Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#281

Post by datacruncher01 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

From where the web started to now, the complexity makes sense. There were tons of browsers all implementing html, css, and javascript with their own quirks not to mention their own additions. For example, the father to all modern live websites, XMLHttpRequest is a Microsoft invention that was originally intended for Outlook web mail.

Honestly, it's more of the speed of design that drove the complexity. Everyone had some specific niche that they picked up and due to the volume of demand for web development there was bound to be many different approaches tried.

Eventually, that's going to mature down to a few different standards. That's already happening with web browsers, for practical purposes we have three current browser engines today, down from who knows how many.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#282

Post by player2121 » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

x86x87 wrote: post #253

player2121 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think that you would be able to do ActiveX, COM, OLE, MFC, C++ after 2 weeks of bootcamp. Yes, Delphi and Visual Basic simplified many of it but there were still many challenges to develop and ship your software. Just shipping alone and dealing with installers was a challenge by itself. Now compare it with a browser tab and a single click that deploys your code across the globe so it event can run in space o…

But here's the thing: you didn't needed COM or ActiveX or MFC in many cases. You could literally wire up and build an up pretty effortlessly. With webdev today we jump directly to very complicated things when 90% of the time they are not needed.

For simple things we still have Excel and Ms Access where people continue to build simple UIs for personal use. At my previous job, our CFO build own framework (Excel) to manage and automate financial reports (which makes him a full-stack developer based on industry standards)

I guess the frustration comes from the fact that historically Web started as a set of static HTML files to create/publish documents and we inertially compare todays Web with it but we if stop comparing apples with oranges than it becomes apparent that:

1. It's never been simpler to create and publish web content 2. It's never been simpler to build/ship/and distribute software

Complexity arises when people (given many options) pick wrong tool for a job.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#283

Post by chiefalchemist » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #92

chiefalchemist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. No user wakes up and says, "I gots to find me a UI built with React* today, or I'm going to cry." Ever. Users. Don't. Care. We keep adding tech and tools and experiences - if you asked users - aren't improving all that much. * Or whatever technolgy being championed.

I dunno. Lots of users seem to wake up and say “Gimme a UI with rich interactions, super low latency, offline support, and real-time sync.” Even for B2B “back-of-office” software, the standards for software usability are really high, especially for new entrants. Those kinda features are hard without a pretty complex frontend. Not saying those things are always necessary, or that people don’t add bells and whistles wh…

Nah. They never say that. Ever. At best they say cut the crap and help me get done what *I* need to do.

The point is, tech for the sake of tech is the wrong target. And once you go down that road you're already lowing your odds of having satisfied users.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#284

Post by Alifatisk » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

It feels to me like we are heading towards unifying our tools.

Look at Vite & Rome for example.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#285

Post by sibeliuss » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

trashburger wrote: post #91

Some scattered thoughts: Just today, I built a complex order editing form in vanilla Javascript with AJAX. It's over 900 lines of Javascript where half of the code is state management boilerplate, painstakingly ensuring the correct effects are run when the user changes an order line's quantity or picks another product. We currently can't use libraries with our stack, so it was necessary to write it like this, but it…

Exactly. Things are just complex, and who wants to wire up a form library from scratch? All of the tools out there now (assuming you know which to choose) have made our lives easier, and (vastly) less bug ridden, then ever before. It's hard to know what to choose, but the domain itself is necessarily complicated.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#286

Post by ketzo » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:24 PM UTC

idlewan wrote: post #233

Jasp3r wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me you're not making complex webapps without telling you're not making complex webapps

The publish-subscribe/observer/mediator pattern is perfectly fine for state management, and doesn't need a framework. At most, a small-ish library, but you can also re-implement it yourself quite easily. Reading your comment, I have the impression you took it as "there shouldn't be any state management necessary", instead of "state management doesn't need a framework" sense.

"State management is complex, so we used a framework to make things easier."

"Why use a widely popular, well-documented, battle-tested framework? Just have one of your senior devs build something over the weekend. This will definitely reduce complexity."

Like... I get what you're saying. But "build your own" is not a default answer for an extremely complicated software engineering topic (which, yes, state management is!)

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#287

Post by ergonaught » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #271

ergonaught wrote: post #210

Because business cares about business and moves too fast to get it right or waste time on values, and by the time enough people might object the network effect or inertia or tech debt or whatever you want to call it has become The Way It’s Done and nobody can stop long enough to fix that.

Business is in competition with other business, not in competition with 'doing things right'. Forcing businesses to 'do things right' is called regulation and will get you lots of subcomments on how that's bad here on HN.

It’s the same situation for business vs academia, business vs standardization processes, business vs anything.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#288

Post by stiray » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

peterhunt wrote: post #265

stiray wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/me remembers MFC/QT/BCGsoft and C++ codebase and gently smiles on thought that maybe the issue are everywhere else except the UI complexity. We are where we are, but it is interesting that GUI libraries from 20 years back are still running circles around latest and the greatest UI web front-end, even if it is also client rendered. Maybe, just maybe, we should search for an issue somewhere else?

I haven't used QT or BCGSoft, but I for one have very negative memories of MFC. Sure the performance was much better than anything you get on the web, but the UIs were far less complex, didn't handle window resizing well/at all, handled text overflow poorly, and had much less aggressive design requirements than we have today. There was also a ton of imperative glue code and lots of hard-to-read generated code.

Less complex UI, interesting: https://bcgsoft.com/galleries.htm (psst, a secret, BCG is just a library on top of MFC)

Please DO open Word 97 (and this is 26 years old UI) and compare it with the best done web UI you are aware of, regardless of framework, as long it is not QT compiled into webasm (as this is the only thing on web that comes close).

Now why is that, I don't know. But I can tell you what I can see as a user. Web frameworks/developers/name_your_poison are doing a really, really bad job regarding UI.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#289

Post by sibeliuss » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

All I have to say to this is we recently rebuilt our admin tools application and the team responsible have been all backend / devops engineers. Stack is React and GraphQL. Without having any real FE experience this team has been absurdly productive. Rewind the clock a bit and it would have been a nightmare. From this experience alone I can conclude that the complexity issue the OP is citing is mostly an illusion, assuming there's someone around who can help guide tech choices at the beginning. There's simply no way a team of non FE engineers could build this stuff so well, and so quickly, a decade ago.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

#290

Post by meindnoch » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

ThePadawan wrote: post #256

ASalazarMX wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [..] the most popular state management framework for React [..] Quoted from the comment they're replying to. > [..] maybe “state management” is not something you need a framework for? Quoted from their reply.

Ah I beg your pardon. I read the comment in completely the wrong tone of voice. To me it seemed like the comment was attacking its parent for investigating state management frameworks in the first place - when it in fact called out "no framework" as a valid alternative to any number of frameworks. (I hope that made sense)

Exactly.