Excellent question. It cuts to the heart of the frustration many developers feel today. This requires a two-part answer: the philosophical critique and the practical application of that philosophy.

The web development industry hasn't gone "wrong" in a malicious sense; it has sprinted forward with such ferocious innovation that it has stumbled over its own feet. We've optimized for things that seemed important at the moment, often at the expense of core principles.

The primary ailments can be grouped into a few key areas:

We fell in love with complexity because it felt like progress. The simple act of serving an HTML file from a server became pedestrian. We replaced it with a labyrinth of build tools, transpilers, module bundlers, state management libraries, and CSS-in-JS solutions.

• The Problem: A developer starting a new "simple" project is immediately faced with dozens of choices that have massive downstream consequences (Vite vs. Webpack, Redux vs. Zustand, Tailwind vs. Styled Components). This leads to JavaScript Fatigue and immense cognitive overhead for what should be simple tasks. We often build architectures suitable for Google Maps to serve a blog.
• The Cause: Resume-Driven Development (RDD), a desire to use the "latest and greatest," and abstracting problems before they actually exist.

Single Page Applications (SPAs) are a brilliant solution for a specific class of problems: highly interactive, "app-like" experiences like Figma, photo editors, or complex user dashboards. However, the industry adopted the SPA as the default architecture for everything.

• The Problem: For the vast majority of websites (e-commerce, content sites, marketing pages, most CRUD apps), this is the wrong model. It moves essential rendering logic from a powerful, centralized server to a wide variety of less-powerful, unpredictable client devices over inconsistent networks. This results in huge JavaScript bundles, slow initial page loads, and a fragile user experience that breaks if a script fails to load.
• The Cause: The success of giants like Facebook (React) and Google (Angular) made their solutions aspirational, even when the problem domains didn't match.

In our rush to build powerful frameworks, we began to treat the web browser as a "dumb" rendering target. We stopped using the features of the platform itself.

• The Problem: Developers learn React before they learn how an HTML <form> actually works. We use <div>s with onClick handlers instead of <button>s, breaking accessibility. We re-implement routing on the client, often breaking the back button or the ability to open a link in a new tab. We forgot the robust, resilient nature of simple HTML and CSS.
• The Cause: Abstractions are leaky. When frameworks hide the underlying platform, developers lose touch with it and fail to leverage its ever-improving power (e.g., the <dialog> element, CSS container queries, native fetch).

Getting "back on track" isn't about abandoning progress. It's about a course correction, guided by pragmatism and a renewed focus on the end-user.

1. Embrace the Server-Side Renaissance: The pendulum is swinging back. Instead of sending a skeleton HTML page and 2MB of JS to render it, we should render meaningful HTML on the server. The server is closer to the data, it's more powerful, and it's a controlled environment. This leads to dramatically faster first-loads and a more resilient experience. Technologies like HTMX, Hotwire, Phoenix LiveView, and Next.js Server Components are the vanguard of this movement. They provide the rich interactivity of a SPA without the client-side bloat by sending HTML, not JSON, over the wire.

2. Choose the Simplest Tool That Works: Start with the "boring" solution. A monolith is not a bad word. Serve plain HTML and CSS. Use a little JavaScript to sprinkle in interactivity where needed (Progressive Enhancement). Don't start with a microservices architecture, a global CDN, and a Kubernetes cluster for your new startup idea. Earn your complexity.

3. Re-discover the Web Platform: Before reaching for a library, ask: "Can the browser do this now?" Use native web components, use the FormData object, use CSS variables and nesting. Every time you can use a platform feature instead of a third-party dependency, you make your application smaller, faster, and more future-proof.

4. Focus on Principles, Not Fads: Instead of chasing the "Framework of the Week," focus on timeless principles: REST, HTTP caching, accessibility, and resilience. A well-designed system built on these principles will outlast any three-year framework hype cycle.

Reflecting on all of the above, my choice for a new, general-purpose CRUD web app would be:

Ruby on Rails 7 with Hotwire

Here is why this stack is the perfect embodiment of the "getting back on track" philosophy:

1. It Fights Complexity (Convention over Configuration): Rails is the original "batteries-included" framework. It makes a thousand sensible decisions for you. You don't argue about project structure, ORM choice, or testing frameworks. You just start building. This directly counters the "cult of complexity."

2. It's Server-Centric by Design (Hotwire): Rails with Hotwire renders HTML on the server. When you perform an action (like submitting a form or clicking a filter button), it sends a small request to the server, which re-renders just the necessary HTML partial and sends it back over the wire. The client-side library (Stimulus) is tiny and is used for light "sprinkles" of interactivity. This is the perfect antidote to the "SPA-by-default" dogma, giving you an app-like feel with the robustness of a traditional server-rendered app.

3. It Respects the Platform: The entire model is built on the fundamentals. Forms are just HTML <form>s. Links are <a> tags. The system works perfectly fine with JavaScript disabled (albeit with full page reloads), a core tenet of Progressive Enhancement. It doesn't try to hide HTTP from you; it embraces it.

4. It's "Boring," Mature, and Productive: Ruby on Rails has been around for nearly two decades. It is stable, secure, and has an incredible ecosystem. You can build robust, feature-rich CRUD applications with staggering speed. It doesn't chase fads; it thoughtfully integrates new ideas that align with its core philosophy. It's the ultimate "get stuff done" framework.

If I couldn't use Rails, my second choice would be Go + HTMX.

This combination represents the ultimate expression of simplicity and "back to basics."

• Go: A simple, strongly-typed, compiled language that produces a single, dependency-free binary. Incredibly fast and easy to deploy.
• HTMX: A tiny, dependency-free JavaScript library that brings the "HTML-over-the-wire" concept to any backend. It's the philosophical core of Hotwire, distilled into its purest form.

This stack has no build tools, no complex abstractions—just a fast backend serving HTML that is enhanced by a touch of declarative JS. It's the antithesis of the modern, complex frontend world and a perfect choice for someone who values simplicity and performance above all else.

Excellent question. It cuts to the heart of the frustration many developers feel today. This requires a two-part answer: a diagnosis and a prescription, followed by its practical application in a technology choice.

The core problem, in my view, is a feedback loop of ever-increasing, often unnecessary, complexity. We've become tool-obsessed rather than problem-obsessed.

Here’s a breakdown of the specific areas where we've gone astray:

1. The Cult of the Single-Page Application (SPA)

• The Problem: We took a brilliant solution for a specific problem (highly interactive, desktop-like applications such as Gmail or Figma) and began applying it as the default for everything. Blogs, marketing sites, and simple CRUD apps that would have been perfectly served by a server-rendered approach are now saddled with kilobytes or megabytes of JavaScript, complex client-side state management, and API layers. This results in slower initial page loads, worse SEO out-of-the-box, and a massive cognitive overhead for developers.
• How to Get Back on Track: Re-embrace the "boring." Start with the simplest possible architecture: server-rendered HTML. A request comes in, the server processes it, and it sends back a full HTML document. Use JavaScript for what it was originally intended for: progressive enhancement. Sprinkle in interactivity where it adds real value, don't build the entire house on a foundation of it.

2. Forgetting the Foundation

• The Problem: In our rush to master the framework-of-the-week (React, Vue, Svelte, etc.), we have created a generation of developers who understand the framework's abstractions but not the underlying platform. They can useState but don't understand the DOM event loop. They can use an ORM but can't write a SQL JOIN. They can deploy a Docker container but have a fuzzy understanding of HTTP status codes or caching headers. This is a fragile foundation. When the abstraction leaks—and it always does—developers are left stranded.
• How to Get Back on Track: Prioritize fundamentals in learning and hiring. We need to shift the focus from "5 years of React experience" to "a deep understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, HTTP, and database principles." Frameworks are just tools; they are powerful multipliers on top of a strong foundation, not a replacement for it.

3. Résumé-Driven Development & Over-Engineering

• The Problem: Decisions are often made not on the basis of technical or business needs, but on what looks good on a developer's résumé. "Let's use Microservices, Kubernetes, GraphQL, and a bleeding-edge framework for our company's three-page marketing site." This leads to brittle, absurdly complex systems that are a nightmare to maintain and offer zero tangible benefit over a simpler solution. The business pays the price in development time, hosting costs, and maintenance burden.
• How to Get Back on Track: Cultivate engineering cultures that reward simplicity and pragmatism. The goal is to solve the business problem in the most direct, maintainable, and cost-effective way. A senior engineer shouldn't be the one who knows the most complex tools, but the one who has the wisdom to choose the simplest tool for the job. Celebrate deleting code and reducing complexity.

4. The JavaScript Tooling Juggernaut

• The Problem: The complexity of our build tools has become a discipline in itself. Configuring Webpack, Vite, Babel, ESLint, and TypeScript to all play nicely can take days. While these tools solve real problems, their sheer number and the complexity of their interplay create a massive barrier to entry and a constant source of "dependency hell."
• How to Get Back on Track: Favor frameworks and ecosystems with integrated, "zero-config" or "low-config" tooling. The less time you spend wrestling with your bundler, the more time you spend building features. Again, start simple. Do you even need a build step for a simple project? Maybe a single <script type="module"> tag is enough.

Reflecting on all of the above, my goal is to choose a stack that is:

• Server-centric by default.
• Minimizes client-side JavaScript.
• Simple, with integrated tooling.
• Productive and enjoyable for the developer.
• Does not sacrifice a modern, interactive user experience.

Based on this, my choice is Elixir with the Phoenix Framework, using Phoenix LiveView.

Here’s why it is the perfect antidote to the problems I outlined:

1. It Annihilates the SPA-by-Default Problem:
LiveView is the antithesis of the SPA. The initial request serves plain, server-rendered HTML, making it incredibly fast to first paint and inherently SEO-friendly. All state lives on the server. Interactivity is handled over a persistent, lightweight WebSocket connection. When a user clicks a button, a tiny event is sent to the server, the server process updates its state and re-renders only the changed parts of the template, sending a minuscule diff of HTML back to the browser, which then patches the DOM.

2. It Fixes the "Two Apps" Problem:
With a typical SPA, you're building two applications: a backend API (e.g., in Node/Rails/Django) and a separate frontend application (e.g., in React). This requires API versioning, state synchronization, client-side routing, and authentication handoffs. LiveView collapses this into a single, cohesive application. The logic, state, and rendering all happen in one place. This is a monumental reduction in complexity.

3. It Reduces JavaScript to an Enhancement Layer:
With LiveView, you can build highly interactive, real-time applications (like dashboards, form validations, infinite scroll, notifications) writing virtually zero custom JavaScript. You work primarily in Elixir and HTML templates. This allows you to focus on the business logic, not on fighting with useEffect, Redux boilerplate, or async data fetching on the client.

