Modern web development has created a bifurcation of the field as far as where developers go. Junior developers largely skip all existing web tech and go right into front-end development. This keeps them without the perspective of the CMS space which is about empowering complex workflows of users.
CMS platforms that have existed since the early 2000's, empower their user-bases but suffer from their own complexity and early development on the web. These platforms have struggled to attract younger developers, even as site building users at times, because of the complexity of the tools and setup. Coupled with the simplicity of 3rd party website-tonight software, it's a difficult proposition for open source.
The HAX ecosystem, founded at Penn State by @btopro, has a community pipeline to ensure that a sustainable web ecosystem is not only built, but sustained over the years. It starts in the classroom and builds out from there.
IST 256: Programming for the Web, is a course about teaching students how to work with modern web stacks and build websites. @btopro teaches a section of this course, and 54+ people a semester at a time, teaches in the following way:
This creates future web component developers that are aware of how the HAX ecosystem works. This pipeline seeks to build a sustainable method of development in which developers across industries will be aware of how to build web components, and how HAX leverages them, so that they can lead the charge to implement and contribute to HAX long term.
Web components are the future of all web application development. As developer tools simplify the process of contribution, distribution, and participation in this approach; HAX is the natural next step to take an organization from creating small pieces of web into creating full web properties with minimal effort and maximal sustainability.
Every semester, the Project EdtechJoker tag in the haxtheweb issue queue generates problems for students to solve. These problems directly improve the HAX platform every semester since establishing this approach in 2020.