How to Survive the Single-Page App-ocalypse

A presentation at The Lead Developer in in London, UK by Jim Newbery

When Single Page Apps (SPAs) started becoming a standard approach for web applications around five years ago, it seemed like web-based products had a way to rival the interactivity and performance of corresponding native apps.

Modern browsers are incredibly capable, and open-source tools and frameworks promise to put slick web apps within reach of even the smallest teams.

And yet many product teams are already struggling with the SPA they have. They can be slow, buggy, hard to use and extremely resistant to change. The kind of thing that can kill a business. What happened?

In this talk, I explore some home truths about developing and maintaining SPAs in small- and medium-sized companies, and suggest some approaches technology leaders can take to haul their own products out of the mire. Spoiler: most of the challenges are not technical.

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