4. It Has an Opinionated, Integrated Toolchain:
Phoenix comes with everything you need out of the box: a project generator, database management, an integrated build system (esbuild by default, which is lightning fast), and a testing framework. You run mix phx.new my_app and you have a fully functional, production-ready starting point in seconds. No more wrestling with Webpack configuration.

5. It's Built on a Rock-Solid, Performant Foundation:
Elixir runs on the Erlang VM (BEAM), which was designed by Ericsson for building massively concurrent, fault-tolerant telecommunication systems that needed to run for years without going down. Phoenix inherits this power. It can handle hundreds of thousands or even millions of concurrent WebSocket connections on a single server, making the LiveView model incredibly efficient and scalable.

In choosing Phoenix with LiveView, I’m not being a Luddite or rejecting modernity. I'm choosing a different, more sustainable path to modernity. It provides the rich, real-time user experience we've come to expect, but does so by leveraging the power of the server, valuing simplicity, and elegantly sidestepping the entire swamp of client-side complexity we've spent the last decade creating for ourselves.

Excellent and thought-provoking question. It touches on the very core of the craft of web development. Here is a reflection broken down into the two parts of your query.

The web development industry hasn't gone "wrong" in a malicious or irreversible way, but it has certainly chased trends that have led to immense, and often unnecessary, complexity.

Here are the key areas where I believe we've strayed:

1. The "Single Page Application (SPA) by Default" Mindset.

• The Problem: We started treating every website and application as if it needed the complexity of a desktop-like application running in the browser (like Gmail or Figma). This led to the default choice for new projects being a heavy JavaScript framework (React, Angular, Vue) on the front-end, talking to a JSON API on the back-end. This architecture is powerful, but it's also incredibly complex. It doubles the state management (client and server), introduces complex tooling (Webpack, Vite, Babel), hurts initial page load performance, and makes SEO a non-trivial problem.
• Getting Back on Track: Re-embrace the server. Recognize that most web applications are, at their core, about displaying and manipulating data. Server-rendered HTML is fast, simple, and robust. We should start with a monolith that renders HTML and only introduce client-side complexity (or "sprinkles" of JavaScript) when a specific user experience genuinely demands it.

2. Over-engineering and Resume-Driven Development.

• The Problem: The allure of using the latest, hottest technology (Microservices, Kubernetes, GraphQL, Serverless, the newest JS framework) often outweighs a pragmatic assessment of the project's actual needs. Developers, wanting to build their resumes, push for complex solutions to simple problems. A five-page CRUD app does not need a globally distributed network of microservices.
• Getting Back on Track: Cultivate a culture of pragmatism and simplicity. The primary goal is to deliver value to the user and the business, not to use a specific technology. Celebrate "boring" technology that is stable, well-understood, and productive. The mantra "You Ain't Gonna Need It" (YAGNI) should be our guiding principle. Start with a monolith; break it apart only when you feel the scaling or organizational pain of it being a monolith.

3. The Abstraction of Fundamentals.

• The Problem: We've built so many layers of abstraction that many developers no longer understand the underlying principles. They learn React before they learn the DOM. They use an ORM so heavily they can't write a moderately complex SQL query. They use cloud platforms without understanding the cost implications or the basics of HTTP, caching, and state. When these abstractions "leak" or break, developers are left helpless.
• Getting Back on Track: Focus on fundamentals in education and professional development. SQL is a superpower, not a legacy burden. Understanding the request/response cycle of HTTP is non-negotiable. Learn how browsers render HTML and CSS. These fundamentals are timeless and will serve a developer far longer than knowledge of any specific framework.

4. The Developer Experience (DX) vs. User Experience (UX) Imbalance.

• The Problem: We have become obsessed with "Developer Experience"—hot-reloading, magical CLIs, and intricate tooling that make the developer's immediate feedback loop faster. While good DX is valuable, it has sometimes come at the cost of the end-user experience. Gigantic JavaScript bundles, slow initial loads, and client-side performance issues are often the price paid for a DX-focused framework.
• Getting Back on Track: Re-center the User. The primary metric of success is not how slick the build tool is, but how fast, reliable, and usable the application is for the end-user. Performance is a feature. Simplicity for the user is paramount. This means shipping less code, especially less JavaScript.

Reflecting on the principles above—simplicity, server-centricity, pragmatism, and mastering fundamentals—my choice for a new CRUD web app is clear.

I would choose Elixir and the Phoenix Framework, specifically with LiveView.

Here is the justification, point by point, linking back to my philosophy:

1. It Gets Us Back on Track by Re-Centering on the Server.

   • Phoenix LiveView is the ultimate answer to the "SPA by default" problem. It allows you to build rich, real-time, interactive user experiences with SPA-like feel, but you write almost entirely server-side Elixir code. State lives on the server, where it is easier to reason about. The browser receives pre-rendered HTML diffs over a persistent WebSocket connection. This dramatically simplifies the entire stack. You don't need a separate front-end team, a REST/GraphQL API, or client-side state management libraries (like Redux). It collapses the "front-end" and "back-end" into one cohesive whole.

2. It Promotes Pragmatism Over Over-engineering.

   • The Phoenix framework follows the "batteries-included" but "get out of your way" philosophy. It gives you a clear, productive path for building a web application—routing, database access (via Ecto), and templating—without being overly dogmatic. It encourages a "majestic monolith" approach, which is the perfect starting point for the vast majority of applications.

3. It Respects the Fundamentals.

   • While LiveView feels magical, it's built on a deep understanding and respect for the web's fundamentals. You still write HTML templates. The underlying communication happens over standard WebSockets. Its database library, Ecto, is a masterpiece. It's a "data mapper" that doesn't try to hide SQL from you. In fact, it encourages you to understand your queries and schemas, giving you the full power of the database without the common pitfalls of traditional ORMs (like the N+1 query problem).

4. It Prioritizes User Experience.

   • The end result of a LiveView application is an incredibly fast user experience. Initial page loads are pure server-rendered HTML, making them lightning quick. Subsequent interactions are tiny diffs sent over WebSockets, which feel instantaneous. The underlying Erlang VM (BEAM) on which Elixir runs is legendary for its ability to handle massive concurrency and build fault-tolerant systems, leading to a highly reliable and responsive application for the user.

In short, Phoenix with LiveView directly addresses the primary ailments of modern web development. It fights complexity, brings logic back to the server, and provides a stunningly productive and enjoyable development experience that directly translates to a superior and faster user experience. It feels like the future, but a future that has learned the lessons of the past.

Excellent and deeply reflective question. It gets to the heart of the frustration many developers feel today. Here’s a breakdown of my thoughts, followed by a practical technology choice.

The core issue isn't a single bad technology but a systemic drift away from foundational principles, driven by a few key anti-patterns:

1. The Cult of Complexity and Premature Optimization.
We've started treating the complexity of a FAANG company as the default starting point for a two-person startup. We reach for Kubernetes clusters, microservice architectures, and global CDNs before we have a single paying customer.

• The Symptom: "JavaScript Fatigue." The endless churn of build tools (Webpack, Rollup, Vite, esbuild), frameworks (React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Solid), and state management libraries (Redux, MobX, Zustand, Jotai). Each tool is brilliant in isolation, but the combinatorial explosion is overwhelming.
• The Root Cause: We choose tools based on hype, resume-driven development (RDD), or a fear of not being "modern," rather than on the actual, immediate needs of the project.

2. Forgetting the Platform.
The web has an incredibly powerful and resilient platform: HTML for structure, CSS for presentation, and the browser's native capabilities for everything from form submissions to navigation.

• The Symptom: Developers who can build a complex React component but don't know how a standard <form> post-redirect-get cycle works. Developers who learn Tailwind CSS before they understand CSS specificity or the box model. We build single-page applications (SPAs) for content that is fundamentally a multi-page document (like a blog or a news site), sacrificing performance and resilience for a "smoother" feel that often isn't necessary.
• The Root Cause: Abstractions have become so thick that we've lost touch with the foundation. SPAs, originally designed for highly interactive, application-like experiences (think Google Maps or Figma), became the default for everything, bringing their immense client-side complexity along for the ride.

3. Confusing Developer Experience (DX) with User Experience (UX).
We've become obsessed with tools that make our lives as developers more interesting, often at the direct expense of the end user.

• The Symptom: Shipping megabytes of JavaScript to a user's phone on a spotty 3G connection to render a page that could have been a 20KB static HTML file. The page is blank for seconds, components flicker into existence, and the CPU fan spins up just to display an "About Us" page.
• The Root Cause: We've fetishized the "hot module reloading" and component-based organization of modern frameworks (which are great!) and forgotten that the end-user doesn't care. They care about speed, accessibility, and reliability.

4. Over-reliance on Client-Side Rendering.
This is a specific technical manifestation of the problems above. For the vast majority of web applications (especially CRUD apps), rendering the entire UI on the client is an architectural mistake.

• The Symptom: Poor initial load times, bad SEO performance without complex workarounds (Server-Side Rendering, Static Site Generation), and a fragile system that completely fails if a single JavaScript bundle doesn't load.
• The Root Cause: Treating every web page as a "blank canvas" that must be painted with JavaScript, instead of seeing it as a document that can be enhanced with JavaScript.

The path back is not about abandoning modern tools but about re-centering our philosophy.

1. Re-embrace Simplicity and "Boring" Technology.
Start with the simplest architecture that can possibly work. A monolith is not a dirty word; it's the right choice for 95% of projects. Choose stable, well-understood technologies that solve your problem directly. Let the application's success create scaling problems which you can then solve with targeted complexity.

2. Revere the Platform & Progressive Enhancement.
Serve HTML first. It's fast, resilient, and accessible. Use CSS for styling. Use JavaScript as it was intended: to enhance the user experience with interactivity where it adds genuine value, not as a prerequisite for seeing content. This philosophy is making a major comeback under the umbrella of "The HTML-over-the-wire" approach (HTMX, Hotwire, etc.).

3. Put the User First, Always.
Measure what matters: Time to First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), and bundle size. A great Developer Experience is one that makes it easy to build a fast, reliable User Experience. If your DX leads to a slow UX, it's a bad DX.

4. Choose Architecture Based on the Problem.
Is your site a collection of documents linked together (a blog, e-commerce store, most CRUD apps)? Use a server-centric, multi-page application (MPA) architecture. Is your app a highly stateful, interactive tool with few full-page reloads (a design tool, a complex dashboard, a music player)? Then a Single Page Application makes sense. Don't use an SPA as your default.

