Front end development is a fickle, fickle game. Tools, best practice and standards shift like memes in a feed. Even in the 6 years since the introduction of the iPhone we've seen progressive enhancement, responsive design, version-less browsers, HTML5, JavaScript frameworks, native mobile applications, 4G speeds, and staggering mobile web access increases just to name a few things. When work opened on Drupal 7 only hints of this future existed. Here we are again, on the cusp of another major Drupal release staring into our crystal balls trying to predict the nature of front end development for the next five years.

Out of the box, Drupal 7 produced HTML. From a default Drupal 8 installation, we can now request JSON in addition to HTML. With this fundamental shift in the basic architecture of Drupal, we have the potential to power dynamic front end applications with it. But we may not get all the necessary tools from a default Drupal 8 installation. For instance, the entity CRUD API will be incomplete. Contrib module developers will find themselves filling in the gaps. The future will arrive and its distribution will be uneven.