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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

#51

Post by sureaboutthis »

I have found lately that many web things today are based on fads and they have found their way into the standards. In the past, standards were developed through engineering and computer science. Today it's based on fireworks, explosions and emojis. Speed trumps quality. Do not want to think is the motto or slogan.

If there is a framework or library I can use then, great, I don't have to know how it works so I won't bother seems to be the mantra today. Which, in my mind, reminds me of "All in the Family" scene where Gloria is talking to her friend. "Daddy said girls don't have sex, only boys do." Friend: "Then who do the boys have sex with?" Meaning, if no one is doing the thinking, who is going to write the code?

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#52

Post by lultimouomo »

ohazi wrote: post #16

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 w…

My personal favorite:

> I type clear: both and say a prayer to the box model.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#53

Post by pka »

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…

> If anyone has advice on how someone who prefers rigour, simplicity, elegance, and decent PL design over the latest trend should approach web dev that would be massively helpful

Sounds like Elm [0] (pure, functional, very very easy to start with but lacks abstractions), Purescript [1] (pure, functional, powerful, the best language for the web right now, imo) or ReasonML [2] (functional but impure, familiar syntax, focused on pragmatism) would be right up your alley.

If you're ok with a dynamic language (i.e. strike rigour), then look no further than Clojurescript [3], Clojure's [4] little web brother. An elegant and simple Lisp, it makes almost all other dynamic languages completely obsolete.

There most definitely are sane options for developing for the web if one is willing to use a compile-to-js language.

[0] http://elm-lang.org

[1] http://www.purescript.org

[2] https://reasonml.github.io

[3] https://clojurescript.org

[4] https://clojure.org

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#54

Post by nawitus »

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…

Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. It's a good, productive programming language. Most of the quirks can be disabled with a linter, and optionally a lot safety can be brought in with typing (using e.g. TypeScript).

On the other hand, many developers don't know much about programming and JavaScript, and therefore tend to have unjustified criticism of the language.

JavaScript was a perfect choice for Node.js. It's event-driven design is a perfect fit for a performant web server. Python would have been a bad choice, because it didn't support asynchronous programming when Node.js was created. Furthermore, using the same language in the backend and frontend will reduce context switching, enable code reuse and generally speaking improve implementation efficiency.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#55

Post by user15128 »

you still can write `hello world`, there is nothing wrong with it!

but once you have written a file-browser with an embedded editor in it or anything else at more complex level, you will consider using react and all the things. because complex things are complex.

again, for simple things you can easily use simple tools - maybe you should. but of course once you are using react day in day out because you need it for other things - you might just use it for anything because you are familiar with it.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#56

Post by BjoernKW »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #34
BjoernKW wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the often-heard premise that HTML is a somehow inferior tool for creating GUIs that we somehow ended up with despite better choices beings available. Yes, native GUI frameworks and widget toolkits like Swing, Qt, Cocoa and MFC have their place but it's precisely the nature and features of HTML (most notably: The link) that enabled most of the innovation we've seen on the web. If building web apps was…

> However, web applications today are so much more than their desktop equivalents from the 80s and 90s both in terms of what's possible with them and as to how accessible they are to developers. Could you elaborate on that? From the point of view of the user, an app from the 90s works much faster than Google Docs. From developer's point of view, using a visual widget in an app was as simple as dropping it on a form,…

Yes, the 90s app is faster but can it consume and provide data over a network? Does it afford collaborative editing? Sharing data with others?

You can now even use Google Sheets for creating web applications much like Excel has been used for creating desktop applications.

Lazarus and Delphi in general certainly are great tools but they're also limited in terms of what types of user interfaces you can create with them. There probably aren't many faster ways of creating single-user CRUD applications but once you have to roll out an application to multiple users who are supposed to use the application over a network and in a collaborative fashion things start to look different.

As for the other angle I consider Excel (and the concept of spreadsheet software in general) one of the single most remarkable pieces of software created so far. Creating a fully-fledged spreadsheet application is no small feat. Then, let's not forget, Google Sheets is free whereas Microsoft makes significant revenue with their Office products, which would explain their motivation to create the best and fastest version of their product they possibly can while Google seems to be trailing behind.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#57

Post by pleasecalllater »

nawitus wrote: post #54
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…

Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. It's a good, productive programming language. Most of the quirks can be disabled with a linter, and optionally a lot safety can be brought in with typing (using e.g. TypeScript). On the other hand, many developers don't know much about programming and JavaScript, and therefore tend to have unjustified criticism of the language. JavaScript was a perf…

Yea, modern JS... it's just a joke, no integers, still funny effects with []+[] and {}+{} and []+{} and {}+[]. Good luck with writing anything serious using such a crap.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#58

Post by skrebbel »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #57
nawitus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. It's a good, productive programming language. Most of the quirks can be disabled with a linter, and optionally a lot safety can be brought in with typing (using e.g. TypeScript). On the other hand, many developers don't know much about programming and JavaScript, and therefore tend to have unjustified criticism of the language. JavaScript was a perf…

Yea, modern JS... it's just a joke, no integers, still funny effects with []+[] and {}+{} and []+{} and {}+[]. Good luck with writing anything serious using such a crap.

Both ESLint and TypeScript solve all that. In all honesty, if you're not using tools like that I'm not sure you're doing "modern JS development". It's like complaining that modern C++ is a mess while refusing to use references and RAII.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#59

Post by mnm1 »

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…

Try Clojurescript + Reagent. There's no reason to use JS if you have a choice.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#60

Post by BigJono »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #48
k__ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find JS any worse than Java, PHP or Python. They all have really ugly parts at least in JS they don't slow you down.

I disagree. While Python, for instance, certainly has its quirks, it doesn't have multiple ways of declaring a function, each with their own scope and hoisting gotchas. In Python, self isn't ambiguous the way this is in JavaScript. Python's datatypes are straight forward, unlike JavaScript, where 1 + "1" produces a valid result. In Python, 9999999999999999 is precisely 9999999999999999, however in JavaScript this is…

I've been a professional Javascript dev for over 5 years and never once run into a bug due to any of these problems.

I agree that they are problems, but their impact on day to day use of the language is zero.

If you want examples of real problems that give good front end devs hell day in and day out, start looking at some of the libraries, tooling and abhorrent "best practices" that get thrown out and cargo culted to death by the community.

The language itself is the last problem with JS

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