To serve or not to serve, 2021 edition

Early Spring 2021 

Served HTML vs. Hard Coded Apps 

So last month, I wrote all about how dev technologies of the past still continue to hang on. So of course, this month, it's about the tsunami of new technologies that young devs and founders have to choose from.

 What's good? What's hype? What makes for better security, performance, user engagement, more money?!?! 

I've written extensively about React Native - particularly on my MyGoRe stack, serving off a Go backend with MySQL data. 

That was a few years ago (man, time flies when the world is coming to an end, huh?!) and since then, React Native has been challenged by Flutter, Go now jostles with Dart (or Spring Boot, or Rust?!) for attention, and SQL vs. NoSQL?! 

What's a developer to think? 

And, of course, served frameworks like Angular 2, ReactJS...and Vue. Just as we were all coping with having to learn yet another JS framework, just as we were trying to figure out if AngularJS is better than React or if VueJS is better and why...Vue now jumps into the hard coded race with Vue Native!  

It's good to work with. It's new, and there's lots of features it still needs - an opportunity, right?

But I would love feedback on why, exactly, it's different from React Native, never mind which one is better and why. I literally copy/pasted some React Native into a function from StackO (it's not the recipe, folks - it's the chef) and it compiled and ran fine! ...it didn't do anything, but it compiled at least. 

And just so everyone gets into the act, there's now NativeScript, which transforms good old fashioned Netscape javascript into native apps.

Meanwhile, in the pure hard coded arena... 

With Flutter 2, you can serve an app responsively - e.g. the app you load onto users' phones can now run in Firefox or Chrome. (Supposedly. I will be experimenting with that!) Add Firebase for a back end and you've got everything your business or your clients' business needs to take over the mobile world. Today. Until something radically new comes along and the debate starts again. 

Speaking of backend, isn't a good framework better than a fancy front-end framework? SpringBoot for Java, Flask for Python, and about 50 of 'em for Go...when routing is that simple from the back, what is the front doing to help?

All of which has got me off topic a bit - the topic is, is it better to serve responsive pages or to hard code apps? 

Is security really better? Sure, HTTP2 and HTTPS is making it harder for script kiddies to steal your info...but why would they bother when they can buy it from social media for pennies on the dollar? Not to mention that most hacks are inside jobs. 

Also, hard coded apps are resistant to ad blockers. Which is the entire point of making an app in the first place. Unless it's the kind of app that sells users' info to whoever wants it, and you don't want to make that kind of app, do you?!

Having said all that, app to Firebase connectivity (you don't use AWS, do you? Jeff Bezos has too much money already) seems to be good enough that a taste test might be insignificant. Not to say we won't try. 

Is performance better? This largely depends on the coder, but it's key to mention that despite the sudden popularity of Web Assembly, Wordpress sites aren't converting on a grand scale (it helps that WP just had a big makeover). Having said that, hard coded apps are far more stable than an HTML page generated by a server. The creation process tends to take a lot of the guesswork out of building the user interface! 

So I'm a hard coded guy, but your mileage may vary. Your local businesses (mostly run by the kinds of people who think smartphones are a fad) might not want to adapt until you can demonstrate to them that scaling apps can improve their outreach by a significant margin.