My choice is a direct reflection of the principles above: default to simplicity, revere the platform, and serve HTML.

My choice is Go on the backend with HTMX on the frontend.

Here’s the breakdown of the stack and why it's the perfect embodiment of this philosophy:

• Language: Go (Golang)

  • Simplicity: Go is renowned for its simplicity and small language specification. It's easy to learn and read. There's often only one "Go-like" way to do things, which eliminates endless debate.
  • Performance & Self-Containment: It compiles to a single, statically-linked binary with no external dependencies (no node_modules, no Python venv). Deployment is as simple as scp'ing a file and running it. It's ludicrously fast and has a fantastic built-in HTTP server.
  • No Magic: The standard library is powerful but explicit. You build your handlers, you route your requests. There's no "magic" framework doing things you don't understand. It forces you to engage with the reality of HTTP.

• Frontend Interactivity: HTMX

  • The Antidote to Complexity: HTMX is the purest expression of "HTML-over-the-wire." It allows you to get the rich, interactive feel of a modern SPA without writing a single line of JavaScript. You add a few simple HTML attributes, and it handles making AJAX requests and swapping in the HTML fragments your Go server sends back.
  • Platform-Centric: It extends HTML, it doesn't replace it. Your application remains fundamentally a collection of server-rendered HTML pages, making it fast, SEO-friendly, and resilient by default. It works perfectly with a simple <form> submission if JavaScript fails.
  • Tiny Footprint: The entire library is ~14KB. Compare that to the hundreds of KBs or megabytes of a typical React/Angular application.

• Database: PostgreSQL with the sqlx library

  • Write Real SQL: While ORMs are convenient, they are a prime example of an abstraction that leaks and often generates horribly inefficient queries. For a CRUD app, writing clean, explicit SQL is not difficult and gives you complete control and understanding of your database interactions. The sqlx library in Go provides a thin, convenient wrapper around the standard database/sql package without hiding SQL from you.

• Templating: templ

  • Type-Safe HTML: templ is a templating language for Go that allows you to write HTML components in a way that is checked by the Go compiler. This gives you the component model benefits of React (reusability, composition) without any of the client-side rendering overhead or JavaScript dependency.

Why not other great choices?

• Ruby on Rails / Laravel / Django: These are excellent choices and very much in the same spirit (especially Rails with Hotwire or Laravel with Livewire). They are arguably more "batteries-included" and faster for initial development. The reason I lean towards the Go stack is its radical simplicity, performance, and zero-dependency deployment, which I feel is the ultimate expression of getting "back on track."
• Phoenix (Elixir) with LiveView: This is the pioneer and gold standard for this server-centric interactive model. The performance is legendary. The only reason it's not my primary choice is that Elixir and the OTP framework have a steeper learning curve for most developers than Go does, slightly violating the "choose boring technology" principle unless your team is already invested.

This Go + HTMX stack is productive, ridiculously fast, simple to deploy and maintain, and forces you to build websites that are user-centric by default. It's a conscious, deliberate rejection of the accidental complexity that has plagued our industry.

Where Web Development Has Gone Wrong

The Core Problems

1. Complexity Theater
We've normalized 200MB node_modules for a contact form. The gap between "what the problem requires" and "what we deploy" has become absurd.

2. Resume-Driven Development
Choosing tools for career advancement rather than problem fit. Every startup doesn't need microservices.

3. Abstraction Addiction
We've abstracted so far from the platform (HTML, HTTP, the browser) that developers don't understand what their code actually does. When the abstraction leaks, they're helpless.

4. Churn as Culture
The JavaScript ecosystem especially treats stability as stagnation. Rewriting everything every 2-3 years isn't innovation—it's waste.

5. SPAs as Default
We made everything a client-rendered application when most sites are... documents with some interactivity.

Getting Back on Track

• Embrace progressive enhancement again
• Value boring technology
• Measure actual user outcomes, not developer aesthetics
• Learn the platform before the framework

My CRUD App Choice

For most cases: Go + standard library + htmx + SQLite

Or if I want slightly more structure: Rails or Laravel

Why:

Criteria              | My reasoning
----------------------|------------------------------------------
Deployment            | Single binary (Go) or simple (Rails/PHP)
Dependencies          | Minimal
Time to working app   | Hours, not days
Maintenance burden    | Low - stable ecosystems
Hiring                | Readable by any developer

The honest truth: the "best" choice is almost always the one your team already knows well.

What's prompting this question for you?

Where Web Development Has Gone Wrong

The Core Problems

1. Complexity Addiction
We've normalized 200MB node_modules for a contact form. The industry conflates "sophisticated" with "good."

2. Resume-Driven Development
Architectural decisions made for career advancement rather than problem-solving. Microservices for a blog. Kubernetes for 100 users.

3. Abstraction Without Understanding
Developers who can configure webpack but can't explain HTTP. We've built layers on layers without ensuring foundational knowledge.

4. The SPAification of Everything
We broke the browser's native capabilities (back button, links, forms) then spent years rebuilding them poorly in JavaScript.

5. Churn as Culture
The ecosystem rewards novelty over stability. Last year's best practice is this year's anti-pattern.

Getting Back on Track

• Embrace boring technology for most problems
• Measure actual user outcomes, not developer experience
• Treat dependencies as liabilities, not assets
• Rediscover progressive enhancement
• Value longevity and maintainability

My CRUD App Choice

Language: Go or Python
Framework: Go's stdlib + minimal router, or Django

For something more modern in feel: Elixir/Phoenix or Rails 7+ with Hotwire

Honestly? For most CRUD apps: SQLite + server-rendered HTML + a sprinkle of HTMX.

What's driving your question—frustration with a current stack?

Where Web Development Has Gone Wrong

The Core Problems

1. Complexity Theater
We've normalized massive dependency trees for simple problems. A "hello world" React app pulls in 200MB of node_modules. We've confused sophisticated with good.

2. Resume-Driven Development
Technology choices often optimize for developer careers rather than user needs or business outcomes. New frameworks get adopted because they're exciting, not because they solve real problems better.

3. The SPA Hammer
We treated every nail like it needed a single-page application. Most CRUD apps are document-oriented - they'd be better served by server-rendered HTML with progressive enhancement.

4. Lost Fundamentals
Many developers can't explain how HTTP works, what the browser actually does, or why their 50KB of JavaScript exists. We've abstracted away understanding.

5. Build Tool Hellscape
The meta-work of configuring tooling often exceeds the actual work. Webpack configs became their own specialty.

How to Get Back on Track

• Embrace boring technology that's proven
• Start with HTML, add complexity only when justified
• Measure actual user outcomes, not developer experience metrics
• Value simplicity as a feature, not a limitation

My CRUD App Choice

For most cases: Rails, Laravel, or Django

If forced to pick one: Rails or honestly Go + htmx + minimal templating

Why? The request-response model is CRUD. Fight the architecture less.

What's your take - am I being too curmudgeonly?

Where Web Development Has Gone Wrong

The Core Problems

1. Complexity worship
We've normalized needing 200MB of node_modules to render a form. The industry conflates "sophisticated" with "good."

2. Resume-driven development
Tech choices often serve career advancement over project needs. Nobody gets promoted for picking "boring" technology.

3. Premature abstraction
We build for Netflix scale when we have 50 users. We add microservices when a monolith would ship in a week.

4. The JavaScript monoculture
Forcing one language everywhere created tooling sprawl (bundlers, transpilers, polyfills) to paper over fundamental mismatches.

5. Lost fundamentals
Many developers can't explain HTTP, SQL, or how browsers actually work—yet debate framework minutiae endlessly.

Getting Back on Track

• Ship smaller things faster
• Embrace "boring" technology that's proven
• Question every dependency
• Learn the platform (HTML, CSS, HTTP) before abstractions
• Measure actual user needs, not developer aesthetics

My CRUD App Choice

For most cases: Go + html/template + PostgreSQL + minimal CSS

Or if I want slightly more interactivity: Rails or Laravel

Why:

• Single binary deployment
• No build step for simple cases
• Fast enough that I'll never think about performance
• SQL stays SQL
• Ships this week, runs for years

What would you optimize for?

Where Web Development Went Wrong

I think we've accumulated several layers of accidental complexity:

The Build Tool Industrial Complex: We now need multiple tools, transpilers, and bundlers just to serve HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. A simple "Hello World" can involve webpack, babel, npm, and dozens of dependencies.

Framework Churn: Instead of mastering tools, we're constantly learning new ones. The half-life of frontend frameworks seems to be shrinking, and each brings its own ecosystem of patterns, tooling, and best practices.

Over-engineering by Default: We reach for microservices, Kubernetes, and complex architectures for problems that could be solved with a monolith and a database. We've normalized complexity that most projects don't need.

JavaScript Everywhere Syndrome: We're rendering entire applications client-side for what are essentially document-based websites. We ship megabytes of JavaScript to display text and images.

Dependency Hell: A simple project can have thousands of transitive dependencies. The left-pad incident should have been a wake-up call, but we've only gotten worse.

Getting Back on Track

• Embrace boring technology that's battle-tested
• Start simple and add complexity only when proven necessary
• Respect the platform - browsers are incredibly capable without frameworks
• Optimize for developer productivity over resume-driven development
• Value stability and longevity over using the latest tools

My Choice for a CRUD App

Ruby on Rails with vanilla JavaScript sprinkles (maybe Alpine.js if needed).

Why?

• Batteries included: Authentication, ORM, migrations, testing - it's all there
• Convention over configuration: Stop bikeshedding and start building
• Proven at scale: GitHub, Shopify, Hey - it clearly works
• HTML-first: Server-side rendering by default, enhance with JS where needed
• Mature ecosystem: Gems that have been maintained for decades
• Developer happiness: Rails optimizes for programmer joy and productivity
• One-person framework: A single developer can build and maintain substantial applications

With Rails 7+, Hotwire, and import maps, you can build reactive, modern applications without any JavaScript build step. Deploy it on a single VPS with PostgreSQL and Redis. Simple, boring, effective.

The web is a document delivery platform that we've complicated beyond recognition. Sometimes the answer is to step back and use tools that embrace rather than fight this reality.

Where web development went wrong

I think we've overcomplicated things dramatically. A few key missteps:

The JavaScript-everywhere monoculture - We're shipping megabytes of JS to render what could be server-rendered HTML. SPAs became the default even for content-heavy sites that don't need them.

Build tool complexity - The toolchain has become so complex that "JavaScript fatigue" is a recognized phenomenon. We spend more time configuring webpack/babel/typescript than solving actual problems.

Premature abstraction - We reach for microservices, Kubernetes, and complex architectures before we have a single user. Most apps could run fine on a single VPS for years.

