I remember all the pain and suffering I used to go through in the old days looking for a place to park my server side code, leading me to eventually invest in my own servers, and rack at a datacenter. All of this changed with Amazon S3 & EC2. After 2008 I migrated everything to the cloud, selling all my servers, and never looking back.
As I complete two stories, one one an innovative API deployment platform called Blockspring, and the other on automation platform Temboo’s new JavaScript SDK for the 100+ API platforms Temboo connects with. Both of these evolutions in technology, and evolution in cloud computing, reflect one possible future where the concept of “server side code” will fade away, bringing us closer to a more programmable web.
While there will always be robust server side frameworks, I’m seeing a shift to where the need to have server side coding skills to deploy websites, mobile apps, and single page apps will go away. I envision containerized solutions like Wordpress, that allow us to deploy anything we need to support app deployment, and allow us to configure, tweak, and evolve without being aware of what the backend is up to.
I know these thoughts will drive many developer crazy, thinking that I will open up the gates to a much more shittier web, but I think if developers build high quality, very configurable, and modular APIs, we can help mitigate the trash that gets deployed. Whether you like it or not WordPress runs over 65M websites, and I think we can do even better with the next generation of online apps, and the APIs that drive them.
I’d love to see the concept of hosting evolve into allowing anyone to park the apps they need anywhere they want, even on their Facebook account, or via their Dropbox. I think APIs and containers will go a long way into moving us towards this future. It is something that won’t happen overnight, but eventually hosting, and much of the server side code wrangling we’ve done in the past will go away.
