It's crazy how web development has changed from past 35 years. In every 10yrs, multiple changes happened and many things became obsolete so fast.
I was having this talk with a friend last week and I thought why not start with this as my first blog post.
After a reaaally long procrastination. Here is my brief rundown on how web development has changed over the time.
Foundation Era (1990 - 1995) Birth of WWW
Picture this: It’s 1990. Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau are cooking up something in the CERN labs that would change the world forever. the World Wide Web.
By the end of the year, they had built:
- The first web browser
- HTML to structure pages
- HTTP to transfer those pages
- The first web server, hosted on a NeXT computer with a handwritten label screaming: 👉 "This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!"
Developers wrote raw HTML in basic text editors without syntax highlighting or autocompletion. There were only 18 HTML tags to play with, and styling? Forget it! CSS wasn’t even a thing yet.
Deployment was manual. Developers uploaded files via FTP and prayed they looked okay in the browser. Content, presentation, and logic were all jumbled together, and version control was… making backup copies with dates in the file names. 😅
But things started looking up in 1994 when CSS was proposed, giving hope for separating content from design. Then, in 1995, Brendan Eich gave us JavaScript, which brought basic interactivity to the web. Game-changer!
Fun Fact: Brendan Eich created JavaScript for Netscape Navigator 2. Initially developed in just ten days and originally called Mocha (later LiveScript, then JavaScript).
The Enhancement Era (1996-2005): Dynamic Content and Design Control
As the web matured into its second half-decade, things got more dynamic and interactive.
- CSS gained traction, allowing developers to move away from ugly table-based layouts.
- PHP, ASP, and CGI scripts made server-side programming possible, allowing for user authentication, database connections, and dynamic content.
- But, cross-browser compatibility? A nightmare! Developers had to write different code for Internet Explorer, Netscape, and others, a frustrating time for sure.
The Framework Revolution (2006-2015): JavaScript Ascendance
By the mid-2000s, developers were tired of browser quirks and clunky interfaces. Enter jQuery in 2006, with its motto:
👉 “Write less, do more.”
It simplified DOM manipulation and abstracted away browser inconsistencies. Life was good!
Then after 2008, many big players entered:
- V8 Engine (2008): Google’s lightning-fast JS engine changed the game, enabling JavaScript to run on servers via Node.js.
- AngularJS (2010): Introduced concepts like two-way data binding and dependency injection, making complex front-end apps possible.
- React (2013): Facebook’s answer to the chaos, bringing component-based architecture and virtual DOM magic.
- Vue.js (2014): Struck a balance between simplicity and power, attracting devs who wanted something less complex than Angular or React.
Developer tools also leveled up, with Chrome DevTools making it easier to debug JavaScript and analyze performance. Life as a web developer finally felt a bit more manageable!
The Modern Component Era (2016-2025): Specialization and Optimization
From 2016 onward, web development entered a phase where component-based architectures became the undisputed king. This era wasn’t just about building cool UIs. It was about specialization and optimization to tame the growing complexity of modern apps.
In 2016, Angular 2 dropped, and it was a complete rewrite. Angular ditched the old-school AngularJS vibes and fully embraced TypeScript with a more modular, component-driven approach.
React and Vue didn’t just sit around either. They matured like fine wine, with better tooling, bigger communities, and rock-solid ecosystem support. React Hooks (2019) shook things up by offering a more functional, elegant way to manage state and side effects. It was a game-changer that made class components feel ancient overnight.
Svelte (2019) threw the virtual DOM out the window and went for a compile-time approach to reactivity. Smaller bundles, faster runtime — it was like the cool kid who didn’t follow the usual rules but still aced the game.
By 2020, frameworks like Solid and HTMX started exploring fresh approaches to interactivity, pushing the boundaries of what web apps could do. These innovations weren’t just alternatives — they were rewriting the rules of frontend development.
This era also saw build tools level up. Webpack became the go-to bundler, not just for JavaScript but for CSS, images, and everything in between.
Babel made sure devs could write modern JS without worrying about compatibility, seamlessly transpiling ES6+ to older browser-friendly versions.
But the real MVP was TypeScript. It exploded in popularity, helping devs catch errors early and making large codebases far easier to manage. Static typing became a must-have rather than a nice-to-have.
Web development didn’t stop at code. It embraced DevOps head-on.
Docker made it possible to run apps consistently across dev, testing, and production.
Kubernetes handled scaling and managing containerized apps like a boss.
CI/CD pipelines became the industry norm, automating testing and deployments with tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins.
This automation meant fewer deployment errors and faster, more reliable releases. Teams could iterate and push updates without sweating about breaking production.
By the 2020s, JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) and serverless architectures flipped the web development game yet again. JAMstack apps combined the speed and security of static sites with the power of APIs and client-side JavaScript.
Static site generators like Next.js, Gatsby, and Nuxt.js made it possible to build blazing-fast apps that could still handle dynamic functionality through APIs. The best of both worlds!
Conclusion: Reflections on 35 Years of Web Development
After three and a half decades of web development, we’ve gone from basic HTML pages to mind-blowing interactive web apps that rival native app experiences. But through all the chaos and change, some things never budged:
- HTML, CSS, and JavaScript remain the backbone of the web.
- Cross-browser issues, performance optimization, and security challenges? Still here, but with fancier tools to manage them.
- The developer experience went from editing plain text files to using integrated environments packed with real-time feedback, automated testing, and powerful debugging tools.
The biggest transformation?
We’ve moved from document-centric websites that just displayed information to application-centric web apps that deliver rich, interactive experiences.
Modern web apps don’t just show data, they think, react, and adapt to users like never before.
As we look back, one thing is clear: web development is a never-ending cycle of innovation. The principles of progressive enhancement, separation of concerns, and component-based architectures have stood the test of time.
So much has happened so quickly that I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of details.
And I can’t help but wonder, the devs who actually lived through those drastic changes must have a completely different perspective. So, if you were part of that wild ride, what was your favorite part? Drop your thoughts below! 😃👇