Framework churn - The constant reinvention means knowledge becomes obsolete quickly, and we're always learning tools instead of solving problems.

Resume-driven development - Choosing tech for career advancement rather than project needs.

Getting back on track

• Embrace server-side rendering by default
• Use progressive enhancement (HTML first, enhance with JS where needed)
• Choose boring, stable technology
• Optimize for developer productivity and maintainability
• Actually measure before optimizing

My choice for a CRUD app

Rails with Hotwire or Django with HTMX

Why? Because they're "boring" in the best way:

• Batteries included (auth, migrations, admin panels)
• Mature ecosystems with solutions for common problems
• Server-rendered HTML with sprinkles of interactivity where needed
• One developer can be incredibly productive
• Deploy anywhere with a simple VPS
• Knowledge remains valuable for decades

If I had to pick just one: Rails 7 with SQLite, Hotwire, and deployed on a single Hetzner VPS. You could scale to millions of users before needing anything more complex.

Where web development went wrong

I think we've accumulated tremendous accidental complexity while losing sight of fundamental simplicity:

1. Over-engineering by default - We now use build systems with hundreds of dependencies for what could be static sites. The median web page ships 2MB+ of JavaScript to display text and images.

2. Framework churn addiction - Instead of mastering tools and building lasting knowledge, we're constantly rewriting everything in the newest framework that promises to "fix" problems the last one created.

3. Microservice theater - Teams of 5 people building systems designed for Netflix-scale that will never see 100 concurrent users, adding massive operational complexity for no benefit.

4. Lost fundamentals - Many developers can't build anything without a framework, don't understand HTTP, and can't debug without specialized tooling. We've abstracted away the platform we're building on.

5. Resume-driven development - Choosing technologies based on what looks good for job hunting rather than what's appropriate for the problem.

Getting back on track

• Embrace boring technology that's proven and well-understood
• Start simple - you can always add complexity when actually needed
• Learn the platform - HTML, CSS, HTTP, and browsers are incredibly powerful
• Measure real user impact not developer convenience metrics
• Own your dependencies - understand what you're bringing in and why

My choice for a CRUD app

Rails with SQLite, server-rendered HTML, and Hotwire for interactivity.

Why?

• Mature and stable - Rails has 20 years of production hardening
• Batteries included - Authentication, emails, jobs, caching all built-in
• Convention over configuration - Stop bikeshedding, start shipping
• SQLite - Eliminates entire categories of problems for 99% of apps
• Hotwire - Rich interactivity without API versioning or client state management hell
• One language, one paradigm - No context switching between backend/frontend

This stack can handle millions of users (Hey, Basecamp prove this daily), deploys trivially, and one developer can understand the entire system. It's "boring" in the best way - it just works and stays working.

Where web development went wrong

I think we've accumulated tremendous accidental complexity. The modern web stack feels like archaeological layers of solutions to problems created by previous solutions:

• Over-engineering simple problems: A basic CRUD app now "requires" build tools, transpilers, bundlers, state management libraries, CSS-in-JS, and complex deployment pipelines. We've normalized 500+ npm dependencies for a todo list.

• JavaScript everywhere syndrome: We're running JavaScript on the server to generate HTML... which browsers already understood perfectly well. We've reinvented the wheel, but made it square.

• Premature optimization: We optimize for Facebook-scale problems before validating basic product ideas. Most apps will never need microservices, yet we start there.

• Framework churn: The constant chase for the "next best thing" means codebases become legacy before they're even finished. Knowledge becomes obsolete faster than it can mature.

• Lost fundamentals: Many developers can't build without frameworks, don't understand HTTP, or how browsers actually work. We've abstracted away the platform we're building on.

Getting back on track

• Embrace boring technology: Proven, stable tools that won't change dramatically next year
• Start simple, stay simple: Don't add complexity until you've proven you need it
• Learn the platform: HTML, CSS, HTTP, and browsers are incredibly capable
• Measure actual user impact: Most performance optimizations don't matter to real users

My choice for a CRUD app

Ruby on Rails with server-rendered HTML, Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus), and PostgreSQL.

Why?

• Productivity: Rails' conventions and batteries-included approach means I'm building features, not configuring build tools
• Simplicity: Server-rendered HTML with sprinkles of JavaScript via Hotwire gives you 90% of SPA interactivity with 10% of the complexity
• Mature ecosystem: Solved problems stay solved. Authentication, file uploads, background jobs - all boring and reliable
• One language, one mental model: Not context-switching between server and client architectures
• Deploy anywhere: One process, one server. No complex orchestration needed
• Fast enough: For 99% of applications, this is more than sufficient

The web was designed for documents with hyperlinks. Rails embraces that model rather than fighting it, and you can build remarkably sophisticated applications without the complexity modern SPAs require.

This is a question that touches on the soul of the current engineering zeitgeist. Here is my breakdown of the industry's missteps, the path forward, and the tech stack that best embodies the solution.

The web development industry lost its way when we conflated Web Sites with Web Applications, and subsequently decided that the architecture required for a collaborative design tool (like Figma) was the default requirement for a blog, an e-commerce store, or a CRUD dashboard.

1. The Abandonment of Hypermedia (HATEOAS)
The web was designed as a state engine driven by Hypermedia (HTML). You click a link/submit a form, the server processes it, and returns the new state of the world as HTML.
We broke this by treating HTML as a lifeless skeleton and HTTP as a dumb pipe for JSON. We moved the application state from the database/server (where it belongs) to the client's RAM. Now, developers spend 50% of their time writing code just to synchronize state between the client and the server (React Query, Redux, useEffect).

2. Accidental Complexity
We normalized build pipelines that are more complex than the applications they build. To put "Hello World" on a screen today often requires Node.js, NPM, Webpack/Vite, Babel, TypeScript, limited CSS-in-JS libraries, and a dozen config files. We traded the stability of the platform (the Browser) for the volatility of the NPM ecosystem.

3. The "Hydration" Gap
We became obsessed with Single Page Applications (SPAs). To fix the SEO and load-time issues caused by SPAs, we invented Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with Hydration (Next.js, Nuxt). This means we render the site on the server, send it, and then re-run the logic on the client to make it interactive. We are effectively paying the computation tax twice.

To fix this, we don't need to go back to 2005 PHP spaghetti code, but we do need a Return to the Server.

1. HTML as the Payload: The server should send what the user needs to see (HTML), not the raw data (JSON) required to build it.
2. Locality of Behavior: Code should be located where it is executed. If a validation rule belongs to the database schema, it shouldn't be duplicated in a TypeScript schema on the frontend.
3. No JSON APIs for Internal Clients: If you are building the backend and the frontend, you should not be building a REST/GraphQL API in the middle unless you have a mobile app or 3rd party consumers.
4. WebSockets & Live HTML: Modern connection speeds allow us to keep a persistent connection open. We can push UI updates from the server instantly, negating the need for complex client-side state management.

Reflecting on the philosophy above, if I am building a CRUD web application today, I am choosing:

The Stack: Elixir + Phoenix Framework (with LiveView)

Here is why this choice is the antidote to modern web complexity:

In a React/Node stack, a CRUD action involves: Database $\to$ ORM $\to$ API Controller $\to$ JSON Serialization $\to$ Network $\to$ Client Fetch $\to$ Redux/State store $\to$ Component Render.

In Phoenix LiveView: Database $\to$ Socket $\to$ HTML Diff Update.
You write zero API modification code. You write zero client-side fetch code. You simply change the data on the server, and the view updates.

LiveView keeps the state of the user’s session in a lightweight process on the server (Elixir is built on the Erlang VM, which handles millions of concurrent processes trivially).
When a user clicks "Delete" on a list item:

1. The click travels over a WebSocket.
2. The server deletes the item from the DB.
3. The server re-renders the list, calculates the minimal binary diff (only the bytes that changed), and sends it down the pipe.
4. The browser patches the DOM.

You get the User Experience of a distinct SPA (instant feedback, no page reloads) with the Developer Experience of a classic server-rendered app.

The web is inherently concurrent. Most modern stacks (Node, Ruby, Python) struggle with massive concurrency, requiring complex caching (Redis), background workers (Sidekiq/Celery), and orchestrators (Kubernetes) to handle scale.

Elixir runs on the BEAM (Erlang VM), built by Erickson for telecom switches that need 99.9999999% uptime. It handles concurrency natively. You often don't need Redis. You often don't need a separate background worker fleet. The platform does what we currently rely on AWS services to do.

For styling, I would use Tailwind. It aligns with the "Locality of Behavior" philosophy. I don't want to hunt for a class definition in a separate file; I want to see the styling right next to the markup. Phoenix's template engine (HEEX) is compile-time checked, meaning if you miss a closing div or call a function that doesn't exist, the app won't compile.

This is a question that cuts to the core of the current "developer fatigue" crisis. Here is my analysis of the ecosystem’s missteps and the specific technology stack that corrects them.

The web development industry lost its way when we stopped building dynamic documents and started building distributed systems for everything.

Here are the three specific areas where we went wrong:

1. The SPA Default (Premature Complexity)
Somewhere around 2015, we collectively decided that a blog, an e-commerce storefront, or a simple CRUD dashboard required the same architecture as Google Maps or Spotify. We decoupled the frontend and backend completely, necessitating the specific problem of state synchronization. Now, you have state in the database, state in the JSON API, and state in the React/Vue/Angular store. Keeping these three aligned requires an immense amount of "glue code" that delivers zero value to the user.

2. The Loss of "The Platform"
The browser was designed to invoke hypermedia (HTML) requests and render responses. By shifting to client-side rendering (CSR), we broke the browser's native navigation/history, form handling, and caching, and then spent ten years writing megabytes of JavaScript to re-implement feature-poor versions of what the browser did for free in 1999.

3. Ephemeral Tooling (Churn)
We created a culture of "Resume Driven Development." The JS ecosystem creates a massive dependency tree (node_modules) where the tools used to build the software are often more complex than the software itself. Projects built three years ago are often unbuildable today because of dependency rot.

How to get back on track:
We need to embrace Hypermedia-Driven Applications (HDA). We must return the "source of truth" to the server and treat the browser as an intelligent hypermedia viewer, not a generic runtime for an operating system you built in JavaScript. Broadly, this is often called "The Return to Server-Side Rendering," but it is specifically about returning to HTML as the primary data transport.

Reflecting on the philosophy of simplifying complexity, maximizing stability, and relying on the platform, if I were to build a production-grade CRUD web app today, I would choose:

The Stack: Go (Golang) + HTMX + SQLite (with Templ)

Here is why this specific combination is the antidote to modern web development woes:

Go is arguably the most boring language in modern development, and that is its greatest strength.

