Frontend Or Backend: Where Full-stack Devs Spend Their Time

Thinking astir becoming a full-stack developer? Be forewarned: Full-stack developers are doubly arsenic apt to opportunity that a mostly of their tasks are connected nan backend versus nan frontend, according to a new survey by JetBrains.

The State of Developer Experience and Developer Productivity successful 2025 queried much than 6,000 developers and 2,000 tech leads.

Additionally, nan study besides recovered that 85% of developers who grip nan frontend besides do backend development; that contrasts to nan 57% of backend developers who do frontend development.

The afloat study explores really companies measurement DevEx and developer productivity, arsenic good arsenic looking astatine what developers deliberation astir AI and modular productivity metrics.

A New Alpha Release for htmx

Carson Gross, creator of htmx, promised location would ne'er beryllium an htmx 3. He’s keeping his word, but he ne'er said location wouldn’t beryllium an htmx 4.

Gross released a caller alpha of htmx this week. He’s calling it nan fetch()ening.

Htmx is simply a JavaScript room that allows web developers to usage minimal aliases nary client-side JavaScript. Instead, it gives programmers entree to modern browser features specified arsenic AJAX, WebSockets and Server Sent Events straight from HTML attributes, which enables move web applications.

Gross explained that earlier this year, he created fixi.js, a hyperminimalist implementation of nan ideas successful htmx.

“That activity gave maine a chance to get a batch much acquainted pinch nan fetch() and, especially, nan async infrastructure disposable successful JavaScript,” he wrote.

While nan htmx API is correct, he said, he began to wonderment if “maybe location was room for a much melodramatic alteration of nan implementation that took advantage of these features successful bid to simplify nan library.” He knew, though, that changing from XMLHttpRequest to fetch() “would beryllium a beautiful convulsive change, guaranteed to break astatine slightest immoderate stuff.”

Instead, he started to deliberation astir an update to htmx that could adhd fetch(), and possibly hole a fewer of nan quirks htmx has picked up.

“So, yet & reluctantly, I person changed my mind: location will beryllium different awesome type of htmx,” he wrote. “However, successful bid to support my connection that location will not beryllium a htmx 3.0, nan adjacent merchandise will alternatively beryllium htmx 4.0.”

The scheme is to make 3 awesome changes designed to simplify:

1. The fetch()ening. Fetch() will switch XMLHttpRequest arsenic nan halfway ajax infrastructure, he wrote. “This won’t really person a immense effect connected astir usages of htmx isolated from that nan events exemplary will needfully alteration owed to nan differences betwixt fetch() and XMLHttpRequest.”
2. The Long National Nightmare of Implicit Attribute Inheritance Ends. This will beryllium nan astir important upgrade htmx users will request to woody with, he said. Gross acknowledged his “biggest correction successful htmx 1.0 & 2.0 was making property inheritance implicit. I was inspired by CSS successful doing this, and nan results person been astir nan aforesaid arsenic CSS: powerful & maddening,” he wrote. So, he explained, htmx 4.0 property inheritance will beryllium definitive alternatively than implicit, via nan :inherited modifier which looks for illustration this:

   <div><button>Like</button>
   <button>Dislike</button></div>
   <output id=”output”>Pick a button…</output>

   “Here nan hx-target property is explicitly declared arsenic inherited connected nan enclosing div and, if it wasn’t, nan fastener elements would not inherit nan target from it,” he wrote.

3. The Tyranny Of Locally Cached History Ends. “Another changeless root of symptom for some america and for htmx users is history support. htmx 2.0 stores history successful section cache to make navigation faster,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, snapshotting nan DOM is often brittle because of third-party modifications, hidden state, etc. It besides creates information issues to shop history accusation successful convention storage, he added.

In consequence to this, aft nan merchandise of htmx 2.0 nan squad often would urge group facing history-related issues disable nan cache entirely.

“In htmx 4.0, history support will nary longer snapshot nan DOM and support it locally,” he wrote. “It will, rather, rumor a web petition for nan restored content. This is nan behaviour of 2.0 connected a history cache-miss, and it useful reliably pinch small effort connected behalf of htmx users.”

Instead, location will beryllium an hold that enables history caching, but it will beryllium opt-in, alternatively than nan default, he added.

He goes connected to explicate what will stay nan same, arsenic good arsenic really they will support nan multiyear rotation retired of htmx, which started Nov. 1 pinch nan rotation retired of nan alpha release. The 4.0.0 merchandise should beryllium disposable sometime adjacent year, pinch nan last merchandise planned for early 2027. You tin way nan team’s advancement successful nan four branch connected GitHub.

