State is the First Decision You Never Made
summary
Argument: state is the first design decision and it determines UX tradeoffs. Shows concrete techniques: ping-pong state via hidden inputs to avoid server storage, ambient state with cookies to avoid resending a cart on every request, and batch client-side then single server request to satisfy both user multi-step flows and server one-shot processing. Uses curl to reason about continuity, mentions Turbo and HTMX as helpful tools, demonstrates that a simple cart.txt harness essentially reinvents cookies and that these approaches do, in practice, work.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:55The day the internet broke
- 3:01State in web development
- 7:03Stateless protocol paradox
- 9:30URLs for state
- 13:17Form state exchange
- 15:48Cookies and ambient state
- 19:20Checkout with JavaScript
- 23:57State properties shareability
- 27:50Trivial decisions' state impact
- 30:21State as first decision
- 33:31Stateless system solutions
- 34:12Closing
