Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#1

Post by mr_nobody » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

A little about me: I am web-developer with almost 10 years of experience. I've spent lots of time in my life learning about design patterns, frameworks, and going through hundreds of programming blogs. I work mostly with quite big business apps (crm's, intranets) but also big frontend websites.

Since I started working as developer I can see that every year majority of leading frameworks (at least in PHP, Javascript, Ruby...) for web applications are becoming more and more complex. Instead of writing code in programing language we move into xml/yaml direction and hundreds of weird config files. Each frameworks use different syntax for config, often different templating languages, few layers of abstraction with a lot of magic behind the scene, Dependency Injections, ORM'S, CRUD generators with supposed to make our life easier actually are painful to use...

Even small website often requires hundreds of megabytes of dependencies. Sometimes one application can have 2 different build systems e.g. (ant, grunt) and few dependency managers...

Micro/nano services trend looks optimistic, but I am not sure if it's not double-edged sword, and instead of using complex frameworks developer will be forced to use complex communication system to orchestrate communication between them.

In few years instead of writing code are we going to write configs files?

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#2

Post by pags » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

This sort of "complexity" (DI, ORM, extensive configuration) has existed for a long time, particularly in the Java webapp space.

You don't need a license to release a framework, and a framework doesn't have to be sensical to be adopted.

If you learn the fundamentals of the things you're working with, particularly HTTP, web browsers, the web in general, and your chosen programming languages, things will become much more clear.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#3

Post by mr_nobody » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

pags wrote: post #2

This sort of "complexity" (DI, ORM, extensive configuration) has existed for a long time, particularly in the Java webapp space. You don't need a license to release a framework, and a framework doesn't have to be sensical to be adopted. If you learn the fundamentals of the things you're working with, particularly HTTP, web browsers, the web in general, and your chosen programming languages, things will become much mo…

It's not that these things are not clear for me, I build many successful applications using these technologies. Also in the past I was really happy using them, but lately I started to realise that it's usually just increase the time we need to spend building applications. I can't see what really I get in return. Especially debugging this kind of application is also hard, as we can not just set breakpoints in yml file.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#4

Post by noobermin » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

mr_nobody wrote: post #3

pags wrote: post #2

This sort of "complexity" (DI, ORM, extensive configuration) has existed for a long time, particularly in the Java webapp space. You don't need a license to release a framework, and a framework doesn't have to be sensical to be adopted. If you learn the fundamentals of the things you're working with, particularly HTTP, web browsers, the web in general, and your chosen programming languages, things will become much mo…

It's not that these things are not clear for me, I build many successful applications using these technologies. Also in the past I was really happy using them, but lately I started to realise that it's usually just increase the time we need to spend building applications. I can't see what really I get in return. Especially debugging this kind of application is also hard, as we can not just set breakpoints in yml file…

I think an important part of this question is who is making you use such frameworks in the first place?

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#5

Post by msie » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

I went to a simple website developed probably in the 90's with a simplistic comment board that let anyone submit a comment and specify their name. It was one of the best web experiences I had this week. Loaded up quickly and didn't have any useless animation. Did its job of letting users communicate with each other. No complex web framework needed.

I think complex web frameworks are developed by expert coders to make their lives easier, supposedly. With little concern for other less-expert developers. But it just turns out to be so complex because they are trying to DRY the shit out of everything.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#6

Post by mr_nobody » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #4

mr_nobody wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that these things are not clear for me, I build many successful applications using these technologies. Also in the past I was really happy using them, but lately I started to realise that it's usually just increase the time we need to spend building applications. I can't see what really I get in return. Especially debugging this kind of application is also hard, as we can not just set breakpoints in yml file…

I think an important part of this question is who is making you use such frameworks in the first place?

Usually when I join company there is some big framework there, and bunch of people who jerk off to the new hype framework in given language. Companies believes it's best solution, because when they send people to conferences they see bunch of other people jerking to the same frameworks. I don't like on small projects with 1-2 developers and these days its the only solution to have normal environment.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#7

Post by mr_nobody » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 8:15 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #5

I went to a simple website developed probably in the 90's with a simplistic comment board that let anyone submit a comment and specify their name. It was one of the best web experiences I had this week. Loaded up quickly and didn't have any useless animation. Did its job of letting users communicate with each other. No complex web framework needed. I think complex web frameworks are developed by expert coders to make…

That's the point, these days it's even to start without IDE supporting code completion because of tons of vendors.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#8

Post by lewiseason » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 8:26 PM UTC

Arguably it's because websites (or more to the point web applications) are becoming more complex

In my experience, the widely-used ones tend to be fairly sane for the most part, and can often be used without having to delve too much into the complexity unless you need to - which I think is the important bit

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#9

Post by chipsy » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 8:51 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #5

I went to a simple website developed probably in the 90's with a simplistic comment board that let anyone submit a comment and specify their name. It was one of the best web experiences I had this week. Loaded up quickly and didn't have any useless animation. Did its job of letting users communicate with each other. No complex web framework needed. I think complex web frameworks are developed by expert coders to make…

When I realized that exposing configuration options is not DRY I was able to break away from most frameworks. Within the scope of your own project it's faster to change code, and once you do that you can start to customize it further.

Re: Ask HN: Why web frameworks are becoming so complex?

#10

Post by cnp » Sun, Aug 23, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

The answer is simple: Web Applications are becoming Applications in the traditional sense of the word -- and Applications have always been complex. Now we're just moving that complexity on to the web.

But that said, the Webpack + React + Flux model is the simplest kind of programming I've done in a very long while.