Context
Back in October I was fortunate enough to graduate from the University of Winchester with a first class honours in Digital Media Development. I made my time at Uni largely an opportunity to try out as many different technologies as possible, ever since I started coding it was always my top priority to ensure I was using the best tools for the problem at hand. Being able to dip my toes into different frameworks, coding languages and technology throughout numerous projects, semester upon semester, finally lead me to the JavaScript ecosystem. It was here I finally felt that I was actually using the best technology for the briefs I faced. It was also in this ecosystem and community that I found the Jamstack.
Websites have most commonly been built using monolithic architectures, your Wordpresses, Laravels etc. The Jamstack introduced a new way of producing websites with dynamic content, one without that of a server. In my dissertation I put the Jamstack up against the older methods in order to answer the question of Is the Jamstack the Future Replacement for Building a Backend?
I discover if the Jamstack’s technical capability matches the traditional monolithic architectures and whether it provides a cost effective, performant, secure and scalable implementation. I wanted to understand whether this new architecture would be adopted by industry. I conduct a multi- method research project to gauge the development industry’s landscape to find any correlations between that of the industry and the architecture that the developers used. Interviews were then used to develop a deeper understanding of why developers in a particular industry, according to the correlation, tended to choose certain architectures. The research gave insight into the benefits, drawbacks, liabilities and gaps that these architectures had. It allowed for a discussion into where the Jamstack currently stands in the development industry and how it may also potentially fit into other industries.