1 Experts Yan Cui Tim Neutkens AWS Serverless Hero Head of Next.js at Vercel Marek Gajda Guillermo Rauch CTO of The Software House CEO of Vercel Jessica Jordan Tomek Rudzki Developer Advocate at .cult Head of R&D at Onely Luca Mezzalira Dylan Schiemann VP of Architecture at DAZN CEO of Living Spec Rocky Neurock Bartosz Skowroński Engineering Team Lead Head of Design at Honeypot.io at The Software House 2 Authors Patryk Mamczur Editor in Chief Marcin Gajda Joanna Swoboda Tomasz Kajtoch Magdalena Habarta Wiktor Toporek Kamil Głowiński Andrzej Wysoczański Publication Design Technical Consulting 3 Table of contents Developers 8 01 Everyday frontend development according to 4,500 experts Frameworks 12 02 React is king. But who’s the contender? Hosting 18 03 Traditional DCs, cloud giants and frontend-focused hosting Jamstack 24 04 Ecstatic about static Micro frontends 28 05 Do we need microservice revolution in frontend development? Search engine optimization 32 06 It seems that you don’t care about SEO. Here’s why you should Application accessibility 07 Making the interface friendly for every user 36 4 Development teams 40 08 Frontend development? It’s a team sport Design 44 09 Striving for close collaboration between designers and developers Quality assurance 48 10 Software testing as the cornerstone of software development Future of frontend 52 11 State of Frontend 2021? 5 How many frontend developers took part in the survey? Total answers: 4500 1082 Western Europe 941 North America 333 Central and 6 South America 107 Other 1581 Eastern Europe 1082 Western Europe 303 South and East Asia 73 Middle East 7 01. Developers Everyday frontend development according to 4,500 experts Patryk Mamczur Report’s Editor in Chief 8 With 4,500 folks filling in the survey, the State of Frontend 2020 is the biggest report out there focused solely on frontend development. When we started thinking about the State of Frontend 2020 report, I had one goal in mind: to find out what the everyday job of a frontend developer looks like. Considering that there are thousands of frontend devs around the world, that goal seemed pretty unrealistic. But hey man – once again, the frontend community surprised us all! In just a few weeks, exactly 4,500 frontend developers took part in our State of Frontend survey! I know the number first hand because I was literally sitting with my finger on a button, observing the growing num- bers and waiting for the perfect moment to close the survey. I don’t know about you but for me the number is pretty perfect – as with 4,500 folks filling in the survey, the State of Frontend 2020 is the biggest report out there focused solely on frontend development. All in all, we ended up with over four thousand frontend devs telling us about their everyday job, the frameworks that they use, the frameworks that they would like to use (but, for example, the boss won’t let them) and about their 9 thoughts on the recent frontend development trends. The results of the survey are awesome – some of them surprising, many of them inspiring, all of them showing how the everyday frontend development looks. To make all this data more accessible, we invited leading software de- velopment authorities to comment on the results. With their incredible know-how and big-picture perspective, they made the State of Frontend 2020 report what it is – the most up-to-date source of knowledge on the modern frontend development. So, I advise you to stop reading my brag-about introduction, take a look at the table of contents, choose the topics that interest you the most and find out what both the developers and the authorities have to say about it. You won’t be disappointed. For how long have you been in the frontend development game? 6.2% A few months 16.9% More than 10 years 24.7% More than 1 year 26.1% 26% More than More than 5 years 3 years 10 How would you describe your seniority? 