Quoting in JavaScript: Inspired by Lisp for Modular Front-End Development

This article explores how the "code is data" concept from Lisp can improve modularity in JavaScript for web app development. The author points out JavaScript's lack of Lisp's quoting mechanism, preventing direct manipulation of code snippets as data. However, by mimicking quoting—sending client-side module identifiers instead of the actual code to the client—delayed execution and modular composition are achieved. This allows backend programs to compose server-side and client-side behaviors, ensuring all server-side logic completes within a single request/response cycle and enabling progressive streaming, thus improving efficiency and maintainability of web applications.