this world is being lost or at least degraded. Not because it is no longer possible to view the source of a web page, but because that source is often inscrutable, even on simple web pages.

— Pixel Envy “A source of display on the web”

Christian’s post reminds me that the essence of the web is not only still alive, but is getting better every day:

Browsers are constantly being updated.

The standardization process for the Web is happening much faster than before.

We don’t all need to build the next killer app. Many frameworks promise infinite scaling, and only a few of us will ever need it.

He goes on to suggest many ways to remove complexity and abstraction from a project. My biggest takeaway is summed up in a single headline:

The web is built on resilient technologies – we just don’t use them

That brings to mind what Molly White said earlier this year: there is always a way to turn the tide:

The thing is: none of this has gone away. Nothing has changed on the web to stop us from going back. If anything, it has become a lot easier. We can return. Better yet, we can restore the things we loved about the old web while integrating the wonderful things that have come along since then. That way, we can build even better things in the future, and leave behind some of the early web stuff that we all too often forget when we look through rose-colored glasses.

We can return. We can fix everything. So tell me, will you take the red pill or the blue pill?

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