In web design, everything easy is hard again

I think complications of today came from the problems of its past where it was taken for granted that you needed a framework to get around browser differences.

My personal and professional view has been use plain vanilla modern JS. Make an informed decision on whether using a framework makes sense for your particular project.

If you're making a mess of JS, its more likley you need to re-evaluate your approach to the problem rather than the easy thing to do which is to blame the language.

I wasn't implying that nor endorsing the use of toolkits to complicate process of creation. Yes, the vast majority of other comments in this thread have focused on overuse of "tools" and "frameworks" but my point was about his first frustration mentioned... the syntax itself becomes more complex to achieve richer (non app) web documents. Yes, the author mentioned "npm" and "react" but his first paragraphs were the exasperation of syntax TABLE "" to CSS float.

Staying with that theme, his subsequent paragraph emphasized the increase complexity of syntactic foundations before accounting for any toolkits and HTML generators:

>My point is that the foundations are now sufficiently complicated enough on their own that it seems foolish to go add more optional complexity on top of it. I’ve kept my examples to the most basic of web implementations, and I haven’t touched on Javascript, animation, libraries, frameworks, pre-processors, package managers, automation, testing, or deployment. Whew.

My point (which is based on the universal phenomenon of increasing complexity in other document layouts languages such LaTeX, Postscript language, etc,) is that the small and simple HTML example he cited isn't full-featured enough for modern web documents. I learned to code "plain HTML" by hand in 1990s but my beginner's knowledge of a few HTML tags in my brain isn't enough to replicate a Wikipedia page. If I decided to do it, it wouldn't matter if I used Dreamweaver, or used a Javascript static site generator, or typed HTML5+CSS3 by hand in Notepad ... the end result would still be a more complicated set of illegible syntax that continues the exasperation of to CSS flex float.

For example, one desirable feature of a modern document (not app) layout would by dynamic resizing of page components depending on big desktop vs tiny smartphone screen. Every example out there to accomplish that (whether multi CSS files, or single CSS file dynamically changed by Javascript) will look more complicated than his "hello world" HTML. For any new feature "X", there's a minimum Kolmogorov complexity to accomplish it which makes the syntax grow in complexity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

For the Web pages for my startup, I just started with what I wanted the pages to look like. Then I calculated where everything should be. I looked at this as a special case of layout in word processing, e.g., D. Knuth's TeX.

Then I turned to HTML and saw tables. Okay, the HTML table constructs are nice, sorry D., nicer than in TeX. So, I decided to use tables.

I heard about CSS, but I saw only a little need for that. Eventually I wrote a few lines of CSS. So, sure, I discovered that I could have separate CSS files, but that seemed like a way to slow the upload to the users. So, I just copied the CSS into the HTML code of the relevant Web pages.

For the rest, I saw how to use the Microsoft .NET ASP.NET to create and send the pages with the appropriate dynamic content, e.g., the results for the user.

I heard about JavaScript but saw no big need for it and so far have written not even a single line of it. Eventually I discovered that somehow ASP.NET writes a little JavaScript for me, maybe having something to do with cursor positioning -- maybe convenient and nice but not really necessary.

For the page designs, they are simple -- high contrast, large fonts, simple parts and pieces easy to understand right away, each page exactly 800 pixels wide, no icons, pull-downs, pop-ups, roll-overs, or overlays. There are some links, but each one is just a word in English.

The pages all have both horizontal and vertical scroll bars and should still be usable in a window only 300 pixels wide. So, the pages, without change, should look good on everything from a smartphone to a high end desktop. The user just needs a Web browser up to date as of maybe 10 years ago -- so, there should be no compatiblity problems. And, there are no user IDs, passwords, logins, or use of cookies! JavaScript is optional!

There really are some really simple, really successful Web pages on the Internet. So, sometimes simple can be good enough!!!

Clearly the users are wrong, I guess? Perhaps you should explain to them why your delicate design sensibilities dictate that they should download native clients because you think HTTP has gone off spec.

Let me guess... you're a COBOL dev and think computers should have never developer GUIs.

I have a friend who has his own navy. It's a small navy. He does like boats.

Once he had a men's yacht trip. There I met a guy and his son who ran an insurance agency.

Well, AI or not, one of the keys to his insurance business success was his ability to separate good customers from risky ones. Basically he knew nearly everyone in town, or at least every one of his customers, down to what they ate for breakfast or some such. That knowledge helped him get a good loss ratio and made good bucks for his business.

So, maybe what he did was not AI but real I!!

I'm sure that if someone had an AI tool that would help his loss ratio, then he'd us it!

For a second example, my father in law was on the local bank board. So, a guy in the community applied for a home loan. Well, at that bank, the loan application went to the BoD of the bank -- no joke.

Then at the BoD meeting, everything about the applicant got exposed and discussed right down to the details of his lifestyle. So, again, if some AI application could help that bank make better loan decisions, then likely they'd use it.

Lesson: That local insurance agent and that local bank both were really big on gathering, analyzing, and using all the data they could get. If AI could help, then they'd use it.