What is the definition of Jamstack and how does it apply to web development?

Jamstack is an acronym that was started by Netlify for “JavaScript,” “APIs,” and “markup” -- basically, HTML websites that use JavaScript to add interactivity and call APIs to get that data. Another term for it that I prefer is “static web apps.” You have these apps that are interactive websites that are formed with static markup, as opposed to being generated on the server. Most of the websites out there are dynamically generated on the server. When you make a request, these static web apps or Jamstack apps are built in advance, so all the HTML is generated in advance, and they're usually delivered with a content delivery network. The idea is that they're going to be very, very fast because all the content is sitting as close to the consumer as possible, as opposed to in some data center -- maybe in AWS or wherever -- but not necessarily as close to your customer as it could be.

Jamstack I think was somewhat of a marketing term, but it really caught fire. A lot of engineers, especially front-end engineers and React developers, were like, “Yes. Give me the power I need as a front-end developer to be able to deliver websites and not have to worry about servers and all that complicated business.” That's roughly my take on it, anyway.