State is the First Decision you Never Made

Web apps are built on a paradox: stateful experiences over a stateless web. State decisions permeate the stack, yet are often made implicitly while teams debate frameworks, APIs, or architecture. This talk shows how those decisions shape real features and how to build *with* the web platform instead of fighting it.

Originally given at Blue Ridge Ruby 2026

Transcript

1. State is the First Decision You Never Made Joël Quenneville
2. The Day the Internet Broke STORY
9. Ev e ry da y is the day the internet broke REALITY
10. State is the First Decision You Never Made Joël Quenneville
18. HTTP is a sta te less protocol by design BIG IDEA
19. Navigate the flow with cURL CHALLENGE
20. Web browsers are just a fancier, grap hical cURL BIG IDEA
21. Login curl -X POST https://amazoff.com/login \ -d "email=jane@example.com" \ -d "password=hunter2"
22. Search curl https://amazoff.com/search?q=headphones
23. Add to Cart curl -X POST https://amazoff.com/cart/add \ -d "product_id=42"
24. Visit profile curl https://amazoff.com/profile
25. Web dev is about building sta teful experiences over a protocol that is designed to be sta te less PARADOX
26. HTTP forgets
29. Re-send context on every request BIG IDEA
30. What's the easiest way of re-sending state?
31. URLs
32. Relative Links /en/products <a href="products/42">SoundOff Pro Headphones</a>
33. Use the Platform
34. What about multi-step forms?
35. Checkout Flow Shipping Address Confirm cart
36. What does the server want?
38. What does Jane want?
42. Delivery Options <form action="/checkout/delivery" method="POST"> <!-- Step 2 fields --> <label>Delivery method</label> <select name="delivery_method"> <option value="standard">Standard (3-5 days)</option> <option value="express">Express (1-2 days)</option> <option value="overnight">Overnight</option> </select> <button type="submit">Next</button> </form>
43. Carrying State with Hidden Fields <form action="/checkout/delivery" method="POST"> <!-- Hidden fields carrying Step 1 state forward --> <input type="hidden" name="street" value="123 Oak Lane"> <input type="hidden" name="city" value="Springfield"> <input type="hidden" name="postal" value="12345"> <!-- Step 2 fields... --> </form>
48. State can be an em e rgent property BIG IDEA
49. Techs that love ping-pong htmx Turbo
50. Use the Platform
51. What about Jane's original problem? Sh oppin g cart? PROBLEM
52. We could thread cart via every URL and form
53. We want ambient context
54. Back to cURL
55. curl amazoff.com/search -d "q=headphones" -d "cart[]=hdmi-cable" -d "cart[]=android-charger
56. curl amazoff.com/cart/add -d "id=soundoff-pro" -d "cart[]=hdmi-cable" -d "cart[]=android-charger
57. curl amazoff.com/cart/checkout -d "cart[]=hdmi-cable" -d "cart[]=android-charger" -d "cart[]=soundoff-pro"
58. It gets annoying to re-send cart state on every request
59. DRY?
63. We just added a memory component to a stateless system!
64. Can memory work on the server?
66. What about the multiple servers problem?
68. Which cart do we pull from the db?
69. Server-side state relies on passing a refe ren ce BIG IDEA
70. Using a Reference curl -X POST /cart/1/checkout
71. Server Memory PostgreSQL or other relational databases S3 or other file storage Redis or other key-value stores
72. Let's rethink the checkout flow
73. What does the server want?
75. Browsers are a JavaScript runtim e BIG IDEA
76. What if we don't send the intermediate data?
78. Use the Platform
79. Where does state live? Browser Decouple state accumulation from HTTP requests Network Ping-pong approaches Server References
80. Combos are common
81. State is more than contin uity BIG IDEA
82. Shareability
83. What if Jane wants to share her cart with her partner?
84. What if Jane starts on a laptop but checks out on mobile?
85. Resumability
86. What if Jane refreshes?
87. Security
88. /cart/123/checkout allows access to arbitrary carts
89. URLs, forms, cookies can all be manipulated
90. Web browsers are just a fancier, grap hical cURL BIG IDEA
91. If you can be hacked by cURL, you are n ot secure BIG IDEA
92. Performance
93. Browser operations work best on sm all da tasets
94. Can't download a whole product catalog
96. Trivial decisions can have big implications
97. State is often downstream of unrelated decisions
98. Chad Velocity, Senior Engineer @ Momentum Labs Let's use React!
99. Susan Pragmatic, Backend Engineer @ Consolidated Systems Just put it in the database
100. Karen Cloudsworth, Architect @ Nexagen Partners Microservices are dope!
101. State is often a decision you don't consciously m ak e, but have to liv e with BIG IDEA
102. How do we fix this?
103. What does Jane want?
104. What does the server want?
105. Where should state live to bridge two?
106. Use the Platform
107. Make state a conscious choice
108. Make state the first question you answer
109. technically the third question
110. State isn't storage. It's the conn ectiv e tissue of your conversation
111. State is context
112. If the term "context" is familiar
113. Web is not the only stateless system BIG IDEA
114. LLMs
116. Re-send context on every request BIG IDEA
117. Let's say Jane goes to ChatGPT to troubleshoot
122. HTTP: Checkout LLM
123. Statelessness is a fundamental problem
124. Now you know how to make every day the day the internet w o rk ed
125. developer, author, speaker Joël Quenneville Bike Shed Co-host bikeshed.fm Author The Web as a Platform @joelquen thoughtbot Principal Developer
126. Sign up to be notified when the book launches The Web as a Platform https://buttondown.com/webasplatform