What Are the Main JavaScript Trends 2023

— Together with my colleagues, I picked a few areas of JavaScript and web development to focus on in 2023 and beyond. They continue to interest the JavaScript engineering community and can be useful for junior developers as well.

13 JavaScript trends to keep up with

1. New front-end frameworks

Single-page applications (SPAs) and JavaScript respective frameworks React, Angular, and Vue.js are still popular. However, there is a clear trend of applications shifting from client-side (CSR) to server-side rendering (SSR). This requires that engineers look into new frameworks like Svelte, Solid.js, and Qwik. While React, Angular, and Vue.js are still the status quo, new frameworks will appear with zero-js by default, better performance, accessibility, and clear APIs.

2. Performance and rendering

Server-side rendering (SSR) has been competing with static site generation (SSG) for quite a while to improve performance and SEO. Over the past few years, rendering patterns have been relatively straightforward. However, Partial Hydration, Progressive Hydration, Island Architectures (Astro), and reusability instead of hydration (Qwik with its Qwik City meta-framework) are also becoming valid approaches.

The main drivers of this trend are cheap serverless cloud computing and high-performance Edge computing. It requires no resources to deploy serverless functions, and it is easy for developers to build full-stack applications when both server-side and client-side code is handled by a unified framework. Frameworks focused on rendering and serving your application will be in high demand in 2023 (Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby, Remix, Eleventy, SvelteKit, and Docusaurus).

3. Design frameworks and systems

As front-end development becomes more complex, design systems will become increasingly important for maintaining design consistency and improving efficiency. Customers are looking for a new visual experience by moving to simplicity and minimalism in graphics, while developers want to spend less time on UI CSS processing.

In 2023, trends in User Interface (UI) design will include:

• Minimal flat design and tools;
• Neo-brutalism on UI (contrast colors, cartoon graphics)
• Motion design — one good resource is Jitter.

From the developer's side, tools like Tailwindcss (API for your design system), PureCSS, and Primer are becoming more popular than Bootstrap.

Besides, CSS Media Queries alternatives have been introduced, such as CSS Container Queries for responsive design and htmx as enriched HTML for creating interactive user interfaces without JavaScript.

4. Building tools and monorepos

Based on the above-mentioned findings, automation of building, testing, and deploying applications will be transformed as well. Webpack has a more established ecosystem and a wider range of plugins available, making it suitable for more complex projects, but new tools Vite and Turbopack (the Rust powered) are becoming extremely popular due to their faster inline-module-script approach and simpler configuration (making them easier to use), instant updates without a full rebuild, smaller bundle sizes, and improved resource loading.

Besides large-scale application development, monorepos have become more prevalent in delivering shareable functionality under distributed teams (e.g., reusable cooperate design). This shift from multi- to mono-repositories is increasing, as are approaches like webpack module-federation and tools (NX, pnpm). Tools such as Turborepo (acquired by Vercel) have brought back the monorepo hype in JavaScript/TypeScript again.

5. Testing

From a testing perspective, Jest and Cypress are still popular. Jest's popularity is largely due to its simplicity and ease of use, as well as its integration with other tools in the React ecosystem. However, other players are becoming popular too: Vitest and  Testing Library focus on providing simple and efficient testing utilities, while Playwright is a powerful end-to-end testing tool that supports multiple browsers.

6. Types safety anywhere

TypeScript is the gold standard for the industry, and the shift from JavaScript to TypeScript is unstoppable. TypeScript has become a popular choice for developers building Node.js applications.

End-to-end type safety is a trend for 2023 with tools like Zod, TanStack Router, tRPC (or gRPC to support more langs), and Prisma, which provide type safety at the edge of an application and will be popular for full-stack TypeScript engineers.

7. New JavaScript runtimes and frameworks

Node.js skills for full-stack oriented JavaScript engineers are a must have. Node.js has high popularity, scalability, cross-platform support, and an extensive ecosystem, making it a valuable technology for developers to learn in 2023 and beyond.

There are also other new JavaScript runtimes such as Deno and Bun.js. In choosing between them, it is important to consider the specific requirements of the project, including performance, scalability, security, and ease of use. However, for JavaScript full-stack engineers, it's good to know the specifics of each runtime to propose optimal solutions.

Frameworks such as Express.js (as a good start) and Nest.js emphasize modular design and are popular among Node.js developers because they provide a range of features and tools that make it easier to build and deploy high-quality applications. There are also a few analogous tools such as Moleculer, Koa, LoopBack, Hapi, and Sails.js.

