Software development is evolving very fast, and we always have something new coming under the hood.

Last month, I found many attractive open-source packages that deserve the chance to try.

When I started my programming journey, I was told much about architecture. My only attention is to look for highly extensible solutions in frontend and backend, and architecture plays a perfect role.

Because of this, I’ve covered so many stories about frontend architecture and how we can make it extensible to god knows what extent.

To reduce the reusable workload, I create a custom repo section on the website to easily download the repository with top-notch packages pre-installed of your choice.

But that’s not the point of today’s story; we are entirely in a chaotic world.

We have many packages, tools, frameworks, and concepts to depend on, yet we cannot develop the most extensible, fast and highly customisable products.

Extensible, Customisable and Scalable are the new trade-offs or so-called new money.

Let's explore this with my favourite section called real-world example.

Recently I posted a tweet asking questions on the price fluctuations of Firebase alternative Supabase.

Supabase vs Firebase Price discussion on Twitter

Twitter is so good; you can directly solve your doubts with the largest community in the world instantly.

The discussion went well; even the Supabase founder Ant Wilson replied by attaching an article from tech crunch about the hike in google storage price.

But that’s not the point. The most critical thing the people mentioned about Supabase is we can directly eject the database and independently run it on our server.

Imagine a few years down the line when your website got colossal traffic. You can eject the supabase and runs your backend servers independently.

This means scalable and extensible; further, we can customise the database to whatever extent we want. This is what makes people happy behind using supabase.

Another thing that motivates developers to contribute to the supabase is it's open-source. They have sponsors and more than 480 contributors so far.

The firebase alternative is ready to crash the market and go higher and higher. But the fundamental trade-off happens because it’s scalable, easy to use, customisable and extensible.

Let’s take another example that I am discussing a lot nowadays.

Astro follows Island architecture under the hood, which loads every component independently and exclusively. This makes Astro quite fast in 2020 compared to Next.js and other javascript competitors.

But that’s not the only thing why Astro is getting so much love and recognition.

Astro is an all-in-one framework, meaning we can write React, Svelte and Vue code in a single repository. We can use markdown extension to lazy-loading optimised image components and third-party like TailwindCSS and vercel integrations in a single repository.

Shorts for Astro introduction

Imagine writing HTML or markdown directly for static pages such as blog and using React with Redux or Zustand for home pages that requires complex state management in a single repository.

This makes Astro highly extensible and customisable, and we can do whatever we want in a single repository. This is the future I can see where we don’t argue among the frameworks to choose. Instead, we add whatever we want in whatever fashion.

So let’s understand Next.js developed by Vercel. Almost all frameworks across the globe love Next.js file-based routing. Recently I read a post from the Expo team that helps to create apps that work across Mobile and desktop.

Expo itself supports new file-based routing. Astro provides file-based and dynamic routing, just like Next.js did.

Read the tweet by the Expo team member introducing new file-based routing in Expo.

Twitter thread by the Expo team on releasing the file-based routing

Next.js set the new standard by providing an extensible solution to architecture in the front end. People loved this and somehow made it an industry tradition.

Providing an extensible solution makes the product more transactional and acceptable and becomes the new currency for trade-in software development.

We all loved the tinder swipe effect and getting used to it very well. Tinder has the trademark in the industry for providing the most effortless user experience.

In this story, Josep Ferrer covered how tinder thinks and creates the most useful functionality. This single functionality disrupts the market, and we can witness more swipe functionalities on the browser itself.

Because it’s scalable and extensible, and easy to use, people love it, including developers.

Xstate is the state management library that is so underrated. The most important thing about Xstate is its extensibility, meaning you can use it in React, Vue, Svelte and even with vanilla javascript.

If you want to learn, here is the introduction shorts on the Finite State Machines concept.

Introduction to Finite State Machines

Xstate is not constrained to a single framework you use, making it robust.

Understand that in future, if we want to remove React, then only the UI component requires a change; the entire UI logic and business logic can remain untouched.

We can replace React with the new framework easily, which is possible because Xstate is extensible with other libraries.

This is quite a trending concept, and people love it, including me

Let me explain; earlier, when we had to develop UI, we used third-party packages like Material UI, React Bootstrap or Ant Design and added the logic to the components.

To create the website according to your theme, we have to override the CSS or add new pieces to every component these third-party libraries provide.

So these libraries come with the cost of customisable and extensibility that they don’t understand until they have a competitor in the market.

I am talking about Mantine dev. This headless UI library only provides components, and you can directly add your styling to each element—no overriding, time-saving, extensible and customisable components library.

Now, look what happens when we have so much love for mantine.dev and headless UI. The Material UI backed by Google developed and launched the MUI Base called Headless Material UI.

MUI Base release Twitter thread

This is the power of open-source and hence new currency to make transactions called Extensible, Customisable and Flexibility.

