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Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
71–80 of 85 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#72If you're a committed, heavily-invested user of a specific language, and well into your professional career: use that language. Otherwise: If you like Python, Django. If you like Ruby, Rails. Otherwise: Flip a coin. Heads? Rails. Tails? Django. A lot of very smart people will tell you that PHP is as good an option as Rails or Django. The problem with PHP is that while the upside for PHP is, as they're observing, just…
> the downside is way worse.
Can you explain how the downside is way worse?
> A trap I can tell you about from recent experience. :)
If it's not too much to ask, please share your experience briefly. Like me, a lot of folks here would be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#73Currently using Sinatra in my latest side project. I realize it's no longer the heyday of Ruby, but for simple apps its easy to get started and enables the possibility of using the vast amounts of Ruby gems in my project.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#74If you're a committed, heavily-invested user of a specific language, and well into your professional career: use that language. Otherwise: If you like Python, Django. If you like Ruby, Rails. Otherwise: Flip a coin. Heads? Rails. Tails? Django. A lot of very smart people will tell you that PHP is as good an option as Rails or Django. The problem with PHP is that while the upside for PHP is, as they're observing, just…
> the downside is way worse. Can you explain how the downside is way worse? > A trap I can tell you about from recent experience. :) If it's not too much to ask, please share your experience briefly. Like me, a lot of folks here would be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
The worse downside: There is a lot more crappy PHP code out there that novice devs will copypasta than there is for other languages. This makes it harder for novices to find the non-crappy PHP code in order to learn from it.
As a result, it is not particularly unusual to come across a PHP app that has been in production (and maintained!) continuously for nearly a decade that have all the SQL and JS inline, for example.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#75If you are comfy with Java, consider Ninja Framework for your backend. Dead simple configuration and ramp-up time. All of my sites based on it have been so fast (page loads < 50ms), I have had no need for AJAX at all.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#76If you're building a basic webapp, you shouldn't be using a front-end framework at all! React has one of the gentler learning curves of the front end frameworks, but it's still a lot more work than just rendering everything server-side and adding whatever minimal effects you need with jQuery. I second sandGorgon's recommendation to use Rails. PHP is another good option. It's absolutely amazing how many successful new…
I couldn't agree more with this.
However, I'm curious: at what point do you think the flavour-of-the-month JS frameworks actually do make sense for a development team / company? This might just be me being old and set in my webdev ways - I remember when PHP4 arrived on the scene, for goodness' sake - but I do struggle to see the business case for a lot of the current JS-everywhere, a-million-tools-for-everything environment, and I suspect I'm missing something key.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#77If you're a committed, heavily-invested user of a specific language, and well into your professional career: use that language. Otherwise: If you like Python, Django. If you like Ruby, Rails. Otherwise: Flip a coin. Heads? Rails. Tails? Django. A lot of very smart people will tell you that PHP is as good an option as Rails or Django. The problem with PHP is that while the upside for PHP is, as they're observing, just…
Is there any argument to be made for someone starting their career to look into an emerging web technology like Elixir/Phoenix?
I ask this as someone who is trying to decide what language/stack to seriously commit to learning while I try to undo the damage caused by starting out professionally in ColdFusion and PHP.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the downside is way worse. Can you explain how the downside is way worse? > A trap I can tell you about from recent experience. :) If it's not too much to ask, please share your experience briefly. Like me, a lot of folks here would be interested to hear your thoughts on this topic.
The worse downside: There is a lot more crappy PHP code out there that novice devs will copypasta than there is for other languages. This makes it harder for novices to find the non-crappy PHP code in order to learn from it. As a result, it is not particularly unusual to come across a PHP app that has been in production (and maintained!) continuously for nearly a decade that have all the SQL and JS inline, for exampl…
Would an appropriate compromise be to recommend "if you're going to learn with PHP, make sure you use a framework" since using any of Symfony/Laravel/Cake/etc will guide/force you into slightly better habits than writing PHP from scratch would?
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worse downside: There is a lot more crappy PHP code out there that novice devs will copypasta than there is for other languages. This makes it harder for novices to find the non-crappy PHP code in order to learn from it. As a result, it is not particularly unusual to come across a PHP app that has been in production (and maintained!) continuously for nearly a decade that have all the SQL and JS inline, for exampl…
Would an appropriate compromise be to recommend "if you're going to learn with PHP, make sure you use a framework" since using any of Symfony/Laravel/Cake/etc will guide/force you into slightly better habits than writing PHP from scratch would?
Part of the downside I was trying to convey is that a lot of the PHP work available is maintaining or fixing truly horrible applications, and that while skilled PHP developers are as productive as skilled developers in any other language, unskilled/novice developers are much worse as a consequence of learning all the wrong lessons from random code examples that they find through search engines.
It is actually quite difficult to deliberately create a web application in Python that is as bad as one of those "shopping cart with all the HTML, SQL, JS, and CSS interleaved in a single PHP file" examples that a novice will find and learn from. A novice is highly unlikely to manage it through ignorance even if they somehow manage to avoid using a framework.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best web tools to build basic web apps as of October 2016?
#80.net core with react?