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Graham Morby
Graham Morby

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The server-side web app

Back when I started developing the internet was so small and most of my coding was simply done to remove glitches or get past a boss on my Amiga 1200. I remember the day I got my 256kbs AOL line and how I suddenly had this wealth of information at my fingertips. I started my journey with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, slowly moving into PHP to help serve some data to my websites. It worked! It flowed and it worked.

SEO was never a problem, responsive frameworks were not needed, this was pre-2008 and pre Steve Jobs with his iPhone. This was CRT screens and making websites and sometimes using GIFS to animate. The biggest thing doing interactive sites was Adobe Flash, I could never get into that myself but some friends loved it. But again Steve Jobs and his iPhone changed that game and flash is no more.

But we still built great content and readable great code. The sites were stable, we used four languages, sometimes a little JQuery was thrown in the mix but it worked and delivered good content. The other fact was developers knew what developers had to do, there was no divide, no my framework is better than yours, we all had a job and we got it done.

This isn't a rant about modern web tactics or me walking down memory lane, it's me asking does the server-side four language site still have a home. Is there a need for it, or will be forever poly filling the latest framework to do what we did 20 years ago.

What are your thoughts?

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