Welcome to the LymeStack blog! 🎙️
Hello! I'm Mike and I've been in this custom web application development game for longer than I'd like to admit. Back in 1996, I discovered the web as a student at the University of Maryland College Park, in the armpit of all dorms, the notorious Denton 3. It was an odd mix of people - from the obnoxious New York / New Jersey frat / sorority scene to the hardcore computer nerds. As a young man without a tribe, I found myself in the middle of this eclectic mix. Denton 3 (3rd floor) was a highly sought after for reasons unknown to me by the Jersey Shore crowd - perhaps it was some sort of legacy destination. The nerds motivation was clear because Denton Hall was one of the first dorms to have ethernet Internet connections newly installed in all rooms. I was lucky(?) enough to have been randomly assigned to this rare purgatory. During this period and thanks to the newly installed technology, I discovered the web, which was very early in its existence. I was fascinated with this new online world back when it was still very quirky and cool and not the huge mall that it is today. It was really lucky timing to get started with computers and programming.
I wanted to learn more about the web and I found and printed out the HTML 1.0 specifiction document, which was pretty short and fundamentally simple. There was only HTML... no CSS, no Javascript, so it was a lot easier to wrap my head around concepts because there just simply weren't too many concepts to learn. Maybe that's why I like Markdown so much. It very much resembles what you could do with HTML 1.0. Not long after studying the spec, I built my very own personal website - a "me" page as my good friend put it. :) (I actually found a trace of it on The Way Back Machine. I used it as a study guide by transcribing my class notes into HTML. For some reason typing my notes was the only way I could seem to retain the information.
While HTML at that time was conceptually very simple, it could quickly become very complicated in its implementation. Since early versions of CSS really only would apply to typography, layout on web pages were typically built using clever and complex implemtations of HTML tables, transparent spacer images or IFRAMEs, which could be very awkward to work with. There were also no developer tools built into the browsers, so debugging CSS could prove to be a newly created hell by the architects of the web. It was a big mess, but it provided me with the opportunity to see the web evolve from what it was to what it is today, allowing me to see each piece come together bit by bit instead of being inundated with so many moving and working parts that a modern application uses. It allowed me to become an early-expert mostly because the web was so new, so nobody really knew what they were doing!
I can only imagine how overwhelming it must be for a new student to enter into the web development world as it is today. There's a lot to it and this blog will hopefully help with someone who is new in finding their own way in this business by sharing our experiences in the topics of web app development. This blog will also help people who aren't as new to it as well by touching on more advanced topics and subjects such as setting up new web applications, database design, and DevOps. We also plan to write about our tools here at LymeStack, how we built them to solve our own problems, and how they can help to make the development experience (hopefully) more enjoyable for you.
We have a ton of ideas for content in the coming months, so stay tuned. Hopefully the information you find here will prove useful for some of you. If you have any feedback, questions or requests for content, feel free to contact us. Thanks for reading!