Why Web Engineering is great

Like many software engineers, one of my first software development experiences started with creating my own web page. Since that time 20+ years ago, a lot has changed in the web landscape. Having worked a lot in web since then, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what I think makes web great!

Accessibility

One thing I appreciate tremendously about web is how accessible it is. Almost any device with a screen can be used to consume from the web: blogs, social media, productivity tools, games, media streaming, … there’s a universe at your hands, requiring only a browser to access. Projects like ChromeOS reflect how wholesome the experience on the web is.
This ease of accessibility is invaluable for consumers, but also for you as a developer creating an experience for your audience.

Quality is Key

One premise for being accessible is web being available in the first place. Web engineering is often not only about what happens in the browser, but also what happens behind the scenes. I see quality engineering and DevOps as very close if not embedded disciplines, and here’s why:
Other software developers may rely on more forgiving ways of distributing their work. If the current version of a program is buggy, users may simply install an older version. Also unoptimized, unsecure applications often don’t pose a big problem.
The presence of bugs or performance bottlenecks however are big concerns for web developers. Users will be stuck with a new buggy version of a web application. The inability to serve web due to security incidents, high traffic and/or performance bottlenecks is of great concern and can have tech companies lose face.
Therefore, I see the consistent, frictionless delivery of secure, performant quality software as a core aspect of web. Considerations for scaling large, critical frontend projects led to architectures such as micro-frontends, drawing a parallel to advancements in backend development.

Drive for Innovation

In web engineering, there’s a very interesting friction that can be experienced between the core technologies HTML, JS and CSS and the tools, libraries and frameworks that complement it. Quite a few years back, tech like jQuery, SCSS or Babel made up for shortcomings of the available core technologies and browser capabilities. Nowadays, the core technologies are powerful enough by themselves for developing complex projects. Also the compatibility of different browsers is normally not a concern anymore, browsers may only suffer feature lag.
However, I believe it’s not only HTML, JS and CSS catching up with innovation in web, it’s also those core technologies and web standards pushing for innovation: Web components will likely bring new dynamics on a stage dominated by React and WebGPU will open the door for new classes of applications in the browser.

Back to Basics

Web involves a lot of tech, which is also a very exciting aspect. There’s much more besides CI/CD and the core technologies, libraries and frameworks: the browsers with their own engines and capabilities, accessibility, REST APIs, networking, cloud, often a good portion of backend development, … what the users interact with is only the tip of the iceberg.
But already the interplay of HTML, JS and CSS makes web exciting. With the modern capabilities of each of these technologies, there are different valid ways to solve a problem. Thinking about a solution with the most elegant usage of HTML, JS and CSS stimulates my engineering mind!
New capabilities also allow us to re-think existing solutions: Ever thought of implementing a nested dropdown menu purely in CSS?

Canonical’s Web Team

Working as Engineering Manager in Canonical’s web team brings me also to reflect on what makes web great in our company.
What’s exciting besides Canonical’s highly international environment and being surrounded by truly great and bright people?
Our web team is structured in tribes, each working on their projects. With that, there’s a great breadth of project types and technological challenges that go with them. While all tribes work with great focus on their own projects, there’s also plenty of room for interacting with web engineers of other tribes and exchanging experiences and knowledge.
We’ve also struck a great balance between building on top of our tested, proven tech stack and having free space for experimentation with new technologies. This supports us in carrying out great work while doing state-of-the-art web engineering.
If you would like to find out more about the team please read our blog and description of the team. We’re always looking for great new talent!

In short: web is great and web at Canonical even more so. I’m excited to see what the future web landscape holds for us!