We specialized in

web applications

. There was actually a time when we considered going into desktop and native applications, but the demand for web apps was just too big that I guess my partner and I never even had the chance to decide. Our path was chosen for us.

We opened up shop after the

SPA

craze had already hit. So clients were already okay with and often wanting their solution to be a single page app. Initially I was gung-ho about SPAs as well. It sounded like a good way of separating concerns and you could separate

frontend

and

backend

developers quite easily.

Only once we began writing actual apps I learned that these benefits were hardily afforded to a team our size. I mean I can understand why huge convoluted webs of teams at

Facebook

or

Google

would want to write apps that way, but for an

SMB

consultancy

like ours, I honestly think we would've been more effective going with the bread and butter

MVC

frameworks.

Man I had a friend who worked at a startup that used

Ruby on Rails

and damn could they not write features any faster. They could have a design, generate that

HTML

and do all their programmatic functionality all using this unified codebase. Clean as a whistle, and fits just the bill for a team of around 3 engineers.

But for a variety of reasons, most of it being that the client came to us with some existing limitations and/or inclinations, we couldn't go with a standard MVC stack. We often made SPAs with a separate backend

API

.

We still managed to write good

software

but we couldn't fly like my friend with that startup.