Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#261

Post by 0xblinq » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 8:12 PM UTC

engineerDave wrote: post #91

I don't know if this helps or hurts but I took up Elixir a few years ago and was liking it, the way the FP simplifies the scope you have to operate within and the general stability of the API that Jose has stated, i.e. it's feature complete for the foreseeable future, changes now are mostly optimizations such as pushing more into the erlang layer. Then they introduced releases which can package everything into a tar…

Elixir is a great idea, but it's already dead. I know of several companies here in Europe that already ditched it and went back to other older technologies or moved to Go, etc. because the Elixir ecosystem is so small. Also they had tons of trouble hiring for it.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#262

Post by 0xblinq » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #10

As someone who works in full stack development, what complexities are you talking about exactly? I just spin up a NextJS app with an express server if I need a backend as well. In a way, it's been easier than before where you'd have to set up Webpack and friends. I just write React code and it automatically shows up on the page. You can do more complex stuff, sure, but it's not necessarily required. So it depends on…

> As someone who works in full stack development, what complexities are you talking about exactly? I just spin up a NextJS app with an express server if I need a backend as well. In a way, it's been easier than before where you'd have to set up Webpack and friends.

Every time I read things like this I wonder if most people here are just building landing pages or side projects.

I've literally always had need for validations, background jobs, translations, authentication, authorization, migrations, orm/data libraries, CLI commands for maintenance tasks, etc, etc. "Just next.js and express" or "just next.js and prisma" is still missing a TON of stuff for me. Of course you can npm install 3000 other packages to achieve all of this, but that's a lot of work to get it right, documented, secured and battle proven.

> I just write React code and it automatically shows up on the page.

I just write HTML in a file and it shows up on the page. My solution is simpler, isn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#263

Post by 0xblinq » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 8:20 PM UTC

RomanPushkin wrote: post #221

That's why I stick with Ruby/Rails (while having 20 years of experience with variety of other languages/frameworks like C, C#, Go, JavaScript/React): * "Optimized for Programmer Happiness" * The Principle of Least Surprise The knowledge you gained 10 years ago is still applicable, language/framework is not going anywhere soon. I kinda love what I do. Shameless plug - my Ruby book https://leanpub.com/rubyisforfun/

Have my upvote. Full stack frameworks like Rails, Laravel or Adonis are not "fashion" anymore apparently. And people keep wasting time reinventing the wheel because that's the fashionable thing to do.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#264

Post by globular-toast » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 9:09 PM UTC

nakatu wrote: post #115

globular-toast wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still work on a Django monolith and agree on being able to focus 100% on business logic. I've found Angular is excellent for "sprinkling" a little JS into the frontend where necessary rather than going the full SPA/React route.

How is Angular adding just a sprinkle of js to your web app? Isn't the ouput of building an Angular app a full SPA?

I am using the "original" angular-js, not the newer Angular whatever version it is now. It's not a full SPA. I just include angular.js and put the ng stuff in my HTML. Maybe the new Angular is different?

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#265

Post by cercatrova » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

0xblinq wrote: post #262

cercatrova wrote: post #10

As someone who works in full stack development, what complexities are you talking about exactly? I just spin up a NextJS app with an express server if I need a backend as well. In a way, it's been easier than before where you'd have to set up Webpack and friends. I just write React code and it automatically shows up on the page. You can do more complex stuff, sure, but it's not necessarily required. So it depends on…

> As someone who works in full stack development, what complexities are you talking about exactly? I just spin up a NextJS app with an express server if I need a backend as well. In a way, it's been easier than before where you'd have to set up Webpack and friends. Every time I read things like this I wonder if most people here are just building landing pages or side projects. I've literally always had need for valid…

> I've literally always had need for validations, background jobs, translations, authentication, authorization, migrations, orm/data libraries, CLI commands for maintenance tasks,

Sure, I was simplifying to make a point, of course I use all of those. My main point however was that there are defined, standardized solutions for all of those. It's not like there's that much churn in authentication libraries for example, most people would use Passport or just JWT.

> but that's a lot of work to get it right, documented, secured and battle proven.

