Mind the Tools
HOW THE TECHNOLOGY WE USE TO BUILD THE WEB
SHAPES THE WEB
❦
Alex Payne
Edge of the Web 2009 – Perth, Australia

Introduction
❖ Working on Twitter since
January, 2007.
❖ Working on the Web since age
12 (1995).
❖ A bit nuts about programming
languages.
❖ Co-author of Programming Scala
from O’Reilly (October, 2009).

How does language
shape what we do?

“That’s demented!”

Agenda
i. A little history.
ii. A tour of the present.
iii. Gazing into the future.
iv. How languages and tools shaped the web.

Programming Languages
of the Web
A Brief History

In The Beginning...
❖ HTML born in 1990-91.
❖ First proper public specification of HTML arrives in
1993.
❖ NCSA Mosaic 1.0 released in April, 1993, just as CERN
announces that the Web will be free and open.
❖ CGI standard emerges in 1993, enabling the earliest web
applications.

The CGI Era
❖ 1993 - 1997.
❖ Most common languages for CGI scripts:
❖ C
❖ Perl
❖ Reduces data to key-value pairs.
❖ The primordial soup of web applications.

The Applet Era
❖ 1995 - 1997.
❖ A showcase for the Java language.
❖ The first “dynamic” content on the Web.
❖ Solid security model, impressive demos, but never really
took hold.
❖ Killed by Microsoft’s unbundling and the rise of Flash
in the early naughts.

The Flash Era
❖ 1998 - present
❖ Started out as simply a solution for vector-based
animation.
❖ For a while, a competitor to “DHTML”.
❖ Now used mostly for delivering video and games.
❖ Deep concern in the Web standards and FOSS
communities about its use.

The JavaScript Era
❖ 1998 - present.
❖ From animations and client-side form validations to
web application greatness.
❖ Much maligned, must misunderstood.
❖ Now one of the most widely-deployed languages in
existence.

The PHP Era
❖ 1998 - 2005
❖ The first programming language built explicitly for web
development.
❖ Decent performance, fast development cycle.
❖ Encourages poor programming practices.
❖ Also spawned ASP.

The LAMP Era
❖ 2001 - 2007
❖ Python catches up to PHP.
❖ Perl is still around.
❖ Generic interfaces like FCGI enable a “right tool for
the job” mentality.
❖ Open source web servers and databases have matured.

The Age of Frameworks
❖ 2005 - present.
❖ Ruby on Rails, Django, and many copycats.
❖ Codifying best practices, treating web application
development like “real” software development.
❖ Increased productivity, but at the cost of vendor
dependency.

Timeline
Flash (ActionScript)
1998 – 2009
CGI (Perl, C)
1993 – 1997
JavaScript
1998 – 2009
The Web opens up
1993
PHP
Applets (Java) 1998 – 2005
1995 – 1997 LAMP (Python, PHP, Perl)
2001 – 2007
frameworks (Rails, Django, et. al.)
2005 – 2009
HTML born VRML
1990 – 1991 1995 – 1997
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Charted Territory
Typing Object Model Compilation
Perl dynamic class-based interpreted
Python dynamic class-based interpreted
PHP dynamic class-based interpreted
Ruby dynamic class-based interpreted
JavaScript dynamic prototype-based interpreted
ActionScript static prototype-based compiled
Java static class-based compiled

Lessons of History
❖ Dynamic, interpreted languages have been
dominant on the Web.
❖ Languages built exclusively for the Web face
tough criticism (PHP, JavaScript).
❖ No one technology lasts forever – and that’s a good
thing.

The Present

Frameworks Everywhere
❖ Application frameworks: Rails, Django.
❖ JavaScript frameworks: jQuery, YUI.
❖ CSS frameworks: Blueprint, Baseline.
❖ Typography frameworks (?!): TypeKit, sIFR.

APIs Everywhere
❖ Not just for mashups anymore.
❖ Eat your own dog food: API as systems architecture.
❖ Letting data escape the browser model.

JavaScript Everywhere
❖ Use the same language, front-to-back.
❖ Perfect for AJAX-heavy applications.
❖ JSON as universal object format.
❖ A bit untested, but AppJet and others are paving the
way.

Code Generation
❖ Use the same language for everything, but compile
down to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
❖ Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
❖ Popular in the Ruby and functional language
communities.

Refining Standards
❖ HTML 5, JavaScript 1.9
❖ new challenges:
❖ mobile
❖ geolocation
❖ heavyweight web applications (GMail, etc.)
❖ old and difficult challenges:
❖ internationalization
❖ accessibility

The Web Outside The Browser
❖ Taking web development to
other realms:
❖ the desktop (AIR, Titanium)
❖ mobile (Palm webOS)
❖ Why build your own
development model?

The Future

The Post-Framework Era
❖ Message queues connecting heterogeneous components.
❖ Trickle-down SOA.
❖ Back to LAMP, only language doesn’t matter this time.
❖ And, yes, finally, the Cloud.

The Native Era
❖ Google Native Client.
❖ Getting video out of Flash.
❖ Mobile apps.

The Functional Era
❖ Functional languages fit the Web development model.
❖ It’s taken time for the old FP languages (Lisp, Haskell,
OCaml) to build up Web tooling.
❖ Newer functional languages (Scala, Clojure) are already
productive and competitive for Web work.
❖ Even newer FP languages are aimed squarely at the Web
(Arc, Ur).

How Does All This Shape The Web?

Dynamism.

Tension.

Heterogeneity.

Evolution.

Tools matter.
Language matters.

Thank you!
❦
Questions?