Understand Modern Frontend

You cannot understand what is happening today without understanding what came before.

— Steve Jobs

From 1980 to 1990, Dr. Tim Berners-Lee (opens new window), who worked at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), invented HTML and HTTP, in order to make it easier for CERN Researchers to use and share documents.

The first public description of HTML only described 18 elements.

The first RFC of the HTTP protocol, HTTP/0.9 (opens new window), only defined a GET method.

In May 1995, Brendan Eich (opens new window) spent ten days designing JavaScript.

On December 17, 1996, W3C published the first standard for CSS (opens new window).

HTML/CSS/JavaScript, the three pillars of frontend, none of which was born with thoughtful design. Back to 2000s, there is not even many jobs for frontend professionals—if there is any, the role of the job is basically converting a design wireframe to HTML/CSS code. Why suddenly in less than 5–10 years, the frontend jobs bloomed with a bloomed skillset requirement? There’s even a kidding Moore’s Law for frontend:

The difficulty of learning frontend would be doulbed every 18 months to 24 months.

— frontend Moore’s Law