The Website vs. Web App Dichotomy Doesn’t Exist | jakelazaroff.com
January 29, 2024
You don’t need to wade far into web development discourse to hear about the website vs. web app dichotomy. It posits that websites can be grouped into two categories: mostly static “documents” with little user interaction beyond following links, and “applications” that involve rich dynamic behavior. Usually, people invoke it to talk about the use, abuse or avoidance of JavaScript frameworks. A more nuanced view is that there’s a spectrum between website and web app, and that where a project sits determines which technologies are appropriate to build it. The implication is that at some point, it makes sense to use a JavaScript framework rather than progressively enhanced HTML. Web developers tend to divide themselves into roughly two camps here — and depending on which camp you ask, the location of that inflection point varies widely.
Source: The Website vs. Web App Dichotomy Doesn’t Exist | jakelazaroff.com
A few weeks back Jake Lazaoff’s article revisiting the supposed and oft recited dichotomy of a document oriented web versus an application oriented web seemed to hit a nerve with considerable reposting and attendant discussion. Jake reframes the dichotomy as a 2×2 matrix, with online and offline, and static and dynamic axes, and considers where well known web properties might sit.
Well worth the relatively short read.
