WebExpress – A Journey Through Progress, Setbacks, and Passion

Long before I started developing WebExpress, I was a passionate Windows Forms developer. During my university years, I also built websites using PHP, which gave me insight into the strengths and weaknesses of both worlds. That experience sparked a desire to combine desktop and web development, but in my own way.

From a simple idea and an early prototype, the WebExpress project gradually took shape. It’s a lightweight web server written in C# that generates HTML directly from class information. You can think of the core concept as “LINQ to HTML,” designed to make web development dynamic and data-driven.

First Steps and Milestones

• December 29, 2017 – PlanExpress begins: Drawing from my Windows Forms experience, I created a planning tool that already carried the seeds of WebExpress.

• March 11, 2018 – Renamed to WebExpress: The project finally received a new name and a clearer direction.

• March 18, 2018 – Open source on GitHub: A defining moment: I opened the project to the community and welcomed every bit of feedback.

• November 2, 2019 – More Windows apps migrated: This transition brought many new requirements and challenges for WebExpress.

• November 19, 2020 – License changed to MIT: I wanted to make the project freely accessible and encourage collaboration.

• November 1, 2023 – Major restructuring: Refactoring and renaming led to a clean, modular project architecture.

The Journey Was Never Straightforward

WebExpress evolved through progress, but also through detours. Many ideas that seemed promising at first turned out to be impractical, inefficient, or overly complex in real-world use. Modules were removed, code rewritten, and some parts discarded entirely. Often, this meant letting go of weeks or even months of work. Painful, but necessary.

These setbacks were never pointless. They sharpened the project’s focus, revealed dead ends, and opened up better paths. The willingness to abandon overambitious structures wasn’t easy, but it shaped me and the project over the years.

Today, WebExpress is modular, flexible, and full of clever ideas, but it’s still not “finished.” Working on it is intense, sometimes frustrating, but always educational. It proves that software development is far more than just writing code. It reflects how we think, adapt, and continuously learn.

The past years have been a journey not just for WebExpress, but for the entire web development landscape. Countless new frameworks and tools have emerged. Many of them brilliant and innovative, all aiming to make web development better, faster, and more intuitive. It’s fascinating to see how much creative energy flows through this space and how diverse the solutions have become.

WebExpress stands out not only for its technical approach, but also for its philosophy: independent, thoughtful, and open to criticism and setbacks. If that vision resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to join in. As an idea contributor, developer, tester, designer, or simply as a user.

Regards, René