Web development loves novelty. One framework chases another, one dependency drags in thirty, and two years later the project no longer compiles without updating everything. I have seen many sites die less from wear than from abandonment: one day, nobody dares touch them any more.

Fashion against time

Chasing every new thing means accepting that you will rebuild everything at short intervals. I say that knowing what I am talking about: I started on Flash, and I saw what becomes of a reigning technology when it disappears. One brick from that time followed me: TweenMax, which I animated with under Flash, is called GSAP today and runs on this site. Building to last starts with a refusal, the refusal of the headlong rush. I choose few tools, but tools I know will still be here, and still readable, several years from now. This site has 7 in production: Astro, three, GSAP, sharp, two fonts and a sitemap generator.

Four technologies on the axis of time, only one of them stops Two stacked registers. At the top, a horizontal bar named Flash, open on its left edge because its start carries no date, and closed off sharply on the right by a marked vertical stroke, beside which the word disappears is written. At the bottom, an axis carrying the date 2010 on the left and the word still on the right, then three bars named HTML, CSS and JavaScript: they all start at 2010 and stay open on the right edge of the frame. A REIGNING TECHNOLOGY Flash disappears 2010 STILL HTML CSS JavaScript
Only one of these four bars has an end, and it is the one I started on.

Standards do not expire

HTML from 2010 still works. So do standard CSS and JavaScript. What breaks is what we stack on top. So I aim at the foundation: static HTML, modern but standard CSS, a minimum of hand-written JavaScript. Fewer dependencies, less debt, fewer reasons for it to fall over.

The foundation that does not expire, and the three floors set on it A stack of four floors. At the very bottom, a wide block running from one edge of the frame to the other, split into three cells: static HTML, modern but standard CSS, hand-written JavaScript. Set on it, two narrower floors with dashed outlines: one framework, then one dependency drags in thirty, followed by a comb of thirty small vertical strokes. Above them, a last floor detached from the rest and drawn in the accent colour, named the project. Between it and the floor below runs a break line cut by two oblique strokes, and in the gap the words no longer compiles are written. WHAT WE STACK ON TOP TWO YEARS LATER the project no longer compiles one dependency drags in thirty one framework static HTML modern but standard CSS hand-written JavaScript STANDARDS DO NOT EXPIRE
The foundation is the only floor nobody ever needs to update.

Longevity as value for the client

A site that holds ten years without a rebuild is a budget that serves the brand instead of paying for its own reconstruction. It is also a lighter footprint: less computation, less data.

I do not build for the launch demo. I build for the tenth year, the one nobody is watching any more. It is the same demand as on a surfboard: what counts is holding the line for a long time.