“Dear aspiring full-stack web developers and indie hackers, my dear peers,

we are all a little bit tired of bloated web stacks and we’re worrying about future of the web.

Too many things to learn. Too many abstractions. Short-living or breaking third-party APIs and packages with security and performance issues. Over-engineered tooling. Outdated documentation.

We can do better…

and as users we deserve a better web. The web today is getting slower, less secure, and visually overwhelming. Endless pop-ups, intrusive notifications, distracting ads, and all the things getting in the way of us and the content.

Don’t waste your time on learning things that change too quickly. Don’t allow complexity sneak into your products.

Start building with simple battle-tested technologies. Start building your products with less code, fewer dependencies, with good-old web stack: vanilla JavaScript, HTML, CSS on the frontend, and CGI and shell scripts for the backend, and maybe Unix userland as your IDE.

Scale as you go. Add new tools only when you really need them. Learn fundamentals first. Learn as you build. Keep the web fast, safe, neat, and accessible for everyone.”

Roman Zolotarev
Die-hard Webmaster
hi@romanzolotarev.com
@romanzolotarev

Mastering the Web

The ultimate guide for indie web developers

Want to learn basic web technologies and Unix userland? Want to build a fully functional and production-ready website like this one? All you need is to follow my direct and detailed instructions. You will need nothing else, just my guides. Build as you learn.