GoKawiil2026-04-18
It was simple back then
What are the roots of this Complexity? How have we arrived here?
Once upon a time, at the dawn of the web, browsers and websites were simple. There were no apps really, but mostly static pages - collections of .html files sprinkled with some CSS for better look. These websites were text-based for the most part, linking to other similar documents available on the World Wide Web. Everything was plain and simple; static documents, referring to each other.
Then slowly, step by step, more and more interactivity was added; first came forms and inputs, not long afterwards - JavaScript programming language (both in 1995).
At this stage, Complexity was still low. Web systems developed then consisted mostly of:
.html documents and templates .css file or files some .js scripts HTTP servers to make these static files available and handle state altering requests from forms databases to store system's state
Crucially, the UI source code of these first websites and apps was mostly the same as the output files interpreted and executed in the browser - runtime target. Even with the use of PHP and templating languages/systems (like Mustache), it looked very similar to the target HTML files, displayed by the browser:
<h1>{{page.title}}</h1> <div> <p>{{name.label}}: {{user.name}}</p> <p>{{email.label}}: {{user.email}}</p> <p>{{language.label}}: {{user.language}}</p> </div> <a href="/sign-out">{{sign-out}}</a>
A templating engine - just a library available in the server runtime/environment - turns this into a specific HTML page:
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