The “Backendification” of Frontend Development – Hacker Noon

I’m more proud of these 128 kilobytes than anything I’ve built since | by Mike Hall | Jul, 2025 | Medium

I don’t normally link to articles on Medium—I respect you too much—and I do wish this were written on Mike Hall’s own site, but this is just too good not to share.

And don’t dismiss this as a nostalgiac case study from the past:

At no point did the constraints make the product feel compromised. Users on modern devices got a smooth experience and instant feedback, while those on older devices got fast, reliable functionality. Users on feature phones got the same core experience without the bells and whistles.

The constraints forced us to solve problems in ways we wouldn’t have considered otherwise. Without those constraints, we could have just thrown bytes at the problem, but with them every feature had to justify itself. Core functionality had to work everywhere, and without JavaScript crutches proper markup became essential.

This experience changed how I approach design problems. Constraints aren’t a straitjacket, keeping us from doing our best work; they are the foundation that makes innovation possible. When you have to work within severe limitations, you find elegant solutions that scale beyond those limitations.

CSS Intelligence: Speculating On The Future Of A Smarter Language — Smashing Magazine

This is a really thoughtful look at the evolution of CSS and the ever-present need to balance power with learnability.

Hiding elements that require JavaScript without JavaScript :: dade

This is clever: putting CSS inside a noscript element to hide anything that requires JavaScript.

Snook Dreams of the Web - Snook.ca

If we were to follow Jiro’s and his apprentices’ journeys and imagine web development the same way then would we ask of our junior developers to spend the first year of their career only on HTML. No CSS. No JavaScript. No frameworks. Only HTML. Only once HTML has been mastered do we move onto CSS. And only once that has been mastered do we move onto JavaScript.

Building WebSites With LLMS - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).

I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.

I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.