Perhaps the most popular platform for applications is the web. There are many reasons for this including portability across platforms, no need to update the program, data backup, sharing data with others, and many more. This popularity has driven many of us to the platform.
Unfortunately, the platform is a bit complex. Rather than developing in a particular environment, with web applications it is necessary to create two halves of a program utilizing vastly different technologies. On top of that, there are many additional challenges such as the communications and security between the two halves.
A typical web application would include all of the following building blocks:
- Front-end layout (HTML/CSS)
- Front-end functionality (JavaScript)
- Back-end server code (Java, C#, etc.)
- Communications (REST, etc.)
- Authentication
- Data persistence (SQL, etc.)
All these don’t even touch on all the other pieces that are not part of your application proper, such as the server (Apache, tomcat, etc), the database server (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, etc), the OS (Linux, etc.), domain name, DNS, yadda, yadda, yadda.
The tremendous complexity notwithstanding, most application developers mainly have to concern themselves with the six items listed above. These are their main concerns.
Although there are many fine solutions available for these main concerns, in general, these solutions are siloed, complex, and incongruent. Let me explain.
Many solutions are siloed because they are single-solution packages that are complete within themselves and disconnected from other pieces of the system.
Some solutions are so complex that they can take years to learn well. Developers can struggle more with the framework they are using than the language or application they are trying to write. This is a major problem.
Lastly, by incongruent I mean that the siloed tools do not naturally fit well together. A bunch of glue code has to be written, learned, and supported to fit the various pieces together. Each tool has a different feel, a different approach, a different way of thinking.
Being frustrated with all of these problems, I wrote the KISS Web Development Framework. At first it was just various solutions I had developed. But later it evolved into a single, comprehensive web development framework. KISS, an open-source project, was specifically designed to solve these exact challenges.
KISS is a single, comprehensive, fully integrated web development framework that includes integrated solutions for:
Front-end
- Custom HTML controls
- Easy communications with the back-end with built-in authentication
- Browser cache control (so the user never has to clear their cache)
- A variety of general purpose utilities
Back-end