Even another React Frontend UI library, Chakra UI, is proceeding in this direction by creating a headless UI library without providing any styling.

We have more and more libraries that will provide only the functionality and take care of the design, looks and styles, making it highly customisable, scalable and extensible.

In addition, Chakra UI is planning to go. Further, they will use Xstate in the business logic for a component to provide highly customisable and extensible features that can be used directly with React, Svelte and Vue and save a lot of their time in creating pieces for each of the individual frameworks.

The Chakra UI team have named it Zagjs.

I have asked the Chakra UI founder directly about this new headless UI library using Xstate in the backend. Here is the reply —

Chakra UI founder on releasing Zagjs

The idea is to use Xstate to create a Headless UI library that is highly customisable, extensible and scalable, making it a high-standard product and easy to trade off among developers.

See, I told you Twitter is quite a product; you can talk directly to the founders, team members, and whomever you want.

Like the USA did in the 90s, swapping GOLD with USD to make any trade in the world.

Well, this is the story I can see with all other third-party packages, companies and open-source products. They all promise to be in one of the categories, and that’s the right way to make products for developers and consumers.

But we should also understand that, irrespective of making such high standard promises, these companies are working extensively hard to stand on it.

It’s straightforward to condemn the product or third party or to say wrong about any package or software we have used.

Developing and maintaining open-source products is quite a task, and many developers are not even getting paid for their hard work. We should understand that competition should stay alive, not make people jobless; instead, it should create more opportunities.

That is why I extensively covered most of the underrated third-party open-source packages.

Recently, I posted on LinkedIn mentioning Moralis Web3. Ironically, the moralis team itself showed their love in the comment section.

LinkedIn Post for Moralis Web3

We should all encourage it and as I always add my favourite —

Technology doesn’t evolve on its own it’s the people working extensively hard to make it happen.

So support them show your love share their excellent work with your audiences, and encourage them to do such a high standard of work.

It is good to see competition, and I look forward to where we are heading. Will we always be competitive among the frameworks languages, or will we support each other to keep working for betterment?

Well, time will tell, but software development is on the excellent track so far, and people are not concerned about money much and paying more attention to providing top-notch and best services.

If you are an open-source contributor, DM me about your product or mention it in the comment section over Twitter. I will undoubtedly reply and try to use your product.

My good wishes are to all open-source contributors and developers. You are doing a good job, KUDOS.

Keep developing
Shrey
iHateReading

Software development is evolving very fast, and we always have something new coming under the hood.

Last month, I found many attractive open-source packages that deserve the chance to try.

When I started my programming journey, I was told much about architecture. My only attention is to look for highly extensible solutions in frontend and backend, and architecture plays a perfect role.

Because of this, I’ve covered so many stories about frontend architecture and how we can make it extensible to god knows what extent.

To reduce the reusable workload, I create a custom repo section on the website to easily download the repository with top-notch packages pre-installed of your choice.

But that’s not the point of today’s story; we are entirely in a chaotic world.

We have many packages, tools, frameworks, and concepts to depend on, yet we cannot develop the most extensible, fast and highly customisable products.

Extensible, Customisable and Scalable are the new trade-offs or so-called new money.

Let's explore this with my favourite section called real-world example.

Recently I posted a tweet asking questions on the price fluctuations of Firebase alternative Supabase.

Supabase vs Firebase Price discussion on Twitter

Twitter is so good; you can directly solve your doubts with the largest community in the world instantly.

The discussion went well; even the Supabase founder Ant Wilson replied by attaching an article from tech crunch about the hike in google storage price.

But that’s not the point. The most critical thing the people mentioned about Supabase is we can directly eject the database and independently run it on our server.

Imagine a few years down the line when your website got colossal traffic. You can eject the supabase and runs your backend servers independently.

This means scalable and extensible; further, we can customise the database to whatever extent we want. This is what makes people happy behind using supabase.

Another thing that motivates developers to contribute to the supabase is it's open-source. They have sponsors and more than 480 contributors so far.

The firebase alternative is ready to crash the market and go higher and higher. But the fundamental trade-off happens because it’s scalable, easy to use, customisable and extensible.

Let’s take another example that I am discussing a lot nowadays.

Astro follows Island architecture under the hood, which loads every component independently and exclusively. This makes Astro quite fast in 2020 compared to Next.js and other javascript competitors.

But that’s not the only thing why Astro is getting so much love and recognition.

Astro is an all-in-one framework, meaning we can write React, Svelte and Vue code in a single repository. We can use markdown extension to lazy-loading optimised image components and third-party like TailwindCSS and vercel integrations in a single repository.

Shorts for Astro introduction

Imagine writing HTML or markdown directly for static pages such as blog and using React with Redux or Zustand for home pages that requires complex state management in a single repository.

