I think the problem is that basically none of these technologies are optimized for a solo developer. I remember deploying cool websites on simple LAMP servers in college a few months after learning to code. I had implemented so many things with just jQuery, sqlite, and php (sign on, media player, messaging) Then I was told I needed to learn a javascript framework and react, I started doing tutorials but never deployed anything. What a waste! I was having fun and deploying real apps.
Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#12The external product is _marginal improvements_,
the internal product is _full employment_ along with a healthy dash of _intellectual pleasure_, though much of the latter is in rediscovery of principles and approaches which regularly recur as the pendulum swings. But pride of ownership and invention is strong human drive.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#13TL;DR: Yes and it's creating "It's X and limited by Y, but it works" projects
In web front-end, the same pattern crops up repeatedly. Two examples:
* Elm[1]: It's brutally functional and limited by purity, but it works
* htmx[2]: It's grug-brained[3] and limited by that, but it works
I'll let others enumerate web frameworks. On desktop, software for uxn and Varvara[4] by Hundred Rabbits fits the same pattern:
* 64k of RAM and limited to 4 colors, but it works
* Created when Xcode was painful to install on a boat over pre-Starlink satellite internet
Who knew rage-quitting could be so productive? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[2]: https://htmx.org/
[3]: Said to be by the HTMX creator: https://grugbrain.dev/
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#14I wonder if this is why most of my engagements over the last 5-10 years were teams that hired "senior only" engineers, whereas some ocean of HTML updates could be handled by any number of juniors, and also provide a needed training funnel to move people up in seniority.
I certainly don't appreciate the cognitive load a lot of my daily stuff takes. It used to be simpler, more direct, and more satisfying.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#15I'm currently using some of the latest popular stack, for a simple Web site that could've appeared almost the same 25 years ago[*], with static HTML and a little client-side JS. (And could've been implemented faster then, and would've operated much more efficiently.)
158 NPM packages already, and the page load requests are insane.
Two reasons I'm doing this monstrosity of an implementation anyway:
1. Resume-driven-development, on a personal/indie project.
2. Using the framework's interactive SSR just to make it harder for freeloaders (AI company scrapers, copy&paste developers) to copy the information or the implementation tricks.
[*] Except for a little flexbox "responsive" flowing, corner rounding (without kludges), and some fade transitions, none of which are necessary.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#16It's only getting complicated if you make it complicated. I work at a company using Ruby on Rails and everything is much simpler than on a previous job that had a full-JS stack. Rails + turbo is all you need.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#17Yes.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#18I'm currently using some of the latest popular stack, for a simple Web site that could've appeared almost the same 25 years ago[*], with static HTML and a little client-side JS. (And could've been implemented faster then, and would've operated much more efficiently.) 158 NPM packages already, and the page load requests are insane. Two reasons I'm doing this monstrosity of an implementation anyway: 1. Resume-driven-de…
This is absolutely insane to me. Native HTML5 gives so much power and it seems like front end devs love to jargon and buzzword the next big thing to death every other year. I primarily work in networking and if we added the layers of complexity like I see front end work does we would have SDN configuring an internal PtP VPN for every device on a LAN just because it's the hot new tech.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#19Nothing like the time wasted on npm updates, usually with additional minutes to fix new issues after update.
Re: Ask HN: Is webdev getting complicated without results to show for it?
#20If you work at a specific company then you could just focus on a narrow subset of tech that your company cares about, largely unaware of trends in any direction. I've seen a lot of people (probably the super-super majority) who have that relationship to work, although I personally don't like to talk tech to them for that very reason. For such people work is work and never fun, and that's why they never looked outside.
Anyways, tech doesn't have to be your hobby. You don't have to be aware of anything outside your company. You company could've bet on SPAs about a decade ago and you could still be on the set of solutions surrounding that, unaware that SSR even exists. That's the level of stress which you are contractually obligated to, and nothing more.