Web Development: On the Size and Output of and the Growth Opportunities Within the Field
by @j9t@mas.to on , tagged guest-posts, training, career, frontend-dogma (share this post, e.g. on Mastodon or on Bluesky)
The field of web development is huge. Everyone in it knows that.
A lot happens in our field, too. Web development is a field of constant change. You can literally watch the web platform grow.
In this vast sea of change, we change, too. We acquire new knowledge, we adapt to evolving practices, we gain more experience.
As actors in the field, we all have a sense for the size and output of and our growth within the field. You don’t need me to tell where you stand in relation to it.
However, in my work I’m very close to some of the indicators of just how big the field is, how much it puts out, and how we change as part of it.
1. An Indicator for the Size of Our Field
The Web Development Glossary—fundamentally a book, but also a website—is the largest collection of terms and concepts related to our field.
The upcoming new edition of the book will feature more than 4,500 references with more than 3,000 definitions. No glossary can claim completeness, but the Web Development Glossary gives one of the stronger indicators for the enormity of the field.
(Is there a resource that gives an even better indication? Would you say MDN, although with a smaller, differently organized glossary, is more accessible in this regard? Please comment!)
2. An Indicator for the Output of Our Field
For 2024, Frontend Dogma has so far documented more than 3,200 articles and videos from across the field. For 2025, it’s almost 3,000 already. While these ~9 articles daily mean a small fraction of the field’s output in terms of knowledge shared, it does give an idea of much going on.
As with any resource, Frontend Dogma will never be complete, and the challenge to gather all the field’s relevant material is even larger than that of a glossary. And yet, it is one resource where we get a taste for how much the field is in motion.
(Now this is a resource I’m sharing because I’m commenting on the experience from my own work. What would you call out? Which resources show our output as well and better?)
3. An Indicator for Individual Growth in Our Field
Like other web developers, and probably like you, I’m both developing and writing about development. In 2015, I bundled up the writings of the previous 10 years to publish On Web Development. 10 years later, this year, I did the same again, releasing On Web Development II.
Now I’m obviously sharing this because I'm not opposed to you and others taking an interest in these writings. But I’m also sharing this because these collections are good indicators, to myself but perhaps even more to others, how we change and grow within the field.
(Did you publish a collection like this, too? What was your experience? And, are there similar collections of other web developers that you recommend? Please share them!)
—As a developer and writer, and as the maintainer of a web development news archive and a tech glossary, I hope this gives another sense, another taste just for how big, productive, and transformative web development is.
(Frontend Dogma accepts guest posts as long as they aren’t predominantly AI-generated or promotional. Although guest posts are being reviewed, Frontend Dogma cannot and does not vouch for their accuracy, and does not necessarily endorse recommendations made in them.)