“All successful all, our dream is that htmx 4.0 will consciousness an atrocious batch for illustration 2.0, but pinch amended features and, we hope, pinch less bugs,” Gross ended.

Vercel’s Turborepo Releases Update pinch Microfrontend Proxy

The Turborepo squad has released Turborepo 2.6, which includes improvements to developer acquisition for nan repository.

Turborepo is simply a build strategy written successful Rust and optimized for JavaScript and TypeScript. It was acquired by nan frontend infrastructure institution Vercel successful 2021. This merchandise includes support for:

1. Microfrontends: Developers tin now create galore applications connected 1 localhost port;
2. Bun package head to stable: Granular lockfile study and pruning for bun.lock. Bun is simply a fast, all-in-one JavaScript, TypeScript and JSX toolkit. “This intends that, erstwhile you usage Bun arsenic your package manager, Turborepo will only miss cache for packages that person changes successful their dependencies,’” nan announcement noted. “If you update a dependency for your web application, your docs application’s tasks will still deed cache.”
3. Task database hunt successful terminal UI: Use ‘/’ to attraction connected tasks faster. This merchandise improved nan task search, making it 1 of nan basal ways that developers interact pinch a ample Turborepo.

Vertical microfrontends are an architecture wherever aggregate applications are served connected 1 accumulation domain, divided into “zones,” nan squad explained. “Each way for nan domain is handled by 1 of nan applications.”

This tin create problems for section improvement since developers must tally galore applications alternatively of conscionable one. Each exertion ends up needing its ain improvement bid and larboard to use, according to Vercel package engineers Anthony Shew and Tom Knickman.

“Today, we’re releasing a microfrontend proxy for section development, truthful that each of your applications tin tally connected 1 port, pinch 1 command,” Shew and Knickman wrote. “Add a microfrontends.json record to your genitor exertion and Turborepo will automatically proxy localhost:3024 to nan ports for your different applications.”

While Turborepo’s autochthonal microfrontend proxy is meant for moving locally, Turborepo integrates pinch infrastructure providers to bring microfrontends architecture to production.

“For example, we’ve designed nan Turborepo-native microfrontends proxy to activity pinch Vercel’s microfrontends product, which is besides releasing to GA today,” nan squad wrote. “In fact, Vercel’s microfrontends characteristic provided nan investigation for Turborepo-native microfrontends. We explored really to build microfrontends, locally and successful production, pinch immoderate of nan largest customers astatine Vercel, and are now extracting those learnings from closed-source to open-source.”

When developers instal @vercel/microfrontends into a repository, Turborepo will dynamically set nan section situation to usage nan proxy provided by nan package, profoundly integrating pinch nan accumulation infrastructure, they wrote. Documentation for nan microfrontends feature is available.

“We look guardant to moving pinch much providers to merge seamless microfrontends crossed your stack. If you are an infrastructure supplier looking to integrate, please scope out,” nan squad wrote.

From Content to Web: New Partnership Offers One Workflow

Storyblok, a headless contented guidance strategy for enterprises, is partnering pinch web improvement level Netlify pinch nan extremity of providing a connected workflow from contented creation to web deployment.

What this intends for developers is that they tin usage immoderate frontend model they want and trigger automatic deploys pinch each published contented update, according to a institution statement.

“We’ve seen it complete and complete again — customers nailing nan contented broadside but struggling to get that task retired into nan world quickly, reliably, and astatine scale. Their marketers hold days for pages to spell live, while their developers walk nights patching servers aliases untangling deployment scripts,” Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of Storyblok, said successful a prepared statement. “With AI upending contented strategies, these delays and symptom points are simply not tenable; that’s why we’ve collaborated pinch Netlify. It takes attraction of nan dense lifting down nan scenes: world hosting, separator delivery, caching, scaling, truthful teams tin create and vessel astonishing projects.”

It will “close nan gap” betwixt contented guidance and task deployment, creating faster and much reliable contented deployment times astatine scale, Storyblock stated.

Another extremity is besides to thief companies mitigate nan effect of AI connected content.

“With consumers progressively utilizing AI hunt engines, companies person recovered that nan visibility and accuracy of their marque online is suffering,” Storyblock said successful a property release. “Storyblok’s business pinch Netlify is ideally placed to thief brands quickly develop, building and deploy their caller contented connected a performant, AI-ready platform.”

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