It's really not, because again, solutions are pretty standardized.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#266

Post by bottlepalm » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

0xblinq wrote: post #260

bottlepalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried out PHP recently for a project because I have fond memories of it, but didn't end up going with it. I want server side rendering for the SEO benefits, but I also want some good 'app like' interactivity on the page. Doing the app like stuff with PHP is possible, but you kind of have to have mirror routines, one to load the data, and other api calls to update the data using whatever binding library you choose.…

You can add any interactivity you want to PHP (or any other server rendered html) using Alpine.js, Unpoly, HTMX, or any other kind of modern approach to frontend JavaScript. It is not anymore a dichotomy between ugly jQuery spaghetti or full SPA Next.js thing.

I did consider Alpine, the pro is that it is very light. The con is that the components don’t seem as complete as MUI and not free either. Also the repo activity of next/react/MUI is much higher than PHP/alpine.

One thing you want to do is try to choose a stack with the best chance of not leaving you stranded in few years. Also a good set of components so I’m not stitching together random packages that may or may not be under active development.

I like next because I don’t want to build a SPA, I want multiple pages that are rendered server side - for the SEO benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#267

Post by erlich » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

0xblinq wrote: post #259

reducesuffering wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails for Node.js is Next.js + Prisma

You have never used Rails, have you? From the top of my head, you'll also need libraries for: - Background jobs - Validation - Translations/i18n - CSRF and other common security considerations - Testing (and integration testing) tools - Logging - Email sending - File uploads (S3 storage, etc) - Websockets And then write the glue code to make all of this work seamlessly, document it for others to understand how you ma…

Well said. There are a million starter projects and examples each with a different mix of tools hooked up all in very different ways with tons of files and config. And lots of them with bugs or out of date.

The problem with the JS world is they can never coagulate around one solution. Everyone has this insatiable desire to roll their own. Next only works because it leaves out a bunch of stuff.

Instead of the examples/ directory they should build a plugin interface and roll out official integrations with lots of tools. This is the closest we would come to Rails.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#268

Post by gtsop » Sun, Oct 09, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #18

no such thing as frontend development. only full stack. and react for all the trillions of words written about it, what can you actually do with it? not much. also it's over-saturated as hell. you think there's high demand, you're right, now try applying for a position and see how it goes. there are two types of roles in modern web dev: 1 .90% of jobs are code monkey work: extremely saturated, you are competing with…

A couple builders were complaining why they couldn't build houses like in the old days when you would slap 2 blocks of wood together and call it a day. now you have to use steel, heatproof it, soundproof it, check the integrity of the build, submit designs, take safety into account, what a waste...

obviously sarcastic. most of the things you are complaining about bring to mind a person who is bored of doing responsible coding.

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#269

Post by phendrenad2 » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

super256 wrote: post #241

phendrenad2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sessions are state Is database state? > php-fpm, opcache Nope > countless parameters Certainly not > "mysql_real_escape_string" vs "mysql_escape_string" There are only a handful of these, and you can learn about them with a simple google search.

> Is database state? Duh. I'm talking specifically about session_*. This data isn't magically stored in the air and if you use more than a single machine, you need to implement the SessionHandlerInterface with a solution like redis or memcached in a clustered setup. That's literally the same as using any other language, plus such map-reduce kv stores. Since you mention that I wouldn't need php-fpm and opcache, I assu…

> This data isn't magically stored in the air and if you use more than a single machine

I'm curious, what do you think the OP meant when they said "stateless"?

> I assume that you haven't worked at scale with php

Oh I have actually! But I'm curious, how many sites do you think have a high enough scale to need php-fpm and opcache?

Re: Ask HN: Getting tired of complexity in web development

#270

Post by 0xblinq » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 4:53 AM UTC

gatinsama wrote: post #234

I can't believe no one is mentioning Django. Still in use, still killing it.

Django is great, I've used it for many, many years until about 6 years ago.

The problem I find with Django is that it's a purely backend framework. The moment you want to use their highly outdated templating system it becomes evident it's from the 00s. It doesn't even handle assets bundling.

Laravel and Rails instead can be considered more "full stack" solutions, as both have really nice frontend stories too.

But Django is great if you want to build a backoffice with the Admin and django-rest-framework. That's how we used it back in the day anyways.