Writing Less Code

This needs technical exploration, but I’m convinced that Solid can make writing web apps easier, faster, more efficient, and safer. A number of problems that just … go away when you, as an app developer, let go of controlling authentication and storage.

GDPR compliance is no longer your department, since you’re not storing any information at all, let alone personally identifying information. Traffic spikes won’t lock your database since you don’t have one. Server bills … don’t really exist since you’re just serving client-side applications. Data breaches aren’t a thing because there’s no where to breach. You can focus on just writing the app that does what it needs to do, and not about writing authentication and access control interfaces. Trying new weird ideas becomes faster, cheaper, and easier. There’s no account creation barrier between your users and your app.

Not only does making web applications just get easier, but by letting go of trying to control identity and data, we can return agency to the people who use our apps. We can go back to making a clear, simple, exchange with them again. The thing that makes money is the service being provided, not the surveillance and data arbitrage that results from a massive pool of human attention.

To make this a reality, using Solid needs to be simple and straightforward as using the localStorage api. It needs to be boring, reliable, and simple. It needs to be interchangeable and interoperable – a default safe choice for new apps and easy to bring in to old ones.