A stack is also technical debt, non-transferable knowledge, accelerated obsolescence, and vendor lock-in. That means fragility and overall unnecessary complication. Popular stacks inevitably turn into cargo cults that build in spite of the web, not for it.
The web platform does not require build toolchains. Always default to, and regress to, the fundamentals of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Those core standards are the web stack.
This is something I bump against over and over again: so-called evergreen browsers that can’t actually be updated because of operating system limits.
From what I could gather, the version of Chrome was tied to ChromeOS which couldn’t be updated because of the hardware. No new ChromeOS meant no new Chrome which meant stuck at version 76.
But what about the iPad? I discovered that my Mom’s iPad was a 1st generation iPad Air. Apple stopped supporting that device in iOS 12, which means it was stuck with whatever version of Safari last shipped with iOS 12.
So I had two older browsers that couldn’t be updated. It was device obsolescence because you couldn’t install the latest browser.
Websites stop working and the only solution is to buy a whole new device.
Old technology seldom just goes away. Whiteboards and LED screens join chalk blackboards, but don’t eliminate them. Landline phones get scarce, but not phones. Film cameras become rarities, but not cameras. Typewriters disappear, but not typing. And the technologies that seem to be the most outclassed may come back as a the cult objects of aficionados—the vinyl record, for example. All this is to say that no one can tell us what will be obsolete in fifty years, but probably a lot less will be obsolete than we think.
Jason goes into detail describing the File Format problem that he and others are going to tackle in the effort known as Just Solve The Problem.