Holy Shift — The Web Changed While I Was Refactoring That One Controller

You know that feeling when you walk into a room and suddenly realize everyone’s wearing neon jumpsuits and speaking in riddles — and you’re still in last year’s jeans? Yeah, that was me when I randomly stumbled upon the csal NPM package the other night.

Node.js and Express: Not Your 2019 Stack Anymore

Express 5 is here, async is everywhere, and lightweight frameworks like Fastify, Hono, and ElysiaJS are taking over.

Real-life dev moment:

My first bun dev after years of npm run dev felt illegal. It was that fast.

The Web Stack Is Having an Existential Crisis (In a Good Way)

Next.js App Router, HTMX, Qwik, and Astro are rebuilding the frontend world with server-first, super-light approaches.

Real-life dev moment:

I rebuilt a dashboard in HTMX and achieved the same UX with 97% less JavaScript. Past me was definitely gaslighting myself.

Dev Tools: Sharper Than Ever

Drizzle ORM — TypeScript dreams meet SQL reality.
Zod — Schema validation that doesn’t make you want to cry.
Turso — Edge-deployed SQLite is a thing now.
tRPC — Goodbye API schemas, hello type-safe endpoints.

Micro-trends Worth Noticing

SQL is sexy again, JSON-RPC is back, Zero.js is the vibe, and Edge functions are basically eating traditional backend infra alive.

🧠 Okay, So Where Do I Go From Here?

Priority	What to Learn	Why
🔥	Try Bun	It’s stupidly fast and delightful
🔥	Play with Fastify or Hono	Lean servers are the future
🚀	Edge Functions Basics	Prepare for the inevitable
🚀	Drizzle ORM	Type-safe DB magic
🌟	HTMX or Qwik	Frontend nostalgia, modernized

The Web Didn’t Die — It Leveled Up

Feeling overwhelmed? Good. It means you’re still in the game. Stay curious. Break things. Build weird stuff again. That’s the whole point.

P.S.

If you wanna geek out more about any of these, hit me up. Always down to swap notes. 🚀