Hoodie’s Concepts

Hoodie was designed around a few core beliefs and concepts, and they explain a lot of the choices made in the code and the functionality. They are:

Dreamcode

While designing Hoodie’s API, we realised that we wanted to do more than simply expose some server code to the frontend. We wanted to reduce complexity, not move it around. And to make something simple and intuitive, you can’t start with the tech stack, you have to start with the humans that are going to use it. What would their dream API look like? Dreamcode is essentially user-centered design for APIs.

To put it bluntly: Hoodie’s API is optimized for being awesome. For being intuitive and accessible. And it’s optimized for making the lives of frontend developers as good as possible. It’s also an API first: it’s a promise - everything else can change or is replaceable. The API is all that matters.

Forget all the constraints of today’s browsers. Then write down the code of your dreams for all the tasks you need to build your app. The implementation behind the API doesn’t matter, it can be simple or tough as nails, but crucially: the users shouldn’t have to care. This is dreamcode.

Everything is hard until someone makes it easy. We’re making web app development easy.

Here’s some further information and links to Dreamcode examples.

noBackend

Servers are difficult. Databases are difficult. The interplay between client and server is difficult, there are many moving parts, there are many entertaining mistakes to make, and the barrier to entry for web app development is, in our mind, needlessly high. You shouldn’t have to be a full stack developer to build a functioning app prototype, or code a small tool for yourself or your team, or launch a simple MVP.

People have been building web apps for quite a while now, and their basic operations (sign up, sign in, sign out, store and retrieve data, etc.) must have been written a million separate times by now. These things really shouldn’t be difficult anymore. So we’re proposing Hoodie as a noBackend solution. Yes, a backend does exist, but it doesn’t have to exist in your head. You don’t have to plan it or set it up. You simply don’t have to worry about it for those basic operations, you can do all of them with Hoodie’s frontend API. Of course, we let you dig as deep as you want, but for the start, you don’t have to.

noBackend gives you time to work on the hard problems, the parts of the app that are justifiably difficult and non-abstractable, like the interface, the user experience, the things that make your product what it is.

With Hoodie, you scaffold out your app with

$ hoodie new best-app-ever

and you’re good to go. Sign up users, store data… it’s all right there, immediately. It’s a backend in a box, empowering frontend developers to build entire apps without thinking about the backend at all. Check out some example Hoodie apps if you’d like to see some code.

More information about noBackend

See nobackend.org, Examples for noBackend solutions and @nobackend on Twitter.

Offline First

We make websites and apps for the web. The whole point is to be online, right? We’re online when we build these things, and we generally assume our users to be in a state of permanent connectivity. That state, however, is a myth, and that assumption causes all sorts of problems.

With the stellar rise of mobile computing, we can no longer assume anything about our users’ connections. Just as we all had to learn to accept that screens now come in all shapes and sizes, we’ll have to learn that connections can be present or absent, fast or slow, steady or intermittent, free or expensive… We reacted to the challenge of unknowable screen sizes with Responsive Webdesign and Mobile First, and we will react to the challenge of unknowable connections with Offline First.

Offline First means: build your apps without the assumption of permanent connectivity. Cache data and apps locally. Build interfaces that accommodate the offline state elegantly. Design user interactions that will not break if their train goes into a tunnel. Don’t freak out your users with network error messages or frustrate them with inaccessible data. Offline First apps are faster, more robust, more pleasant to use, and ultimately: more useful.

More information about Offline First

See offlinefirst.org, on GitHub and discussions and research

So now you know what motivates us

We hope this motivated you too! So let’s continue to the system requirements for Hoodie.