Richard MacManus

The grandly-named Internet Computer is, at first glance, something between a blockchain and a decentralized cloud provider. It’s run by the DFINITY Foundation, a Swiss not-for-profit organization. Since launching last May, Dfinity has made some big claims about what the Internet Computer is capable of in the emerging Web3 world — it’s being pitched as … Read more

One of the interesting developer trends in Web3 is the emergence of Rust as a way to program blockchains. Rust, of course, is a popular programming language that has a wide range of uses — it’s been the most-loved language in Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey for the last six years. So its uses in … Read more

Despite the developer ecosystem for Web3 being a tiny proportion of the larger web developer ecosystem, it appears to be fast-growing — so it makes sense to try and pinpoint what the Web3 tech stack is made up of. We know it includes blockchain for decentralization and cryptocurrency wallets as a form of identity. You … Read more

There are at least 18,000 active developers in the Web3 ecosystem, according to a report from crypto VC firm Electric Capital (available to download on GitHub). This is the number of developers who commit code into open source crypto and Web3 projects at least once a month. The total number of Web3 developers is likely … Read more

At last week’s CES, Nvidia announced that its metaverse platform Omniverse has come out of beta and will be available free to individuals. When I wrote about Omniverse last August, it was positioned as an enterprise tool to help design and manufacturing companies create “digital twins.” But when Facebook pivoted to the metaverse in late … Read more

As another year draws to a close, it’s time for that most dreaded of online media articles: the predictions post. In my case, predictions about the near future of internet technology from a developer perspective. In the tech world, prediction posts are particularly fraught because things change so quickly — and many times with a … Read more

Last week I presented my top internet technologies of the year. This week I’m going to review the top stories of the year. Believe it or not, there isn’t a lot of overlap. A newsworthy story in the tech industry often isn’t about the best technology. Sometimes it’s hype, other times controversy, and still other … Read more

It’s been a year of extremes for internet technology. On the one hand, you have the mostly unproven hype of “Web3” and Facebook’s pivot to the metaverse. But on the other hand, there have been solid — and at times spectacular — advances on the internet platform. This post is going to celebrate the latter; … Read more

It’s been a year of new buzzwords in the web development community. “Web3” and “metaverse” are two of the most hyped and have been fueling social media discussions. In both cases, it’s unclear what these terms mean in a technical sense — but that doesn’t seem to matter in a bull market. I’ve already examined … Read more

After an influential developer in the open source PHP project, Nikita Popov, decided to move on, it prompted the formation of a new foundation to run the project: The PHP Foundation. This begs a couple of questions. First, why is PHP still such a critical part of the web, when other programming languages and frameworks … Read more

Love it or hate it, the term “Web3” has quickly become the latest catchphrase in Silicon Valley. It’s been relentlessly hyped this year by cryptocurrency enthusiasts and investors — and in particular, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The main mouthpiece of Web3 has been Chris Dixon, a partner at 16z. Through an influential … Read more

Shopify has launched a new React-based web development framework, called Hydrogen. It’s open source and available now as a developer preview. Hydrogen is similar to Next.js, perhaps the most popular React framework, only it was built especially for the needs of e-commerce developers. In another twist, Hydrogen was developed on the premise that “commerce needs … Read more

This year’s Chrome Dev Summit, held virtually by Google, was a relatively muted event compared to the 2020 version. Last December, Google told us the web platform was fast catching up with native applications, that Chrome extensions were “a superpower for the web,” and that PWAs (progressive web apps) were “on the cusp” of a … Read more

Last week Vercel announced Next.js 12, the latest version of its JavaScript framework based on the React library. Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel and creator of Next.js, positioned version 12 as “the first SDK for the Web” — presumably based on its ever-increasing set of functionalities, which I’ll get into during this column. Also notable, … Read more

jQuery is one of the longest-running and most influential JavaScript libraries on the web. A staggering 78% of the top 1 million websites use jQuery in some way, according to BuiltWith. As for the most talked-about JavaScript library today, React, it’s used by a relatively paltry 14%. jQuery was launched way back in 2006, when … Read more