I tend to be pretty vocal about the problems client-side JavaScript cause from an efficiency point of view. We’re delivering more JavaScript than ever to our user’s devices and the result is significantly fragile and resource-intensive experiences.

But that does not suggest I do not like JavaScript. On the contrary, I delight in working in JavaScript quite a bit.

What excites me is when JavaScript begins reaching into parts of the technical stack where it didn’t live before. Now that those tools are powered by JavaScript, it’s far more most likely that front-end designers can make those changes themselves.

Whenever we take a part of the technology stack and make it more approachable to a broader audience, we’ll start to see an explosion of creativity and innovation.

That’s why I’m really thrilled about edge computing options.

Using a CDN is one of the most valuable things you can do to enhance performance and extend your reach. But configuring that CDN and getting the maximum quantity of value has been out of grab most front-end teams.

That’s changing.

Cloudflare has Cloudflare Workers, powered by JavaScript. Amazon has [email protected], powered by JavaScript. You can’t compose JavaScript at the moment for [email protected](you can compose TypeScript if that’s your thing), but I think it’s only a matter of time prior to that changes.

Each of these tools provides a programmable layer in between your CDN and the people visiting your website, enabling you to transform your material at the edge prior to it ever gets to your users. Seriously, all of these tools make doing these things a lot more friendly to front-end developers.

For instance, rather of making the client do all the work for A/B testing, you can utilize any among these tools to handle all the logic on the CDN instead, helping to make client-side A/B testing (an annoyance of every performance-minded engineer ever) a distant memory. Optimizely’s already using this technology to do just that for their own A/B screening service

Utilizing a third-party resource? Edge computing makes it much easier to proxy those requests through your own CDN, sparing you the additional connection cost and helping get rid of single point of failures.

Custom error messages? Sure. User authentication? You betcha. Customization? Yup. There’s even been some quite innovative technical SEO work taking place thanks to edge computing.

Some of this work was achievable before, however often it required digging through archaic interface to find the right setting or utilizing completely different languages and tools like ESI or Varnish which don’t really exist beyond this little sliver of area they operate in.

Making these things friendly to anyone with a little JavaScript understanding has the possible to assist be a release valve of sorts, making it easier for folks to move some of that heavy work far from customer gadgets and back to a part of the tech stack that is a lot more predictable and reliable. Like Node.js and JavaScript-driven construct tools, they extend the reach of front-end designers further.

I can’t wait to see all the experimentation that happens.