The Web Is Evolving. Really?

The Internet is going through a wave of intrusions into glaring security holes, some of which have existed since their creation… for far too long, in fact.

Web servers around the world, administrators and developers mobilize on a caffeine IV drip, downing 'freeze-dried Red Bull' and trying to harness artificial intelligence to write code they couldn't produce before. That’s evolution, I guess.

For every problem, a framework

It must be said that the development world is not short on resources. For every problem, a framework. For every framework, dependencies. For every dependency, updates. And for every update, another opportunity to discover that a solution to one problem has created three more.

We live in remarkable times. Not for everyone.

We automate, abstract, encapsulate, and containerize. We build architectures capable of routing a request across multiple services, machines and sometimes continents, only to find the issue was an overlooked access control or a password left in the wrong place.

Complexity has become an industry. Mastering it, a specialty. And maintaining it, a calling that sometimes requires more attention than sleep.

AI does not replace design

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is learning to write code at an impressive pace. It generates functions, fixes bugs, suggests architectures and produces lines of code we once wrote by hand—sometimes with patience and a few curses, but usually better designed.

Generating code is not the same as designing a system. Making an application work is not the same as guaranteeing its security. And asking an AI to fix a vulnerability without understanding the architecture is sometimes like handing the keys to a building to someone who knows how to make locks.

The same mistakes, generation after generation

The funny thing is that today we have ever more powerful tools to solve ever more complex problems, while the most basic errors keep crossing decades.

And recent events have just given us a live demonstration. On October 21, 2026, PHP released patches for two critical vulnerabilities in its engine that could allow unauthenticated remote code execution. On the same day, Node.js released its own security updates, fixing several high-severity issues, including some affecting TLS certificate validation and data handling. All this after a year already full of twists in the cybersecurity world.

Two major ecosystems, millions of potentially affected projects, and a reminder that even the foundations on which we build our applications require constant vigilance. Modernity certainly has a lot to teach us about the mistakes we still make.

The fundamentals remain the fundamentals

The core principles are nothing revolutionary: apply the principle of least privilege, keep software up to date, validate inputs and outputs, limit access and understand what you deploy. Most people in the industry are paid handsomely to apply these foundational practices.

Less flashy than an AI demo, certainly. They rarely go viral on social media or fill sales decks and ads. But they have the annoying habit of staying relevant, even as technology changes its costume.

There’s a certain irony in seeing the industry repeatedly rediscover obvious truths under new names, with new tools and hundreds of pages of fresh documentation. The craft of the web still carries its aura...

Progress is not always a revolution

The history of the Web is not only one of advancing technologies. It’s also a story of accumulated knowledge, sometimes forgotten experiences, and solutions whose value lies not in novelty but in effectiveness.

Progress does not necessarily mean replacing everything that exists. Sometimes it helps us understand why something works, why it fails, and what should have been done differently from the start.

But that wisdom has a major flaw: it requires looking back. And in a world that keeps speeding up, time is no longer a variable we bother to measure: it’s a resource we constantly try to save, even if that means losing what time would have helped us understand.

The Web’s memory

In an industry that constantly celebrates the next revolution, looking back can feel like wasting time. So we start over, rename, rewrite, reinvent. And sometimes we present as a discovery what others had already understood long ago.

The essential point may be this: technology advances, but the industry’s memory does not always keep pace. Tools change, trends pass, specialists come and go. Some ideas vanish into silence, only to reappear years later wearing new clothes and accompanied by shiny marketing arguments.

And yet, sometimes returning to basics is enough to rediscover a kind of elegance that all this bustle made us forget. Otherwise, HTML still renders web pages and information, and with CSS it still looks nice!

Take care of the seagulls, too!