Web development in 2021 is dominated by frameworks — JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Angular, CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Materialize, J

Web Frameworks: Why You Don’t Always Need Them

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Style Pass

2021-07-07 06:30:01

Web development in 2021 is dominated by frameworks — JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and Angular, CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Materialize, JAMstack frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby, and many others. But one new company, Yax.com, is advocating for a “no-framework” web standards approach to web development. Upon closer inspection, it offers a refreshing “back to basics” method of building a website or app. The question is: Can it work at scale?

Yax.com was founded last year by Daniel Kehoe, who has had a long history in web development — even including an email exchange with Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. He’s a respected voice in the Ruby on Rails community, after starting the RailsApps open source project and writing the book Learn Ruby on Rails about a decade ago. But somewhere along the way, Kehoe tired of the frameworks approach to web development.

“I’m no longer teaching anyone to build applications with Rails,” Kehoe wrote in a long article describing what he calls “the stackless way.” Instead, he’s now focused on helping people build web apps and websites using “the newest features built into web browsers.”