My recent forays into learning about static-site generators, and the earlier foray into Angular framework for single-page applications, had a clearly observable influence on my web search results. Especially visible are changes in the "relevant to your interests" sidebars. "Jamstack" specifically started popping up more and more frequently as a suggestion.

Web frameworks have been evolving very rapidly. This is both a blessing when bug fixes and new features are added at a breakneck pace, and a curse because knowledge is quickly outdated. There are so many web stacks I can't even begin to track of what's what. With Hugo and Angular on my "devise a project for practice" list I had no interest in adding yet another concept to my to-do list.

But with the increasing frequency of Jamstack being pushed on my search results list, it was a matter of time before an unintentional click took me to Jamstack.org. I read the title claim in the time it took for me to move my mouse cursor towards the "Back" button on my browser.

The modern way to build [websites & apps] that delivers better performance

Yes, of course, they would all say that. No framework would advertise they are the old way, or that they deliver worse performance. So none of the claim is the least bit interesting, but before I clicked "Back" I noticed something else: the list of logos scrolling by included Angular, Hugo, and Netlify. All things that I have indeed recently looked at. What's going on?

So instead of clicking "Back", I continued reading and learned proponents of Jamstack are not promoting a specific software tool like I had ignorantly assumed. They are actually proponents of an approach to building web applications. JAM stands for (J)avaScript, web (A)PIs, and (M)arkup. Tools like Hugo and Angular (and others on that scrolling list) are all under that umbrella. An application developer might have to choose between Angular and its peers like React and Vue, but no matter the decision, the result is still JAM.

Thanks to my click mistake, I now know I've started my journey down the path of Jamstack philosophy without even realizing it. Now I have another keyword I can use in my future queries.