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Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?

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

#51

Post by sam0x17 »

spapas82 wrote: post #17

Why? I think mainly FOMO. When react was out with the blessings of Facebook people wanted to use the same library. Of course most people didn't really care/understand that their internal crud app for editing invoices wouldn't need that complexity. I think my answer should answer your second question: This kind of complexity is actually needed on some apps but these apps are a minority. Programmers love shiny new thin…

It's a mix of this FOMO and a lot of people not knowing how to wire up AJAX well. I've seen entire teams reach for react just because there is a portion of the page where some AJAX was required and react is the only way this new crop of devs knows how to do DOM stuff with server side effects.

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

#52

Post by MrLeap »

Most of it seems about resolving the tension between javascript, peoples opinions, the DOM, and the role of the server.

Also there's the whole fractal of tool chains, transpilers, frameworks, libraries and design patterns that exploded out of people manipulating DOM strings to do something to a webform and feeling yucky about it.

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

#53

Post by eloisant »

codeptualize wrote: post #32

I disagree with the premise, things have gotten a lot simpler. I think you need to make distinction between website and web application. The latter came later and is by definition a lot more complex, I assume this is mainly where the premise originates from. But having gone through building websites with frames, tables, png's for box shadows and border radius, jQuery and php based web apps, and having spend many days…

Web applications don't all have to be Single Page Apps.

That's where most of the unnecessary complexity comes from. Unneeded SPA.

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

#54

Post by zozbot234 »

davedx wrote: post #43
spapas82 wrote: post #17

Why? I think mainly FOMO. When react was out with the blessings of Facebook people wanted to use the same library. Of course most people didn't really care/understand that their internal crud app for editing invoices wouldn't need that complexity. I think my answer should answer your second question: This kind of complexity is actually needed on some apps but these apps are a minority. Programmers love shiny new thin…

> these apps are a minority. I disagree with this. Almost all front-end projects I've worked on in the last 10 years or so have had some requirement that made pulling in react a better choice than trying to push back on business and/or get buy in to do everything server side. Providing users the kind of tighter feedback loops for their workflows is only possible with JavaScript.

You don't need to do everything on the server side. You can use Svelte or Solid.JS and have the same DevX as a framework, while compiling down to lean and blazing fast JS code on the client.

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

#55

Post by abraxas »

90% of small and medium apps could be redone with a simple UI toolkit that gives you a box of widgets and callbacks. I built a geoscience 3D application in the mid 90s with FLTK and it was the last time I made something UI based where I didn’t feel that the UI toolkit was getting in the way of getting the work done. Assuming a lot of complexity in anticipation is the wrong approach 99% of the time.

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

#56

Post by chiefalchemist »

davedx wrote: post #43
spapas82 wrote: post #17

Why? I think mainly FOMO. When react was out with the blessings of Facebook people wanted to use the same library. Of course most people didn't really care/understand that their internal crud app for editing invoices wouldn't need that complexity. I think my answer should answer your second question: This kind of complexity is actually needed on some apps but these apps are a minority. Programmers love shiny new thin…

> these apps are a minority. I disagree with this. Almost all front-end projects I've worked on in the last 10 years or so have had some requirement that made pulling in react a better choice than trying to push back on business and/or get buy in to do everything server side. Providing users the kind of tighter feedback loops for their workflows is only possible with JavaScript.

JavaScript in proper doses and places? Absolutely. Agreed.

But that's not the same as taking on a trendy library (e.g., React) and associated tooling...unnecessarily.

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

#57

Post by layer8 »

HTML and CSS weren’t designed to be general-purpose GUI description languages. HTTP wasn’t designed to be a client-server GUI application protocol. JavaScript wasn’t designed to be a serious application programming language. And the continued evolution of those technologies hasn’t focused enough on substantially changing that state of affairs. For example, a lot of basic UI controls still have to be custom-implemented and custom-styled by each app. CSS layout and styling is still a byzantine minefield. The ecosystem of tooling and libraries and frameworks remains highly fragmented. A staggering amount of manpower is being wasted away in bespoke frontend development.

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

#58

Post by eloff »

I think the principal reason is the browser now has sufficient features, broadly deployed, that we swung back towards thick client architectures. So the frontend gets more complex because it’s doing more. It’s not the first time in the history of computers that this happened.

Personally, I’m a grumpy backend developer, I don’t like it. I’m doing a side project now where I’m trying out old school server side templates (Jinja2 in rust, compiled using Askama ) with a little JavaScript to make it so I can replace parts of the page via Ajax calls. It’s so light and so fast, I’m really enjoying it so far. Pretty much all the state is on the server.

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

#59

Post by bmitc »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #27
bmitc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats true, but people do crave complexity. If something is "too simple", often people, especially developers, are strangely suspicious of it being useful or competent. Present someone with something doing a couple things well but simply, you'll be normally greeted with a million comments of how it doesn't scale or give enough levers or do this or that.

most developers are not senselessly seeking complexity

Maybe. But they aren't consciously avoiding it either. Simplicity must be sought after.

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

#60

Post by fortnum »

chasd00 wrote: post #26
saiya-jin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well why reinvent the wheel with ie Spring in Java - you want well tested automatically scaling thread messaging bus for example, just configure existing stuff. Maybe its boring to some devs, but business like boringly stable tools, and they are the ones paying for our work. Would you like that architects reinvent 'engineering wheels' with every house, bridge or tunnel and do all feom scratch just because its more fu…

Spring is a strange example. It’s main selling point is you’re not reinventing the wheel and, instead, building on well tested and operational work already done.

That's the argument for all those frameworks.
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