My life used to be easy. I was an iOS developer from 2014-2021. To do that, I just needed to know Objective-C and then Swift. Apple provided a default way to make UI and it was fine.
But, in 2021, when I went independent, I decided to abandon iOS and move to a React/Node stack for web applications (that I wanted to be SPA). I chose React/ReactNative. It was fine, but I have to move on.
The main reason is the complexity. For my application, which is simple, there are an insane amount of dependencies (which are immediate tech debt, IMO). Hello World in Typescript/Node/React will put 36,000 files (at last count) in node_modules. This reality has become a prime target for hackers who are using this as a vector for supply chain attacks. It’s clear that the node community is not prepared for this, so I have to go.
This is a major shift for me, so I am rethinking everything. This was my criteria:
- Minimal dependencies
- No build for JS or CSS
- Security protection against dependencies
- Bonus if I already know how to do it
The first, and easiest decision, was that I was going to move all development from my Mac to Linux. I’ll talk about this tomorrow in Part II.