• Solution to Dependency Hell: Go has a robust standard library (net/http). You can build a production web server without a framework like Express or NestJS.
• Solution to Churn: Go guarantees backward compatibility. Go code written in 2016 usually compiles and runs perfectly today.
• Deployment: No Docker containers filled with an OS and Node runtime. You compile a single, static binary. You SCP it to a server, and it runs.

HTMX allows you to access AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets, and Server Sent Events directly in HTML attributes.

• The "Back on Track" Factor: Instead of your Go server sending JSON to a React client which then converts it to HTML, your Go server just sends the HTML snippet (e.g., the updated row in the table).
• No State Sync: There is no client-side state to manage. The UI is always a direct reflection of the database state.
• Performance: The bundle size is tiny (~14k) compared to the megabytes of modern framework bundles.

For a standard CRUD app, specifically "read-heavy" web apps, PostgreSQL is often overkill.

• Operational Simplicity: No separate database server to manage, secure, or pay for. The database is a file sitting next to your binary.
• Performance: Because there is no network round-trip between your app and the database, SQLite is often faster than Postgres for small-to-medium applications (up to millions of requests).

Go's standard html/template is fine, but Templ brings type safety to HTML.

• It allows you to write HTML in Go (similar to JSX), meaning if you delete a variable in your backend code, your frontend code fails to compile immediately. This catches errors at build time, not runtime.

By choosing Go + HTMX, you eliminate the build step (Webpack/Vite), you eliminate the JSON API layer, and you eliminate front-end state management. You are left with a system where you write a query, wrap it in HTML, and send it to the browser.

It is fast, it creates a single deployable artifact, and it will still work ten years from now.

Here is an assessment of the industry's trajectory, a roadmap for correction, and a technology choice that embodies that correction.

The industry lost its way when we stopped building applications and started building distributed systems by default.

1. The Premature Separation of Concerns
Somewhere around 2015, we collectively decided that every web application, regardless of size, required a strict physical separation between the Frontend (SPA) and the Backend (API).

• The Cost: We replaced simple function calls within a single codebase with network calls, serialization, authentication handshakes, and state synchronization logic.
• The Result: To implement a simple CRUD feature, a developer now has to write the logic in the database, the API layer, the API client, the frontend state manager, and the frontend UI component.

2. Complexity Fetishism
We began valuing complexity as a proxy for quality. "Resume-Driven Development" took over, where using Kubernetes, Microservices, and complex Client-Side Hydration frameworks became necessary not because the project required scale, but because the developers required employability.

3. Abandoning the Platform (HTML)
We stopped treating the browser as a Hypermedia agent and started treating it as a dumb runtime for JavaScript applications. We ignored the capabilities of HTML/CSS in favor of re-inventing browser native features (routing, form submission, history management) in JavaScript, leading to the infamous "dependency hell" and fragile build pipelines.

The correction lies in the Return to the Majestic Monolith and the HTML-over-the-Wire movement.

1. Locality of Behavior: Code that changes together should stay together. If changing a database field requires you to open three different repositories (Client, API, DevOps), the architecture is wrong.
2. Server-Side Authority: Move state management back to the server. The client should be a reflection of server state, not a separate state machine trying to stay in sync via JSON payloads.
3. Boring Technology: Prioritize stability and maintainability over the "New Shiny." Tools that have survived a decade are usually better bets than tools released last month.

Reflecting on the philosophy of simplicity, unification, and server-side authority, I would choose:

The Framework: Phoenix (with LiveView)
The Language: Elixir
The Database: PostgreSQL

If the goal is to correct the errors of the SPAs-by-default era, Phoenix LiveView is the architectural antidote.

1. It Kills the API layer
In a standard React/Node stack, you build an API to talk to your own frontend. In LiveView, the server renders the HTML. When the user interacts (clicks, types), that event goes down a persistent WebSocket, the server updates the state, re-renders only the changed diff, and pushes it back to the DOM.

• Result: No REST endpoints. No JSON serializers. No Redux/TanStack Query. You write the feature once.

2. Performance without Complexity
Elixir runs on the BEAM (Erlang VM). It was built for telecom systems that required nine nines of availability. It handles concurrency naturally.

• Result: You don't need a complex caching layer (Redis) or a fleet of microservices to handle load. A single Phoenix server can handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections effortlessly.

3. Developer Happiness (The "Back on Track" aspect)
Building a CRUD app in Phoenix feels like the early days of Rails or Laravel—high productivity, convention over configuration—but it gives you the real-time interactivity of a modern React app without the JavaScript bloat.

The Implementation:
I would build the app as a Modular Monolith.

• Database: Postgres for relational data (ACID compliance is boring and beautiful).
• UI: Tailwind CSS (colpr-located styling).
• Logic: Elixir Contexts (clean boundaries within the monolith, preventing spaghetti code without the overhead of microservices).

This stack acknowledges that for 99% of CRUD applications, the network is the bottleneck, state synchronization is the bugkiest part, and developer context-switching is the biggest cost. Phoenix removes all three.

Here is a reflection on the state of the industry and a technology choice that aligns with the proposed solution.

The web software industry lost its way when we began solving Facebook-sized problems for local-bakery-sized applications.

Here are the three specific areas where we went off the rails:

1. The Separation of Concerns Fallacy: We decided that the "Frontend" and "Backend" should be entirely distinct disparate applications, often managed by different teams, communicating strictly over JSON. For a standard CRUD app, this introduced massive overhead: state synchronization issues, hydration errors, CORS nightmares, and the need to maintain types across a network boundary.
2. Resume-Driven Development: We deprioritized shipping finished products in favor of learning complex toolchains. We stopped asking, "What is the fastest way to deliver value to the user?" and started asking, "How can I fit Kubernetes, Kafka, Microservices, and a React Meta-framework into this todo list app?"
3. Abandoning the Platform: We spent a decade fighting the browser. We replaced the browser’s built-in navigation, form handling, and caching mechanisms with heavy JavaScript bundles (Client-Side Routing, Redux, preventing default event behaviors) that poorly mimicked what the browser already knew how to do.

To correct course, we need to embrace consolidation and native capabilities.

• The Majestic Monolith: We must accept that 99% of applications do not need microservices. A single codebase that handles the database, business logic, and UI rendering is infinitely easier to reason about, deploy, and maintain.
• HTML over the Wire: Instead of sending JSON to the client and forcing the client to turn it into HTML (using React/Vue/Angular), the server should send the HTML. This reduces the computational load on the client and simplifies the developer's mental model.
• Radical Simplification of Ops: We need to move away from complex cloud orchestration for simple apps. A virtual private server (VPS) and a solid deployment script are often superior to serverless lambdas for consistent workloads.

Reflecting on the above—aiming for simplicity, speed, complete ownership, and browser-native behavior—if I were to build a robust CRUD web app today, I would choose:

Ruby on Rails (Version 7+) with SQLite and Hotwire.

Here is why this specific stack solves the problems identified above:

SQLite is no longer just a toy. With modern NVMe SSDs and WAL (Write-Ahead Logging) mode, a single file-based SQLite database can handle tens of thousands of concurrent requests.

• The Fix: No Docker containers to manage, no connection pool overhead, no network latency between app and DB. The data lives inside the application context.

Ruby on Rails treats the entire application as a cohesive unit. It includes the ORM, the router, the mailer, the job queue, and the testing suite by default.

• The Fix: This eliminates "decision fatigue." You don't spend three days choosing which Zod schema validator to use or how to wire up ESLint. You just write code. Rails 8 (upcoming) specifically focuses on "The One Person Framework"—tools enabling a single dev to do the work of a team.

Hotwire (Turbo & Stimulus) is the key. It allows you to build the interactivity of a Single Page App (SPA) without writing a separate frontend application.

• How it works: When you submit a form or click a link, the server renders the new HTML fragment, and Turbo swaps only that part of the page in the DOM.
• The Fix: You get the UX speed of React without the payload size, build steps, or state management complexity. You write server-side Ruby (or your language of choice), and the frontend "just works."

Where the industry went wrong:

We turned the browser into a virtual machine and shipped our entire development environment to users. The cult of SPAs-for-everything made sense for Google Maps but not for your blog. We chain 800 dependencies to show a date picker, optimize for DX at UX's expense, and treat "boring" tech as career-deadly. Resume-driven development gave us microservices for 10-user startups, and we replaced stable server-side rendering with hydration nightmares.

Getting back on track:

• Embrace progressive enhancement. Use the web platform's strengths instead of fighting them.
• Adopt complexity surgically. Choose monoliths until they scream, SPAs when justified, and static HTML when possible.
• Value stability over novelty. Mature tools that change slowly trump flashy ones that rewrite their API annually.
• Measure user impact, not developer ergonomics. Your Lighthouse score matters more than your hot reload speed.

For a CRUD app? Elixir + Phoenix.

Not for purity points, but because it solves the actual modern problems:

• Phoenix LiveView gives you server-side rendering with SPA-like reactivity—no API layer, no React, no hydration mismatch hell. You write Elixir functions that push diffs over WebSocket. It's the "have your cake and eat it" solution to the SPA debate.
• Fault tolerance that matters. The BEAM VM (Erlang's legacy) means one user crashing a function doesn't take down the app. For CRUD apps that grow into critical business tools, this is quietly revolutionary.
• Developer productivity withoutDependency Madness™. One language, clear patterns, hot reloading that actually works, and a few well-chosen dependencies that don't explode into 400 transitive packages.

The pragmatic runner-up: Django/Python if you need ecosystem breadth, or Go + htmx if you want maximum simplicity and hate abstraction. But Phoenix feels like the industry correction we've been waiting for—built after we learned what not to do.

1. The Complexity Treadmill
We've equated "progress" with layering abstraction upon abstraction. A simple form now demands a SPA framework, state management, a bundler, a transpiler, a linter, a type-checker, and 500MB of dependencies. This isn't engineering—it's Jenga.

2. Developer Experience > User Experience
We've built tools that make our lives easier in the short term (hot reloading, component isolation) but often punish users with bloated bundles, laggy interactions, and broken semantics. We've forgotten that the "user" in UX is the person using the app, not the person building it.

3. Framework Churn as a Proxy for Innovation
We discard stable tools not because they're ineffective, but because they're not exciting. The half-life of a "modern" stack is now 18 months, leaving behind a graveyard of tutorials, Stack Overflow answers, and unmaintained projects. This is unsustainable.

4. The JavaScript-Only Blind Spot
We collectively pretended that browsers only speak JavaScript. We forgot about progressive enhancement, semantic HTML, and the fact that the web is inherently server-driven. We built houses on sand and called it a beachfront.