8. Cloud Native

Cloud-native development is becoming increasingly important, and this trend is here to stay for years to come. This involves building applications designed to be deployed in the cloud, which can take advantage of cloud-based services and infrastructure. Full-stack engineers should know at least one cloud of the big three (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform). Engineers should focus on learning about cloud-based storage, databases, APIs (REST APIs and GraphQL), and serverless architectures to run code in the cloud without managing infrastructure. You also need to deploy, manage, and scale applications. Knowing Docker or Kubernetes enables you to succeed in the modern cloud-first world.

9. Security

Technological singularity is already here, and so we’re thinking about scam and clone persona problems, where it will be hard to distinguish fakes from reality. That's why solutions for keeping personal data, and cybersecurity — especially cloud security — will trend. Node.js engineers looking to become more proficient in cloud security need to know and focus on security protocols such as SSL/TLS and SSH, encryption standards such as AES and RSA, IAM, network security, data protection, and compliance (PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2). More and more people are worried about the privacy of their data, so we must be responsible to the end users of the system and stay compliant with the standards.

10. New database approaches

New waves of databases are growing in popularity with cloud-native, serverless, and multiple-data-paradigm approaches (combining relations, graphs, and document oriented). SurrealDB, EdgeDB, and Xata are innovators in how databases should work.

Also, DynamoDB, Neo4j, and MongoDB offer serverless options that will be suitable for serverless applications, jamstack applications, SPA, and traditional applications as well.

11. Migration to MACH

Migration to MACH (Microservices, API first, Cloud, Headless) from legacy solutions has been a trend for the last few years, mainly for enterprise-specific solutions. MACH architecture is increasingly popular for building scalable and flexible applications that can be easily supported and updated. Moreover, today's market is highly saturated with niche SaaS solutions and platforms, which allows building truly tailored solutions. Engineers looking for a specific implementation should consider MACH. Composable commerce takes MACH architecture to the next level. It aims to solve specific business needs while making them easy to consume, integrate, and use. For front-end engineers, it will be helpful to investigate Jamstack and become more familiar with headless CMS (Contentstack, Contentful) and cloud-based headless commerce platform (Commercetools) to stay in demand on the market.

12. ML and AI driven development

AI and machine learning can be used to build intelligent and personalized user experiences and improve enterprise applications' efficiency. Companies such as DeepMind and  OpenAI are leading cutting-edge research and development in AI, including reinforcement learning, generative models, and deep learning.

The most well-known language models include BERT, GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer), and Transformer-XL. These models are designed for text classification, language translation, and text generation. They have demonstrated unprecedented results in many NLP (Natural Language Processing) benchmarks.

As for tools and apps for multimedia content generation (images, music, etc.), the most popular are DALL-e, Midjourney, Riffusion, and beatoven.ai or hybrid tools such as Play.ht and Visper.tech. AI spices up enterprise projects no matter how many lines of code are used. For customer support and SLA (Service Level Agreements) provisioning, more instruments might be considered. For example, AWS Lex and Google DialogFlow in integration with Chat GPT-3, can provide unique experiences for customer support service.

Low-code (Mendix, OutSystems)/no-code (Bubble, Webflow, Glide, Zapier) developers should consider platforms, as they are becoming increasingly popular and provide a faster, easier, and more cost-effective way for organizations to develop and deploy applications. Some low-code and no-code platforms may also offer options for writing custom code, including JavaScript, so it can be beneficial for developers to understand coding concepts and practices to fully leverage the capabilities of these solutions.

13. Variety of programming languages

The fluidity of programming languages reminds us once again how important it is to have fundamental engineering skills that will allow you to switch easily from one language to another. You may learn a second concrete language for variety and a broader view of technology.

Conclusion

— To avoid missing anything important in a rapidly developing world, you should learn new things. My advice to JavaScript engineers is to consider learning new languages. Besides Python and Go, new languages such as Rust will be helpful in 2023 and beyond. The fact that Rust has become the second language officially accepted for Linux kernel development says a lot about its future.

As users become more demanding and the competition for attention grows, web application performance and user experience will be increasingly important. This requires that engineers look into new design frameworks and systems.

To keep up with the trends in the modern cloud-first world, explore cloud-based storage, databases, APIs, serverless architecture, and cloud security. And don’t be afraid of AI, it won’t replace developers in the near future.