Traditional Web Apps And RESTful APIs

When we are building web applications these days, it is considered a best practice to expose all our functionality as a RESTful API and then consume it ourselves. This usually goes with a rich front-end using heavy javascript, e.g. Angular/Ember/Backbone/React. But a heavy front-end doesn’t seem like a good default – applications that require the overhead of a conceptually heavy javascript framework are actually not in the majority. The web, although much more complicated, is still not just about single-page applications. Not to mention that if you are writing a statically-typed backend, you would either need a dedicated javascript team (no necessarily a good idea, especially in small companies/startups), or you have to write in that … not-so-pleasant language. And honestly, my browsers are hurting with all that unnecessary javascript everywhere, but that’s a separate story. The other option for having yourself consume your own RESTful API is to have a “web” module, that calls your “backend” module. Which may be a good idea, especially if you have different teams with different specialties, but the introduction of so much communication overhead for the sake of the separation seems at least something one should think twice before doing. Not to mention that in reality release cycles are usually tied, as you need extra effort to keep the “web” and “backend” in proper sync (“web” not requesting services that the “backend” doesn’t have yet, or the “backend” not providing a modified response model that the “web” doesn’t expect). As in my defence of monoliths, I’m obviously leaning towards a monolithic application. I won’t repeat the other post, but the idea is...