• Choose Boring Technology for Boring Problems: CRUD apps are not space flight. Use tools where the edge cases are known and the bugs have already been found.
• Embrace the Server Again: Server-side rendering isn't "legacy"—it's the web's original superpower. Push complexity to where the data lives, not the user's pocket.
• Tools Should Disappear: A great framework is one you rarely think about. It handles the plumbing so you can focus on business logic and user value.
• Measure What Matters: Bundle size, Time-to-Interactive, and accessibility scores are more important than GitHub stars or conference talks.

This isn't nostalgia—it's pragmatism. Rails embodies the correction:

Why it fixes the problems:

• Stability: It's been solving CRUD for 20 years. The APIs are stable, the ecosystem is mature, and "how to do X" is thoroughly documented.
• Zero-Config Productivity: rails new → rails generate scaffold → you have a complete, production-ready CRUD app in minutes. No wiring, no boilerplate, no decision paralysis.
• Server-First, Enhancement-Second: Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) gives you SPA-like responsiveness by sending HTML over the wire, not JSON. The app works without JS, then gets faster with it. Progressive enhancement, but actually practical.
• The 80/20 Rule: Rails assumes you're building a CRUD app and optimizes for that. You fight the framework only when you're doing something genuinely unusual.

The Stack:

• Language: Ruby (readable, expressive, optimized for developer happiness)
• Framework: Rails 7+ (import maps, no Node.js required for basic functionality)
• Frontend: Hotwire (Turbo Frames/Streams for async, Stimulus for light interactivity)
• Database: PostgreSQL (boring, reliable, powerful)
• Hosting: Anywhere that runs Ruby (Fly.io, Render, or even boring old Heroku)

When I'd choose differently:

• For extreme real-time scale: Phoenix/Elixir (same server-first philosophy, better concurrency)
• For microservices integration: Go/Fiber (simpler compiled binaries)
• For deep in-browser interactivity (maps, graphics): A small React/Vue island inside a Rails app, not instead of it.

The goal isn't to avoid modern tools—it's to use them surgically. For pure CRUD, Rails is the shortest path from idea to working software that won't embarrass you in production. It's not the shiny future; it's the solid present we've been ignoring.

Where the Industry Went Wrong

The web development industry hasn't so much "gone wrong" as it has fallen into a classic engineering trap: optimizing for developer experience at the expense of user experience and long-term maintainability. The core issues are:

1. Complexity Theater: We've normalized absurd toolchains—transpilers, bundlers, package managers, and frameworks stacked like a Jenga tower—to solve problems that most CRUD apps don't actually have. A junior developer now needs to understand a dozen abstractions before they can render "Hello World."

2. The Framework Churn Treadmill: The JavaScript ecosystem treats frameworks as disposable fashion, creating a generation of developers who know React but not the DOM, Docker but not Linux, and GraphQL but not HTTP. This isn't progress; it's planned obsolescence of knowledge.

3. User-Hostile Defaults: We ship 5MB bundles to show a form, ignore accessibility, break the back button, and call it "modern." The user pays the complexity tax while we enjoy hot reload and component isolation.

4. Boring = Bad Mentality: Stable, proven technology is seen as "legacy" while experimental tech is "cutting edge." We've confused novelty with innovation.

Getting Back on Track

The solution isn't to return to 1999, but to adopt a principle of pragmatic reductionism:

• Choose Boring Technology: Use proven tools that will exist in 10 years. The goal is shipping value, not CV-driven development.
• Start with the Platform: Browsers are incredibly capable. Use HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS until they genuinely can't solve your problem.
• Measure Before You Optimize: Don't add Redux, microservices, or Kubernetes because you might need them. Add them when you must.
• Embeddability Over Abstraction: If you can't understand the entire request/response path from scratch in an afternoon, you've over-abstracted.

My CRUD Stack Choice: Python + Django + HTMX

For a CRUD app, I'd choose Django with HTMX—a deliberately "boring" but powerful combination.

Why Django:

• Batteries Included: Authentication, admin panel, ORM, migrations, security headers—it's all there, stable, and documented. You can have a production-ready API in hours.
• Maturity: It's been around since 2005 and will be around in 2035. The API surface changes slowly. Your code remains comprehensible.
• Python: Readable, ubiquitous, and the lingua franca of AI/ML—critical if you need to sprinkle intelligence into your CRUD later.

Why HTMX:

• Progressive Enhancement: It extends HTML instead of replacing it. You get SPA-like interactivity (click-to-edit, infinite scroll, modals) without writing JS or maintaining state in two places.
• No Build Step: It ships 14KB. You don't need Webpack, Vite, or a degree in bundler configuration.
• Server-Side Sanity: Your logic stays on the server where it's easy to secure, test, and reason about. The client is just HTML.

The Philosophy: This stack embraces the web's original model (stateless requests returning HTML) while selectively enhancing it where it hurts. You're not fighting the platform; you're collaborating with it. For 95% of CRUD apps, this is faster to develop, cheaper to host, more accessible, and maintainable by any developer who knows Python and HTML.

The industry doesn't need more frameworks. It needs the discipline to use the right amount of technology—and often, that's less than we think.

The web development industry has taken a long, strange trip from serving static HTML to downloading half a million npm packages to render a button. We've mistaken novelty for progress and developer experience for user experience. Here's where I think we drifted, and how we might find our way back.

1. The Complexity Arms Race
We keep solving problems created by our last solution. State management libraries exist because our SPA frameworks turned simple form submissions into distributed systems problems. Build tools proliferated because we shipped raw source files and called it "developer productivity." We've built Jenga towers of abstraction where a simple request becomes a saga through bundlers, transpilers, frameworks, and hydration layers.

2. The Resume-Driven Development Cycle
Developers adopt technologies not because they fit the problem, but because they fit LinkedIn profiles. We rewrite working systems in New Framework X for "learning opportunities," leaving teams with unmaintainable codebases and users with new bugs. The industry rewards novelty over reliability.

3. User Experience as an Afterthought
We've shipped 5MB of JavaScript to parse Markdown while a user stares at a loading spinner. We've built "offline-first" apps that don't work without WiFi. We've optimized for hot reload times while page load times ballooned. The user's laptop fan screams while our beautiful component library downloads.

4. The Backend/Frontend Chasm
We split teams and technologies so thoroughly that a simple CRUD operation requires two weeks of API design meetings, a GraphQL schema, and a microservice. We forgot that the web started as a way to put a database on the internet.

Choose Boring Technology for 95% of Problems
Dan McKinley's "Choose Boring Technology" talk should be required viewing. The goal isn't excitement—it's shipping working software. Use stable tools with known failure modes. A 10-year-old framework that still gets security patches is a feature, not a bug.

Optimize for User Time, Not Developer Time
The best developer experience is a fast, reliable product. Measure what matters: time to interactive, accessibility scores, actual user flows. If your DX improvement slows the app down, it's not an improvement.

Embrace Server-Side Rendering (Again)
Surprise: servers are fast and always-on. Rendering HTML on the server eliminates entire categories of problems: hydration mismatches, SEO complexity, initial load states. Modern SSR is what we had in 2005, but with better CSS.

Build Products, Not Platform Demos
Your users don't care if you're using WebAssembly or edge functions. They care if the damn thing works. Ship features, not architectural patterns.

For a pure CRUD web app—let's say an internal tool or a straightforward business application—I'd reach for Django without hesitation.

Why Django:

• The Admin Interface: It's the killer feature everyone forgets. You get a fully functional, secure CRUD interface for your models in minutes, not days. For internal tools, this is often enough to ship.
• Batteries Are Actually Included: Auth, ORM, migrations, security headers, CSRF protection—it's all there and sensible by default. I don't want to curate 50 libraries that might work together.
• Python's Readability: Business logic in Python is transparent. A non-technical stakeholder can read a Django model and understand the domain. Try that with a React component using 12 hooks.
• Stability: Django has been around since 2005 and still evolves thoughtfully. Code I wrote in 2012 would be recognizable today. That's a feature.
• Performance Is Fine: For CRUD, your bottleneck is the database, not the framework. Django's ORM is mature and won't surprise you. When you need async, it's there. When you don't, it stays out of the way.

I wouldn't even bring React into it. I'd use Django templates with a bit of HTMX for sprinkles of interactivity—modal forms, inline editing, sortable tables. You get 80% of the SPA experience with 5% of the complexity. The page loads fast, works without JavaScript, and doesn't require a separate API.

Alternative for Maximum Simplicity: If I wanted something even lighter, I'd go Go + templ + HTMX. No ORM (just SQL), compile-time templates, and a single binary deployment. But for CRUD, Django's admin and ORM are worth the small overhead.

What I Wouldn't Choose: Anything that requires a separate frontend build pipeline, state management library, or API versioning strategy for a problem that boils down to "put this form in the database."

The web didn't go wrong because we have fancy tools. It went wrong when we started using them for everything, regardless of cost. For most CRUD apps, 2005's architecture with 2025's browser standards is exactly what you need.

Where we’ve gone wrong

• Complexity as a default: SPAs, microfrontends, microservices, Kubernetes, and 12 build tools for a simple CRUD. Teams carry a distributed-systems tax without distributed-systems needs.
• JavaScript everywhere by reflex: client-side rendering and state for pages that should be documents. Performance, accessibility, and cacheability suffer.
• Tool churn over fundamentals: framework-of-the-month replaces understanding of HTTP, HTML semantics, caching, database design, and security basics.
• Dependency sprawl and fragile supply chains: thousands of transitive packages for trivial tasks, weak pinning, and runaway attack surfaces.
• Over-abstracted architectures: generic layers and patterns where a simple CRUD, a transaction, and a background job would do.
• DX over UX: fast dev hot-reload often ships slow, janky, inaccessible apps to users.
• Ops drag: container orchestration and bespoke CI/CD for projects that could be a single process on a small VM with backups and monitoring.

How to get back on track

• Start server-first, enhance progressively: HTML forms, server rendering, sprinkle interactivity where it matters. Reach for JS islands or websockets only when needed.
• Prefer monoliths by default: split services only for clear, demonstrated reasons (org boundaries, scaling needs, isolation).
• Trim dependencies: use the standard library and built-ins; add libraries deliberately; pin and audit. Vendor a tiny utility instead of pulling a whole dependency tree.
• Embrace boring, batteries-included frameworks: lean on conventions, scaffolds, migrations, auth generators, and stable ecosystems.
• Center the database: Postgres, transactions, indices, schema migrations, and proper constraints. Avoid premature NoSQL/exotic stores.
• Cache and measure: HTTP caching, CDNs, server-side sessions; measure perf and error rates; set budgets.
• Accessibility and semantics: get HTML/CSS right first, then interactivity. Keyboard and screen-reader support aren’t optional.
• Testing pyramid and observability: fast unit/integration tests, a few E2E tests, logs/metrics/traces. Keep CI simple.
• Simple, reliable deploys: one repo, one process, one database. Start with a single VM or PaaS, backups, and health checks. Scale predictably.

