The Era of Full Stack Web Frameworks

“The only constant in life is change.”

– Heraclitus

We live in exciting times for web development. The landscape is changing at an astonishing pace. There have never been more technologies to choose from to develop for the web. It feels like a new framework or library is published every other month. Existing frameworks and libraries release new major versions with new features, breaking changes, and new conventions. The industry’s fast pace can feel overwhelming, but it is also fascinating to see such a high level of innovation.

The larger web development community moves at a much slower pace than the cutting edge does. Most enterprises and developers are waiting to see what technologies stick around before adopting them – creating something we can consider the industry standard. I would count React as part of this standard. However, moving fast and adopting a new technology can be a competitive advantage if it moves the needle far enough. I believe Remix is such a technology.

Since you bought this book, you’ve decided to try Remix – awesome! As a React developer, Remix provides you with many benefits, such as the following:

• A backend environment for your frontend
• A full stack data mutation story
• A declarative approach to error handling
• Simplified client-side state management
• Server-side rendering
• The latest advancements in React, such as streaming
• An app runtime that can run anywhere, even on the edge
• Progressive enhancement through an embrace of web standards

With Remix, you can tap into the full capabilities of the web. This book guides you through the process, starting with the basics and progressing to more advanced techniques. In this first chapter, we will go over the following topics:

• Introducing Remix
• The philosophy behind Remix
• Primitives, conventions, and levers
• Remix behind the scenes

First, we will introduce Remix as a full stack web framework. After that, we will investigate the philosophy behind Remix and introduce a mental model to categorize the different tools Remix provides. Finally, we will look under the hood and learn about the different responsibilities that Remix takes on.

The goal of this first chapter is to introduce you to Remix. Most importantly, we want to showcase the advantages of Remix to your React development. We hope this will motivate you to get going. Therefore, this chapter touches upon several advanced concepts. But fear not; everything mentioned will be studied in detail later in this book.