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In web design, everything easy is hard again

frankchimero.com

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Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#11

Post by GoToRO »

golergka wrote: post #3

I've almost never touched web development, but as an active HN reader I have at least passing familiarity with almost all the terms used in the article. So, honest question: can a person fully understand how modern HTML/CSS work without diving in the source code of one of the browser engines? Because as a developer, if I was forced to use such a complicated technology, grooming source would be my best guess at making…

As as web developer the most important skill to learn is to let go! You fix it for whatever browsers the client uses and forget about the rest.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#12

Post by afarrell »

golergka wrote: post #3

I've almost never touched web development, but as an active HN reader I have at least passing familiarity with almost all the terms used in the article. So, honest question: can a person fully understand how modern HTML/CSS work without diving in the source code of one of the browser engines? Because as a developer, if I was forced to use such a complicated technology, grooming source would be my best guess at making…

http://book.mixu.net/css/ is a reasonable guide and as a backend dev, I've learned to feel more comfortable with HTML/CSS by reading through it multiple times and making flashcards in a Spaced Repetition app.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#13

Post by keldaris »

randomsearch wrote: post #9

This is my experience of web development, every time I return to it. I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered. JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language (yes, even in its modern form), which I think has caused a lot of problems. Many JS developers don’t know much about programming language design, so they can’t see how bad it is, and they make matters w…

I'm in a similar position, and I've formed the same impression. Furthermore, even though browsers are stuck with JS, given the influx of languages able to compile to JS (or even WebAssembly now) it feels like there should be plenty of options for those of us who would rather stay away from the craziness. Perhaps someone with more frontend experience could comment on what (comparatively) sane, simple and JS-minimizing options are there now?

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#14

Post by dmitriid »

I've recently realised that most of modern day's web stem from the fact that it's not a platform. It's still just a barely functioning system to display text documents.

That's where all the complexity comes from: people are trying to build/collect the missing pieces of a platform, and then try to build their stuff on top of it.

And you can see it everywhere: from CSS (which still pretends that modularity doesn't exist or that complex constraints in layouts do not exist) to DOM (which hasn't seen a proper API design in years) to Javascript (whose idea of a standard library is adding an underspecified `fetch` after 15 years of people writing wrappers around XMLHttpRequest).

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#15

Post by afarrell »

GoToRO wrote: post #11
golergka wrote: post #3

I've almost never touched web development, but as an active HN reader I have at least passing familiarity with almost all the terms used in the article. So, honest question: can a person fully understand how modern HTML/CSS work without diving in the source code of one of the browser engines? Because as a developer, if I was forced to use such a complicated technology, grooming source would be my best guess at making…

As as web developer the most important skill to learn is to let go! You fix it for whatever browsers the client uses and forget about the rest.

I suspect your parent comment isn't talking about browser compatibility. I suspect it is about learning enough CSS/HTML to write up a page for one browser without feeling like [venetian blind gif].

https://imgur.com/gallery/Q3cUg29

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#16

Post by ohazi »

Choice quotes:

> Directness is best in my experience, so a great photo, memorable illustration, or pitch-perfect sentence does most of the work. Beyond that, fancy implementation has never moved the needle much for my clients.

> Last month, I had to install a package manager to install a package manager.

...

I sure as hell know about spaghetti workflows and spaghetti toolchains. It feels like we’re there now on the web.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#17

Post by mattmanser »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #6

I completely share the thoughts of the author of this article. However, I'm not sure if his proposed solution would work for most people. It's not that I want or like to use npm etc. - I'm forced to use them as it's the new default way of working with almost anything useful in today's web development work. An alternative would be to start from scratch - and then reinventing all these things again, making another full…

Crikey, even the 'reasons' are circular.

People were saying that was the problem 10 years ago. Those exact words. Apps aren't docs.

All you need to do now is propose a new language and call it XHTML. Or maybe make markup extensible and functional, we could call it, ummmmmm, XSLT.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#18

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

golergka wrote: post #3

I've almost never touched web development, but as an active HN reader I have at least passing familiarity with almost all the terms used in the article. So, honest question: can a person fully understand how modern HTML/CSS work without diving in the source code of one of the browser engines? Because as a developer, if I was forced to use such a complicated technology, grooming source would be my best guess at making…

Yes. Read the whatwg HTML spec for developers [0].

Understanding ALL of CSS is tricky, because it has a long history. It's also incredibly tricky to understand how it all works together when different display modes are combined. But you don't need to understand ALL the parts in order to build something useful. Just skip over the parts you won't be using.

Do you think any of the alternatives are truly much better?

[0] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/dev/

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#19

Post by DanBC »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #6

I completely share the thoughts of the author of this article. However, I'm not sure if his proposed solution would work for most people. It's not that I want or like to use npm etc. - I'm forced to use them as it's the new default way of working with almost anything useful in today's web development work. An alternative would be to start from scratch - and then reinventing all these things again, making another full…

The other problem is we're doing this weird kludging an app to do something on the web even when we don't need to - even when we're just presenting text.

I know people have different needs, and that reasonable people can make reasonable choices and end up in very different places. What I don't understand is how anyone could end up in a place where this kind of website is ok. Give me a pdf; give me plain html and css. https://fermatslibrary.com/s/shelling-out-the-origins-of-mon...

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#20

Post by megaman22 »

> There’s a voice in the back of my head saying we’re stuck in a loop and it’s repeating. We’ve completed a lap on a cycle which will go around forever. Another approach for layout will come along five years from now, it will probably resemble floats, and not knowing how to clear a float will bite me in the ass for the second time in my career.

This is what I feel like everytime I try to keep up with web tech... For crissakes, the last training I went to had a session on Razor Pages, which set off my PTSD from years of doing ASP.NET WebForms, back before we decided that was a really awful, painful way to do things.

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