My pick for a CRUD web app

• Stack: Elixir + Phoenix + LiveView, Postgres, Tailwind, Fly.io/Render or a single VPS behind Nginx/Caddy.
  Why
• Server-first interactivity: LiveView gives rich UI without a SPA, minimal custom JS, great performance over modest connections.
• Productivity with constraints: generators, contexts (clean boundaries), Ecto for migrations/queries, first-class testing.
• Operational simplicity: one monolith, small memory footprint, easy horizontal scaling. Excellent real-time and concurrency if you need it later.
• Fewer moving parts: no bundler maze, no client-state hydration puzzles, fewer dependencies to audit.
• Strong defaults: telemetry, secure session handling, CSRF protection, and good auth scaffolding.

How I’d build it

• Generate a Phoenix app with LiveView, Postgres, Tailwind integrated.
• Model the domain with Ecto schemas and changesets; put business logic in Phoenix contexts.
• Use phx.gen.auth for authentication; server-side sessions.
• Build CRUD UIs as LiveViews: optimistic UIs, form validation via changesets, minimal custom JS.
• Add simple policies/authorizations in context functions.
• Use standard HTML routes; cache-safe GETs; proper status codes; paginate server-side.
• Background jobs via Oban if needed; email via Swoosh.
• Tests: changeset and context tests first, LiveView tests for key flows.
• Deploy: containerize or use mix releases; one Postgres instance with automated backups; metrics via Prometheus/OpenTelemetry.

If the team is more comfortable with other ecosystems, similar philosophy alternatives:

• Rails 8 + Hotwire (Turbo/Stimulus) + Postgres
• Django + HTMX + Postgres
• Laravel + Livewire + Postgres

All of these keep you close to the metal (HTTP/HTML/SQL), deliver fast, accessible apps, and avoid the complexity tax that’s become the default.

Where we’ve gone wrong

• We’ve mistaken complexity for progress: SPA-by-default, megabytes of JS, and fragile build pipelines for apps that are mostly forms and lists.
• Tooling churn eclipsed fundamentals: new frameworks every quarter, but weak grasp of HTTP, SQL, accessibility, caching, and failure modes.
• Microservices too early: distributed systems complexity without the scale to justify it.
• Dependency sprawl and supply-chain risk: thousands of transitive packages to render a button.
• Duplicating logic on both sides: routing, validation, and state on the client plus on the server.
• Accessibility and performance as afterthoughts: worse UX, energy use, and Core Web Vitals.
• Over-reliance on hosted magic: lock-in, opaque failures, YAML sprawl, and surprise bills.
• Undervalued observability and testing: flaky E2E in place of solid integration tests and traces.
• ORMs used as a crutch: weak data modeling, no constraints, leaky invariants.
• Optimizing for the happy-path DX demo instead of long-term operability and maintainability.

How to get back on track

• Server-first by default: SSR + progressive enhancement. Use small islands or WebSocket-driven UIs only where it pays.
• Start with a well-factored monolith. Split services only when you can name the concrete scaling or team boundary that demands it.
• Prefer boring, mature tech: a relational DB (Postgres), a batteries-included framework, and simple deployments.
• Treat the database as the source of truth: explicit schemas, constraints, migrations, transactions.
• Keep JS small and intentional. No bundler unless you truly need one. Embrace tools like Hotwire, HTMX, or LiveView.
• Set performance and accessibility budgets, measure them, and fail builds when you regress.
• Minimize dependencies; pin versions; generate SBOMs; keep an upgrade cadence; vet critical transitive deps.
• Build in observability from day one: structured logs, metrics, traces, and useful error reports.
• Security by default: safe auth, CSRF protection, paramized queries, CSP, least privilege, and routine secrets rotation.
• Ship small, write docs, and automate tests that match your architecture (unit + integration > flaky end-to-end).

My pick for a CRUD web app

• Phoenix (Elixir) with LiveView, Postgres, Tailwind, and minimal JS.

Why

• Server-first with rich interactivity: LiveView gives real-time, reactive UIs over WebSockets without a SPA. You keep one source of truth on the server, cut JS surface area, and still get snappy UX.
• Reliability and concurrency: The BEAM VM shines at handling many connections, timeouts, and background tasks. It’s hard to accidentally block the world.
• Productivity with guardrails: Generators, Ecto for composable queries and constraints, first-class testing, and excellent telemetry.
• Operational simplicity: One deployable app, straightforward scaling, and good observability. Horizontal scale is sane when you need it.
• Performance and UX: Fast SSR/Delta updates, great Core Web Vitals, and no massive bundles by default.

Typical stack choices

• Web framework: Phoenix + LiveView
• Language/runtime: Elixir on BEAM
• Database: Postgres (with Ecto migrations and constraints)
• Styling: Tailwind (ships integrated), optional component lib
• Auth: phx_gen_auth or Pow, with 2FA and session hardening
• Background jobs: Oban
• Emails: Swoosh
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, structured logs, PromEx/Grafana
• Deploy: Fly.io, Render, or a simple container on your cloud of choice
• Testing: ExUnit for unit/integration; LiveView test helpers for UI flows

How I’d implement CRUD

• Model the domain with Ecto schemas and database constraints first.
• Generate LiveViews for list/show/new/edit; add stream updates for real-time lists; keep JS to small hooks where necessary.
• Add validations on both Ecto changesets (authoritative) and light client hints.
• Write integration tests around LiveView flows and DB constraints; add telemetry for slow queries and render times.
• Enforce performance/accessibility budgets in CI; ship small, iterate.

When I wouldn’t choose it

• Heavy offline-first or complex client-side graphics/canvas: I’d consider a client app with a small API and an island framework.
• Team constraints: If the team is deep in Ruby, Rails 7 + Hotwire is an excellent alternative; in Python, Django + HTMX; in .NET, ASP.NET Core Razor Pages + HTMX; in Go, a thin server + HTMX/Alpine.

But if I have a free hand and the goal is a maintainable, fast, secure CRUD app with room to grow, Phoenix LiveView on Postgres is my default. It embodies the “server-first, minimal JS, strong data model, simple ops” course correction the industry needs.

Where we went wrong

• Complexity inflation: defaulting to SPA + microservices + Kubernetes for CRUD apps. We ship more toolchain than product and push cost/fragility onto teams and users.
• JS-by-default: ignoring server-side rendering and progressive enhancement. Users pay with slow loads, janky UX, and huge bundles.
• Dependency sprawl: thousands of transitive packages for trivial tasks, leading to supply-chain risk and upgrade paralysis.
• Cloud maximalism: over-abstracted infra, vendor lock‑in, and nontrivial ops for simple needs.
• Ignoring the platform: underusing HTML, HTTP, forms, caching, and semantics; reinventing solved problems at higher cost.
• Poor attention to a11y, performance, and privacy: treated as “nice to have” instead of requirements.
• Data and state everywhere: chatty APIs, realtime by default, client state duplication, and brittle synchronization.
• Testing that misses the point: unit test obsession without end-to-end confidence, observability, or good rollback paths.
• Over-modeling and under-measuring: architecture “best practices” without business/user outcomes or telemetry to justify them.

How to get back on track

• Prefer boring, proven tech. Monolith-first. Server-rendered by default; add JS progressively (htmx/Hotwire/LiveView patterns) when it delivers real value.
• Start simple operationally: one repo, one process group, one database, a queue, backups. PaaS or a small VM/container is fine.
• Ruthless dependency diet: use standard libs; review and pin deps; update regularly; remove rarely-used packages.
• Set budgets and measure: Core Web Vitals, size limits, p95 latencies, error budgets. Add RUM + tracing early.
• Accessibility as acceptance criteria, not a phase.
• Own your data footprint: collect less, retain less, delete on schedule. Be explicit about purpose and permissions.
• Prefer SQL you understand. Optimize the 10% of queries that matter; profile N+1s; add indexes intentionally.
• Small, accountable teams that own vertical slices (UI-to-DB), with docs and lightweight ADRs.
• Security basics by default: OWASP 10, CSP, CSRF, strict transport, secrets management, threat modeling for key flows.
• Split services only for clear reasons (independent scaling, isolation, team boundaries), not fashion.

Given that, my free-choice stack for a CRUD web app

• Ruby on Rails (7.x) + PostgreSQL + Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus)
• Why:
  • It optimizes for shipping: conventions, scaffolding, migrations, validations, i18n, mailers, background jobs—all first-class.
  • Server-rendered HTML with progressive enhancement keeps complexity low. Turbo gives you fast nav, forms, and partial updates without a SPA.
  • Excellent ecosystem and docs. You can do 90% with Rails itself; minimal dependencies.
  • Easy to deploy simply (Render/Fly/Heroku, or a small container on a VM). Scale vertically first, then horizontally if needed.
• Additions:
  • Auth: Devise or Sorcery, plus session-backed auth with CSRF/CSP hardened defaults.
  • Jobs: Sidekiq + Redis for reliability (or stick to async jobs initially if load is tiny).
  • Styling: Tailwind CSS for speed and consistency (or your design system of choice).
  • Testing: RSpec (or Minitest) with system tests using Capybara; a few happy-path end-to-end tests over many brittle unit tests.
  • Observability: Logfmt/JSON logs, pg_stat_statements, error tracking (Sentry), lightweight tracing/metrics (OpenTelemetry where useful).
  • Performance/privacy: gzip/brotli, HTTP caching, ETags, strict CSP, minimal analytics with RUM.

When I’d pick something else

• Heavy realtime and concurrency, long-lived connections: Elixir Phoenix LiveView.
• Team is Python-first: Django + HTMX + Alpine/Tailwind.
• Low-level control and single-binary deploys: Go + standard library + HTMX.

But for a straightforward CRUD web app where the goal is to deliver value fast and keep it maintainable, Rails + Postgres + Hotwire is my first choice. It embodies the “use the web” approach, keeps the stack small, and leaves plenty of headroom before you need to add complexity.