0.6% 2.9% Other Chief technology 14.6% officer Junior developer 16.1% Lead developer / Head 35.7% of technology Mid-level developer 30% Senior developer How big is the company you are working in? 7.5% I’m a one -person 25.5% company 500+ employees 14.1% 2-10 9.7% employees 201-500 employees 22.6% 11-50 20.5% employees 51-200 employees 11 02. Frameworks React is king. But who’s the contender? Dylan Schiemann CEO of Living Spec, Co-creator of Dojo 12 One thing is certain: React dominates the mind share today. When you look at the results of the State of Frontend survey, one thing is certain: React dominates JavaScript framework mind share today. However, at the same time, it seems that next-generation reactive frame- works may soon rise as lean alternatives to the React ecosystem. And it all has much to do with the rising popularity of TypeScript. For the past several years JavaScript developers have gravitated towards React, Vue.js and Angular as the leading frameworks. Relative interest in Angular has decreased due in part to the long delay in shipping Ivy and, similarly, interest in Vue has stalled a bit due to the long-awaited and somewhat delayed Vue 3.0 release. It all helped React dominate the JavaScript framework market with 74.2% of the survey’s respondents using it – more than Angular and Vue.js users combined! It doesn’t mean, however, that the React community lives without a care in the world. A major change took place recently when developers start- ed turning away from Redux. We can already see that, when it comes to state management, more people use React Context API and hooks (49.6%) than Redux (48.2%) – of course, some of them still use both but the trend is visible. Also, as a side note, while discussing big JavaScript frameworks is important, we must not forget about jQuery which, while rarely talked about, still remains the most widely deployed JavaScript library on the web. 13 And what about the future of JavaScript? We're already seeing significant interest in next-generation reactive frameworks such as Svelte which strives to provide reactivity on top of normal DOM structures. Yet another competitor is Stencil – a framework focused on web components and, just like Svelte, on efficient compilation. Also, Dojo has re-emerged as a reactive TypeScript-first framework promising intelligent defaults for faster out-of-the-box experience. Some argue that these next-generation frameworks may be great for smaller applications but require more work when building large apps. It’s true that all of them provide much smaller default application bundle sizes as they do not carry the same legacy as frameworks which need to support features of the past few years. Also, they are very aligned with modern standards and language features. And this is where we must discuss the growing importance of TypeScript. With 77.2% of respondents already using TypeScript and most of them preferring it to JavaScript, it’s not surprising that frameworks are improv- ing their support for TypeScript and many start to leverage TypeScript internally. It’s true for both the already established frameworks (like React and Angular) and the next-generation ones (Stencil and Dojo in particular). With all these changes going on, I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next in the realm of JavaScript frameworks. Because one thing is for sure: React is the king now but there are already a few con- tenders for the throne waiting. 14 Which of these frameworks have you used during the last year? 80% 74.2% 70% 60% 50% 40% 33.4% 29.9% 30% 20% 11.8% 6.5% 5.6% 6.2% 10% 4% 0% React Angular Vue.js Svelte Ember.js Preact Backbone.js Other or none Which of these frameworks would you like to keep on using or want to learn in the future? 80 68.9% 70 60 50 45.2% 40 36% 30 26.7% 20 8.8% 6.7% 10 4,6% 0.9% 0 React Vue.js Svelte Angular Preact Ember.js Backbone.js Other or none 15 Which solutions do you use when it comes to state management? 60 49.6% 48.2% 50 40 30 18% 20 14.7% 14.2% 10.5% 9.5% 10.1% 8.1% 10 4.2% 3% 2.1% 0 React Redux Vuex RXJS NGRX Mobx Vue NGXS Ember Other None Create hooks subjects Event Data / custom / React Bus Ember solutions Context Services API Have you used TypeScript during the last year? 22.8% No 77.2% Yes 16 Do you like TypeScript better than JavaScript? 6.6% No – JavaScript for the win! 54.3% Yes, TypeScript 39.1% works better I kind of like for me both What do you think about the future of TypeScript? 1.7% In 2–3 years, everyone will forget about TypeScript 29.2% 14.1% In a few years, JavaScript will JavaScript will remain the turn into more popular something like choice TypeScript 26.6% 28.4% JavaScript and TypeScript will TypeScript become the will be equally more popular popular language 17 03. Hosting Traditional DCs, cloud giants and frontend-focused hosting Yan Cui AWS Serverless Hero and Independent Consultant 18 The future of frontend development calls for platforms such as Netlify and Vercel which provide easy-to-use features for frontend-focused teams. The results of the State of Frontend 2020 survey appear especially in- teresting when it comes to the subject of hosting.