Review Year 2011: Web Development & Webmuch

2011 has been an insane year for web developers. Newer ideas and technologies have come to life everyday. I love web development, I live for it. I love waking up to feedly in anticipation of what the web has for me to learn today. This year has been such a information overload, new things coming out everyday. I realized soon enough, It is quite impossible to keep up with everything. Not that I’m complaining. But I decided I will learn newer technologies as and when I need them.

One thing I have discovered is that it is not always about knowing “how it is done?”, sometimes and most times in advanced web development cases: it is about “what this can be done with” (I guess that’s why consultants flourish so much).

This year I have researched way more than I have learnt. I know what most technologies are about. I know what framework, library, plugin can do what. How? I have no idea until I need it.

This year has been good to me, I have started my own web consulting and development firm named Webmuch Software, I have finished some good projects. The only thing I have failed at is blogging regularly. Here’s to hoping 2012 will change that for the good.

Below are a few things I think notable about web development industry in 2011.

Web Innovation: Unstoppable

2011 has definitely taught me one thing, the Web won’t slow down at innovating. The slur of libraries that came out in 2011 is huge. A JavaScript library for everything. Mobile frameworks coming out on a roll one after another. Then their were boilerplate frameworks bringing all that together. PHP 5.3 frameworks and what not.

• Facebook gave the PHP community a boost with HipHop for PHP in early 2010 by open sourcing the technology. This year they further improved on that by making the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM).
• More and more cloud platforms (PaaS) are coming into market everyday. EngineYard, PHPFog, Orchestra, etc. Exciting times ahead.

Javascript is the boss:

In 2011 I saw JavaScript flourish in a way I have never seen before (but to be honest, I wasn’t watching before). Developers are open sourcing libraries of anything and everything. JavaScript MVC Frameworks also took the their position in the limelight. I could be very wrong in thinking that all thiss happened this year. But this post is about what “I” learnt this year.

Node.js really intrigues me. I haven’t yet got a chance to play with it enough but the thought of having the same language for server and client side excites me. Also tells me that I should really master JavaScript. Ignorable no more!

Don’t Mess With The Internet (SAY NO TO SOPA)

Although late in the year. The proposal of SOPA has led to a internet revolution against SOPA supporters. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) basically gives legal rights to ISPs to block websites if copyright infringing content is found published on it.

Instead of accepting it like powerless peasants. We, the internet really stood up to it. (BTW: Embedding widgets for saying no to SOPA also exists for your site). The power of the internet can mainly be seen by following what happened with GoDaddy. Such a PR Disaster.

They were one of the companies that openly supported SOPA and lost more than 70000 domains in less than a week. That showed me the power we possess as free thinking unfiltered internet users.

Always. SAY NO TO SOPA and I will leave GoDaddy as soon as I finish researching other services.

Web technologies I learn’t in 2011

2011 added Symfony2 to my arsenal of web technologies. I love it and having a routing system in YML is so nice to look at. Beautiful! Along with Symfony2 I learnt theming Joomla, no biggie I know, but I never got a chance to get to know Joomla up close. Completing a project in it gave the new skill I can flaunt. Also made a custom WordPress Framework we use at Webmuch for making WordPress sites for our clients.

2011 in all has been a great learning experience. With that I say goodbye to 2011 and welcome 2012 with open arms to more learning, much web @ Webmuch.