Where we went wrong

• Defaulting to SPA-first and client-heavy apps: We pushed too much state and logic to the browser, added complex toolchains, and paid with performance, fragility, and accessibility debt.
• Premature microservices and “cloud-native by default”: Operational complexity ballooned before product-market fit; teams spend more time plumbing than building.
• Dependency and build bloat: Transitive dependencies, fragile builds, and supply-chain risk became normal.
• Ignoring the web platform: We replaced links, forms, HTTP caching, and progressive enhancement with bespoke JS and RPC, then rediscovered them under new names.
• Performance, accessibility, and privacy as afterthoughts: Multi-megabyte bundles, poor keyboard/screen-reader support, and data hoarding degrade trust and usability.
• Tooling > outcomes: We over-optimized developer fashion instead of user value, reliability, and maintainability.

How to get back on track

• Server-first by default: Render HTML on the server, then progressively enhance. Use HTML-over-the-wire (Turbo/LiveView/HTMX). Reach for a real SPA only when the interaction model truly demands it.
• Monolith until it hurts: One repo, one deployable, one database. Split later, with measurements.
• Embrace web primitives: Links, forms, caching, semantics, ARIA, and CSP. Keep JS small and focused on islands.
• Keep the stack boring and small: Minimize dependencies; own your build; pin and audit what you must bring in.
• Make performance and a11y non-negotiable: Budgets (bundle size, LCP/INP), automated checks in CI, and real device testing.
• Strong defaults for security and privacy: SameSite cookies, CSRF, parameterized queries, least privilege, data minimization.
• Observability built-in: Structured logs, metrics, tracing, error budgets; fix the top regressions continuously.
• Fast feedback loops: Sub-1s test runs where possible, hot reload, stable local dev.

My free-choice stack for a CRUD web app

• Phoenix (Elixir) with LiveView, Postgres, Tailwind CSS.
  • Why: Server-first interactivity with minimal JavaScript, excellent performance and real-time via WebSockets, great developer ergonomics, and operational resilience from the BEAM. It hits the “ship fast, maintain easily” sweet spot without SPA complexity.
• Supporting pieces:
  • Auth: phx.gen.auth (sessions + remember-me, CSRF-safe).
  • Background jobs: Oban.
  • Email: Swoosh.
  • Observability: Phoenix Telemetry + OpenTelemetry exporter.
  • Deployment: Single-node release behind Nginx or Fly.io/Render for simplicity; Postgres managed if possible. Add Redis only if/when you truly need it.
• Approach:
  • Start as a single Phoenix app: Ecto schemas, query changesets, LiveView for CRUD UIs and inline edits.
  • Server-render everything; introduce JS only for true client-only needs (drop in a small Stimulus/Alpine component or a single React island if unavoidable).
  • Set budgets: p95 LCP < 2.5s on 3G, <150KB of JS shipped by default.
  • Keep migrations, seeds, fixtures, and property tests (StreamData) close to the domain.

If the team is more comfortable with other ecosystems, Rails + Hotwire or Django + HTMX are equally strong server-first choices. The principle matters more than the brand: keep it simple, server-first, observable, and humane to operate.

Where We Went Wrong

Complexity worship over problem-solving. We've built cathedrals when we needed sheds.

The industry valorizes "scale" that 99% of apps will never need, creates frameworks that require frameworks, and mistakes novelty for progress. We've normalized:

• Build pipelines that take longer than the app took to write
• Megabytes of JavaScript for forms that could be HTML
• "Modern" stacks requiring 500MB node_modules for a blog
• Rewriting working systems every 3 years to stay "relevant"
• Junior devs thinking they need Kubernetes to run a CRUD app

We forgot that boring is beautiful. The constraint of dialup internet forced elegance. Now infinite bandwidth enables waste.

Getting Back on Track

1. Choose the right tool, not the exciting tool
2. Measure complexity cost, not just dev velocity
3. Default to server-side rendering
4. Write less code (the best code is no code)
5. Value maintenance and operations, not just greenfield dev

My Choice for a CRUD App

Django or Rails. Probably Django + HTMX.

Here's why:

# This is nearly the entire app for a basic CRUD system

# models.py
class Article(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    content = models.TextField()
    created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

# views.py (using Django's generic views)
from django.views.generic import ListView, CreateView, UpdateView, DeleteView

class ArticleListView(ListView):
    model = Article

class ArticleCreateView(CreateView):
    model = Article
    fields = ['title', 'content']

# urls.py
urlpatterns = [
    path('', ArticleListView.as_view()),
    path('new/', ArticleCreateView.as_view()),
    # ... etc
]

Add HTMX attributes to templates for SPA-like interactivity without JavaScript build steps.

What you get:

• Admin panel (free)
• ORM with migrations
• Form validation & CSRF protection
• Authentication
• Template system
• Dev server with auto-reload
• Battle-tested for 18 years
• Deploy to a single $5 VPS
• Zero build step
• No node_modules

Alternative answer: Plain PHP with Laravel or even raw PHP if I'm being honest about simplicity. PHP gets derided, but it's designed for web CRUD and deploys by uploading files. Sometimes the old ways were better.

The best stack is the one you can maintain alone at 2am when something breaks.

Where We Went Wrong

Complexity worship over problem-solving. We've created a culture where architectural sophistication signals competence, regardless of whether it's warranted. A simple CRUD app now "requires" microservices, message queues, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, and a dozen JavaScript frameworks.

Abstraction addiction. We've abstracted so far from the fundamentals that developers can't debug their own stack. When something breaks three layers deep in your dependency tree, you're helpless.

Resume-driven development. Technology choices based on what looks good on LinkedIn rather than what solves the problem efficiently.

The JavaScript singularity. Building complex build pipelines just to render HTML. Transpiling, bundling, hydrating—enormous complexity for what Apache + PHP did in 2005.

Getting Back on Track

• Start with boring technology. Choose proven, stable tools over shiny new frameworks
• Measure actual constraints. Is this really going to have 1M users? No? Then SQLite is fine
• Value constraints. "Must work on a $5/month VPS" forces good decisions
• Teach fundamentals. HTTP, SQL, HTML/CSS before React/GraphQL/whatever
• Celebrate simplicity. Deleting code should be valued more than adding it

My Choice for a CRUD App

Laravel (PHP) or Rails (Ruby)

Why? Because they get it:

• Convention over configuration - sensible defaults, productive immediately
• Monoliths are fine - one codebase, one deployment, easy to reason about
• Batteries included - ORM, auth, email, jobs, all there
• Server-rendered HTML - with Hotwire/Turbo or Livewire for interactivity
• Mature ecosystems - boring, stable, documented
• Single developer can own it - understand the entire stack

I'd specifically choose Laravel today because:

• PHP deployment is trivially cheap
• Eloquent ORM is genuinely pleasant
• Blade templates are simple
• Livewire gives you reactivity without JavaScript build hell
• The documentation is excellent
• You can start on shared hosting and scale to whatever you need

No build step. No hydration. No client-side state management. Just HTML going over the wire.

What would you choose?

Where We Went Wrong

Complexity worship. We've convinced ourselves that "enterprise-grade" means layers upon layers of abstraction. A simple blog now requires:

• A JavaScript framework (and its ecosystem of 47 dependencies)
• A build pipeline with transpilers, bundlers, minifiers
• A separate API backend
• State management libraries
• CSS-in-JS solutions
• Docker containers
• Kubernetes for "scalability" you'll never need

We've forgotten that constraints breed creativity and simplicity is sophisticated.

The "resume-driven development" problem: choosing tech because it looks good on LinkedIn rather than because it solves the actual problem.

Over-engineering for hypothetical scale: Building for millions of users when you have zero. premature optimization remains the root of all evil.

Getting Back on Track

1. Choose boring technology - Use proven, stable tools
2. Start monolithic - Microservices are a solution to organizational problems you don't have yet
3. Server-side rendering - The browser is not an application runtime; it's a document viewer that can do tricks
4. Progressive enhancement - Build for HTML first, enhance with JS
5. Reduce dependencies - Each dependency is a liability
6. Measure before optimizing - Performance theatre vs. actual performance

My Choice for a CRUD App

Django (Python) or Laravel (PHP)

Here's why Django edges ahead for me:

# models.py - Your database schema
class Article(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    content = models.TextField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

# That's it. Admin panel, migrations, validation—all included.

What you get out of the box:

• ORM that doesn't fight you
• Admin interface (auto-generated CRUD UI)
• Authentication/authorization
• Form handling and validation
• Security defaults (CSRF, XSS, SQL injection protection)
• Template engine
• Migration system
• Development server

Zero build step. No node_modules. No waiting for webpack.

One language for everything. Your backend logic, template rendering, and simple interactive enhancements (with Alpine.js or htmx if needed).

Deployment: A single process. gunicorn + nginx. Done.

Go + html/template + SQLite/Postgres

// Even more minimal. Compiles to a single binary.
// Deploy by copying one file.

But Django wins for CRUD because the admin interface alone saves dozens of hours.

The controversial take: For most CRUD apps, your tech stack choice matters far less than your ability to ship quickly and maintain it simply. The "best" framework is the one you can delete code from, not add to.

Where We Went Wrong

Complexity worship over problem-solving. We've created a culture where:

• Using 5 frameworks and 300 dependencies is "professional" but writing vanilla code is "naive"
• Build processes take longer than the actual coding
• Junior developers spend months learning toolchains before writing their first feature
• "Best practices" mean cargo-culting patterns from Google/Facebook regardless of whether you're building something with 10 users or 10 million

The resume-driven development cycle: New framework drops → everyone rewrites → blog posts declare everything else "legacy" → repeat every 18 months.

Abstraction addiction: We've abstracted so far from the fundamentals that developers don't understand what their code actually does. The web is HTTP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Everything else is optional, but we've forgotten that.

Getting Back on Track

1. Start with the browser APIs and standard library - reach for dependencies only when genuinely needed
2. Measure before optimizing - both performance AND developer complexity
3. Choose boring technology - especially for things that aren't your core competency
4. Question the "industry standard" - your startup CRUD app doesn't need the same architecture as Netflix

My Choice for a CRUD Web App

Go with html/template, net/http, and vanilla JavaScript.

Maybe sqlc for type-safe database queries. That's it.

Why?

• Single binary deployment - no runtime dependencies, no Docker necessary
• 15-second cold starts - from git clone to running app
• Understandable - the entire stack fits in my head
• Durable - will work identically in 10 years
• Fast enough - handles thousands of req/sec before you need to optimize
• Actually simple - not "simple" in the React sense where you need 47 packages to render a form

// Your entire app structure:
├── main.go
├── handlers/
├── templates/
├── static/
└── db/

No build step. No transpilation. No node_modules black hole. Just code.

The controversial part: I'd write HTML forms that POST directly to endpoints. With progressive enhancement via vanilla JS where needed. You know, how the web actually works.

What would you choose?