Redwood is a JavaScript-based full-stack framework that’s concentrating on startups and companies wanting an entire stack based mostly on common instruments.
Tom Preston-Warner, the founder and former CEO of Github, is without doubt one of the 4 founders and 300 contributors to the open source web development framework.
“What I wished to do was accumulate collectively a set of instruments that was already generally used, however do the arduous work of actually superbly integrating them so that folks might simply get to work constructing what’s particular about their utility,” Preston-Warner informed The New Stack.
There’s loads of competitors in JavaScript: Preston-Warner acknowledged JavaScript is a primordial soup of choices proper now, with a variety of decisions. From Remix, Next.js Blitz.js and Deno’s Fresh, it’s a crowded and rising discipline.
That exhibits the language is common and thriving, however that may additionally make it arduous to maneuver from mission to mission, he mentioned. The number of instruments additionally made it tough to decide on a know-how stack that wouldn’t be outdated in three months, given how quickly it was altering.
“Now that issues have calmed down a little bit bit — although not tremendously — you begin to see extra individuals saying, the place’s the Rails for JavaScript?” he mentioned. “It doesn’t matter what the Rails app seems like, a number of the principal basic issues are the identical, however within the JavaScript world, each firm does it otherwise and I believe that’s a little bit bit ridiculous.”
Why One other Framework
What prompted the founding of a brand new framework was that Preston-Warner was constructing one thing at a previous firm and observed that everybody — together with himself — was constructing a stack from scratch.
“We had been taking a look at and saying, what if we had been in a position to formalize this a little bit bit, standardize this in a means that makes use of a set of instruments which are the preferred, and simply package deal all that up as a result of we wanted it for ourselves anyway,” he mentioned. “The pondering round it was to simply leverage what had been already extremely popular open supply instruments, and simply mix them actually properly.”
The Redwood Stack
Redwood is designed to assist builders handle the complexity of a startup’s utility because it grows, Preston-Warner mentioned. To that finish, it’s an opinionated full-stack, JavaScript/TypeScript framework that incorporates:
The choice of instruments and tight integration between them is what Preston-Warner mentioned differentiates the framework from others. When it got here to choosing React over Vue.js or Svelte, React received out as a result of it’s the preferred frontend rendering software, he added.
“We then pair that with GraphQL to do information fetching, and so you then’ll speak out of your React frontend to your backend by way of GraphQL,” he mentioned. “You then use Prisma, which is a database software, on the again finish to get data out of your database into your backend GraphQL API.”
For frontend builders particularly, Redwood provides further options — together with Cells, that are a declarative method to information fetching.
“It makes it actually clear to outline precisely how a React part does information fetching, in order that’s one of many high options that you simply get whenever you use Redwood,” he mentioned. “Cells on the entrance finish could be one instance of a sample the place we simply say, ‘Do it this manner, it’ll hold your code actually clear.’”
Anybody taking a look at this code is aware of it’s an information fetching part, he added.
The Redwood Startup Fund
Preston-Wagner is betting on corporations that use Redwood in a literal sense. The Redwood Startup Fund, introduced in April, will launch by mid-August, he informed The New Stack. The $1 million fund will distribute $25-50,000 to corporations that prioritize variety and local weather considerations whereas utilizing Redwood as a part of their stack.
“We’d love to extend the variety of founders that we see within the Redwood group, as we wish to prioritize non-white, non-male founders,” he mentioned. “I additionally would like to prioritize corporations which are engaged on climate-focused software program that may assist mitigate local weather change.”
