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WTF is JAMstack?

jamstack.wtf

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Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#21

Post by androidgirl »

teilo wrote: post #13

How is this different from a single page app? The article is also loaded with BS: > Faster performance. Serve pre-built markup and assets over a CDN Just like every single-page app. > More secure. No need to worry about server or database vulnerabilities Total BS. A form post is an API call by another name. Your server and database are just as vulnerable via an API. > Less expensive. Hosting of static files are cheap…

The term is probably not great for reasons mentioned here, but the concept is nifty.

It makes tricks like React pages rendering without javascript possible, and works with pretty much any language that can manipulate strings (awk, sed & curl build process, why not).

If your api is only used during the build step, scaling is really easy like tfa mentions.

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#22

Post by cpeterso »

sibeliuss wrote: post #11
Geee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing something. Your content is dynamic but the html markup is generated ahead of time and served from CDN. The difference to static site is that your content lives in a CMS server + APIs and is not embedded in your codebase. Your codebase contains just the layout and components etc. without content. You can use all modern methods and frameworks such as React, but the final website is just html.

Yup, it pulls stuff in ahead of time. That said, that's just for the initial render. Once things are mounted and "static" can take advantage of apollo or whatever request lib you'd like for "dynamic" content. But the idea is to build out most paths in the build phase and then push up. A lot of the time thats all a site will need. It works amazingly well, at least with Gatsby.

How is that different from a regular single-page application? My understanding of JAM from watching [1] was that your entire site is static, except for JS that calls out to serverless APIs to CRUD your content on the backend or initiate some workflow with a third-party service like PayPal or Twilio. If your site allows user comments, then you would rebuild your static site every time the user comment is submitted instead of rendering the comments on the server when handling the request.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grSxHfGoaeg

Google's HTTP 203 show about JAM stack [2] talks about doing sites claiming the do static site rebuilds "every second" and debates whether static site rebuilds would scale for a large site with lots of old content like the BBC or New York Times.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXsWaA3HTHA

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#24

Post by subpixel »

I don't like the term and predict that it will fade quickly, but I do admire the way Netlify coined a term that they could market to their audience of developers who are all yearning for a less insanely complicated way of working.

Whether or not JAMstack is less complicated is a question for another day. What's important is that Netlify owns the hype here and is doing a very good job of leveraging it.

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#25

Post by hmak »

I don't know if I have a "JAMstack", but here's my tooling to create a product marketing site:

- GitHub for version control

- AWS CodePipeline for building and deployment (include cache invalidation)

- NextJS to statically export my site built in React

- S3 to host my content

- Cloudfront as my CDN

- Route53 to manage my domain (that I got from Google Domains)

- API's are hosted on a different stack

I didn't use a service like Netlify because I wanted to reduce the number of vendors that had access to my user's data (like IP address etc. etc.)

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#27

Post by cestith »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #7
choeger wrote: post #4

When did "deploy" become a noun? I always considered it only as verb. Can someone enlighten me?

I can think of other -ment words that get shortened like that in just some online games I've played: "I need to change my equip[ment]", "my invest[ment] made money", "who's your replace[ment]?", "which adjust[ment] do you have on your rig?", etc.

It's not just "-ment". You invite someone with an invitation, but the verb is being used as the noun these days. In many contexts "package" is shortened to "pack", like "gift pack" or "bonus pack".

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#28

Post by verdverm »

IloveHN84 wrote: post #20

I still prefer Hugo to JAM. The lesser JavaScript, the better

Love Hugo, can go from git commit to serving in 30s. GCloud builder + GKE on a single n1 vm.

JS shows up in the themes / customization, but for the most part you're only dealing with Markdown

Re: WTF is JAMstack?

#30

Post by jdietrich »

factorialboy wrote: post #14
teilo wrote: post #13

How is this different from a single page app? The article is also loaded with BS: > Faster performance. Serve pre-built markup and assets over a CDN Just like every single-page app. > More secure. No need to worry about server or database vulnerabilities Total BS. A form post is an API call by another name. Your server and database are just as vulnerable via an API. > Less expensive. Hosting of static files are cheap…

25 days ago I made this comment: "The key is to invent a new term for an existing entity. Here the author tries to introduce the term "document site" for static websites." The same happens here. Take an existing concept. Stick a new label-term on it. Market it like you're the inventor of this revolutionary concept to the unaware. Profit.

If you're trying to sell plain ol' websites to management who are obsessed with flavour-of-the-month frameworks, a slick website promoting the benefits of "JAMstack" is a really useful thing.
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