All Things Open is a large, community-created open source conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, with nearly 4,000 attendees and 20 concurrent sessions. At this year’s event, I was invited to deliver a talk similar to one I had presented at JSConf titled “React Already Did That.” The session itself is not actually about React, but about several key concepts in how the JavaScript ecosystem evolves.

At this month’s FullStack London 2018, our CEO, Dylan Schiemann, presented the talk “Choosing a Framework”, based on our Choosing a Framework blog series. Given our long history in web development, we’ve seen JavaScript evolve from an obscure simplistic scripting language to the language of the internet.

It has come time to read the liner notes and write some conclusions. When we started writing this blog series, we knew that JavaScript/web application frameworks were not easy to summarize.

For a web framework to be effective, it should offer you more than just functionality. It doesn’t matter how much hard work you put into your application if it breaks when people use it.

Test early, test often, and test some more. Why put our heart and soul into our web applications only to be let down because we are not completely testing them.

Let’s figure out how to play our album. Is it a 45 vinyl or some sort of fancy SACD? Gaining insight into how we might develop and deploy an application built on a web framework helps us figure out if it is the right fit for our team.

Previously on Web Frameworks, we looked at how various frameworks deal with the concept of applications. Akin to listening to the whole album, we got a sense of how the frameworks pull it all together.

Applications built with web technologies, something that was a curiosity a few short years ago, have emerged onto the scene as a must have for most organizations. Transcending websites and providing users with a more open and unbounded experience, web applications are everywhere.

We have previously discussed the look and feel of web frameworks. While we often become interested in a framework based on the stylishness of the widgets and applications it can create, this may lead to a similar approach to how we have historically selected music.

While instruments such as guitar and drums are part of a band, how they are used by the musicians define the style of the band’s music. Similarly, the elements of an application user interface connected together define the user experience.

Whether it is Top 40 or classical or R&B, artists and music have a recognizable look and feel. When looking at frameworks, some simply provide us with a bag of instruments, while others provide us with chord progressions and album covers we can customize.

…we would all be using justin-bieber.js. We as an organization have been working with JavaScript since 2000.