This makes Astro highly extensible and customisable, and we can do whatever we want in a single repository. This is the future I can see where we don’t argue among the frameworks to choose. Instead, we add whatever we want in whatever fashion.

So let’s understand Next.js developed by Vercel. Almost all frameworks across the globe love Next.js file-based routing. Recently I read a post from the Expo team that helps to create apps that work across Mobile and desktop.

Expo itself supports new file-based routing. Astro provides file-based and dynamic routing, just like Next.js did.

Read the tweet by the Expo team member introducing new file-based routing in Expo.

Twitter thread by the Expo team on releasing the file-based routing

Next.js set the new standard by providing an extensible solution to architecture in the front end. People loved this and somehow made it an industry tradition.

Providing an extensible solution makes the product more transactional and acceptable and becomes the new currency for trade-in software development.

We all loved the tinder swipe effect and getting used to it very well. Tinder has the trademark in the industry for providing the most effortless user experience.

In this story, Josep Ferrer covered how tinder thinks and creates the most useful functionality. This single functionality disrupts the market, and we can witness more swipe functionalities on the browser itself.

Because it’s scalable and extensible, and easy to use, people love it, including developers.

Xstate is the state management library that is so underrated. The most important thing about Xstate is its extensibility, meaning you can use it in React, Vue, Svelte and even with vanilla javascript.

If you want to learn, here is the introduction shorts on the Finite State Machines concept.

Introduction to Finite State Machines

Xstate is not constrained to a single framework you use, making it robust.

Understand that in future, if we want to remove React, then only the UI component requires a change; the entire UI logic and business logic can remain untouched.

We can replace React with the new framework easily, which is possible because Xstate is extensible with other libraries.

This is quite a trending concept, and people love it, including me

Let me explain; earlier, when we had to develop UI, we used third-party packages like Material UI, React Bootstrap or Ant Design and added the logic to the components.

To create the website according to your theme, we have to override the CSS or add new pieces to every component these third-party libraries provide.

So these libraries come with the cost of customisable and extensibility that they don’t understand until they have a competitor in the market.

I am talking about Mantine dev. This headless UI library only provides components, and you can directly add your styling to each element—no overriding, time-saving, extensible and customisable components library.

Now, look what happens when we have so much love for mantine.dev and headless UI. The Material UI backed by Google developed and launched the MUI Base called Headless Material UI.

MUI Base release Twitter thread

This is the power of open-source and hence new currency to make transactions called Extensible, Customisable and Flexibility.

Even another React Frontend UI library, Chakra UI, is proceeding in this direction by creating a headless UI library without providing any styling.

We have more and more libraries that will provide only the functionality and take care of the design, looks and styles, making it highly customisable, scalable and extensible.

In addition, Chakra UI is planning to go. Further, they will use Xstate in the business logic for a component to provide highly customisable and extensible features that can be used directly with React, Svelte and Vue and save a lot of their time in creating pieces for each of the individual frameworks.

The Chakra UI team have named it Zagjs.

I have asked the Chakra UI founder directly about this new headless UI library using Xstate in the backend. Here is the reply —

Chakra UI founder on releasing Zagjs

The idea is to use Xstate to create a Headless UI library that is highly customisable, extensible and scalable, making it a high-standard product and easy to trade off among developers.

See, I told you Twitter is quite a product; you can talk directly to the founders, team members, and whomever you want.

Like the USA did in the 90s, swapping GOLD with USD to make any trade in the world.

Well, this is the story I can see with all other third-party packages, companies and open-source products. They all promise to be in one of the categories, and that’s the right way to make products for developers and consumers.

But we should also understand that, irrespective of making such high standard promises, these companies are working extensively hard to stand on it.

It’s straightforward to condemn the product or third party or to say wrong about any package or software we have used.

Developing and maintaining open-source products is quite a task, and many developers are not even getting paid for their hard work. We should understand that competition should stay alive, not make people jobless; instead, it should create more opportunities.

That is why I extensively covered most of the underrated third-party open-source packages.

Recently, I posted on LinkedIn mentioning Moralis Web3. Ironically, the moralis team itself showed their love in the comment section.

LinkedIn Post for Moralis Web3

We should all encourage it and as I always add my favourite —

Technology doesn’t evolve on its own it’s the people working extensively hard to make it happen.

So support them show your love share their excellent work with your audiences, and encourage them to do such a high standard of work.

It is good to see competition, and I look forward to where we are heading. Will we always be competitive among the frameworks languages, or will we support each other to keep working for betterment?

Well, time will tell, but software development is on the excellent track so far, and people are not concerned about money much and paying more attention to providing top-notch and best services.

If you are an open-source contributor, DM me about your product or mention it in the comment section over Twitter. I will undoubtedly reply and try to use your product.

My good wishes are to all open-source contributors and developers. You are doing a good job, KUDOS.

Keep developing
Shrey
iHateReading