Having spent nearly a decade in IT professionally, I am a bit ashamed to admit that I never felt like there was a good time for me to “break” into the Software discipline. I was always worried that as soon as I began to learn JavaScript or Python or Bash, the next big thing would become popular, and I would have completely wasted my time learning x, y, or z. From outside of Software it felt like new magical technologies were popping up everyday (they kind of are), and it was just a matter of time before something huge completely reshaped how we access our bank accounts, schooling portals, and social media. Although I maintain a healthy level of obsolete-tech-paranoia, I now know that time invested on stable and supported technologies is never in vain. I’m glad that I finally stopped worrying about getting hit by the jump-rope on the way in.

The rise in phone ubiquity and sophistication is something that always gave me pause.

Would desktop computers vanish?

Would apps move to native-only platforms?

Recently, I’ve felt a lot more comfortable about the state of web technologies, and part of that is due to the growth of some massive apps on the shoulders of Electron. Apps like Discord, Teams, Zoom, and VSCode deliver a seamless experience across OS’s, all using a technology that has necessarily grown to be OS-ambiguous. You don’t need to learn OS-specific platforms and languages to understand how these apps work - maybe just a little JavaScript.

Electron using Chromium - and recently Tauri using Webview - has solidified and simplified the app development experience in such a great way, and has helped a worry wart like me find some peace of mind.

So I say, long live the browser! Hopefully it will continue to bridge the gap across different OS’s and hardware.