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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

#281

Post by mmargerum »

skrebbel wrote: post #36

When I worked in embedded systems and systems programming a decade ago, it was totally normal to spend over a day getting your computer set up after joining a new team. Sounds exactly like what the author describes here, so what changed? What changed is that the browser became a popular application platform, forcing frontenders to deal with the stuff everybody else has been doing for decades. I'm not saying this can'…

He’s exaggerating. You can download a cli tool that lets you create a react or vue web app with Babel, webpack, hot code loading, etc in one command. It just works. I know because I just did it and built a large app from it . I think I added 3 lines to my webpack config to proxy api calls to me real web server. It’s magical to code on the fly and I think people have a short memory or aren’t old enough to remember hand coding make files and waiting 20 minutes for your app to compile and link.

Frameworks like vue.js are elegant as all hell and js has the lowest getting shit done to ceremony ratio of any language I’ve ever used.

Sure there’s a few gotchas. Try using c++. Now there’s a minefield.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#282

Post by jimnotgym »

codingdave wrote: post #125

There is a difference between web design and web application development. If you are a designer making brochure sites for small business, you don't need the modern frameworks and toolkits, and you are over-engineering it if you use them. Everyone needs to take a step back and ask why they are building a web site in the first place. My local hair salon really just needs a brochure, and maybe a scheduling widget. A doc…

> My local hair salon really just needs a brochure

And the default solution is Wordpress!! A full blown PHP application to just do a brochure.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#283

Post by naasking »

jugularkill wrote: post #259
naasking wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a highly misunderstood language due to human stupidity. Or maybe it's a highly misunderstood language because it doesn't match human intuitions. That makes it a poor language, like the OP said.

A programming language is not supposed to match human intuitions. We are trying to take things from the physical world an represent them in the digital world. A programming language should be modelled on physical life. But we still haven't figured this out yet. I don't think many people understand what a poor language is, you really need to understand the spec fully and experiment with every paradigm in production to…

> A programming language is not supposed to match human intuitions.

I'd say that's a flat out false conjecture. Given a choice between two programming languages, one which better matches our intuitions and one which doesn't, the one which does will always yield programs with fewer bugs because we will simply be better able to express our solution to the problem being solved, and we will be better able to understand the program and so extend it.

It's like saying that door knobs are not supposed to match human intuitions, they're just supposed to open doors in the best manner possible. Well guess what property opens doors in the best manner possible when humans are the ones opening doors? A door knob that's most intuitive and natural for the majority of humans to use. HCI and ergonomic factors are seriously underappreciated in computer science.

> you really need to understand the spec fully and experiment with every paradigm in production to claim that JS is a poor language. Can you genuinely say that you have?

I've used OO, FP, prototype-based, logic and constraint-based programming languages. Yep, I think I can say JS is not a good language. It's improved somewhat, but still not great. It's not Brainfuck-bad, but it's not particularly good either.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#284

Post by eitland »

jugularkill wrote: post #258
eitland wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is certainly possible to understand JS it is - IMO - a waste of brain cycles that we have to live with. There's no doubth in me that even very good Javascript programmers can be significantly better in a better language. E.g. Typescript gives you literally all of JS - and a way to keep things tidy. Typescript which is a compile-to-js language in a weird way proves how lacking js is - while still buildiing on…

"very good Javascript programmers can be significantly better in a better language." This is not how it works. Take this idea that JavaScript is a "badly designed language" out of your head and understand that about 99% of JavaScript's behaviours are intentional. The majority of gotchas in JS are shown by people who don't understand type coercion, prototypes or who expect it to behave like x language. It is not just…

> Take this idea that JavaScript is a "badly designed language" out of your head

Respectfully, no. The impressive thing about it is it was written in 3 weeks. Edit: I also didn't say Javascript was a badly designed language, at least not in the post you replied to.

The rest of it is like PHP (yes, I have programmed a fair bit in that as well).

> and understand that about 99% of JavaScript's behaviours are intentional.

So much worse ;-) There is one good defense for Javascript IMO and that is it was made in a very short time.

Intentionally leaving in a heap of footguns like Javascripts type coercion isn't brilliant, it is either pragmatic, myopic or evil. I say pragmatic in this case.

> The majority of gotchas in JS are shown by people who don't understand type coercion, prototypes or who expect it to behave like x language.

The classic Perl defense I'd say: ~you don’t understand the beauty of it.

> TypeScript is miserable. I see people building libraries in TypeScript and it's sad because they will never know how much better their performance could be or how small their lib size could be because the can only think in OOP.

Well, every thing you can do in JS you can also do in TS.

In a sense you can say this is our implementation of what you said above: "If you are somebody who is intuitive enough to create your own restrictions on what to use and what not to use in JS from the POV of the language's architecture then you will love it." And here you are right: Typescript is quite a lovely language:-)

Also: By this logic we should be programming in assembly.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#285

Post by shados »

ffang wrote: post #260
cc81 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that web development have never been as easy as it is now and that a lot of people just does not take it seriously enough to bother to learn it properly. People think that just because that they did some jQuery development 10 years ago they should be able to use to the same skills now and discard all new developments. Being able to use modern JavaScript and with linting/prettier will in practice make it…

Easy? No, I believe it's very hard to setup a frontend project.

It's just as easy as it always was. Put a script tag pointing to your favorite tool in a blank html page, and get going.

Oh, you mean setting up a state of the art web application? Years ago we had to roll our own pipeline, often building our own bundler and you had to use a ton of separate tools not meant to work together. There was no package manager so we had to download all of the stricts from random websites and hope for the best sticking them in a /vendor folder.

Nowaway you use the CLI of your favorite framework, type 1 command and you have an app all configured for a real world production environment. It's never been easier (and is easier than pretty much any other type of software development).

The only thing that changed is that since its so easy, you are expected to produce a high quality app if you want to be taken seriously. That part is hard.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#286

Post by ccachor »

gaius wrote: post #114
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 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 Let's take a step back here: the web is designed, from the ground up, for hypertext, interlinked documents comprising text and images, some of which are clickable and lead to other hyper-documents. HTTP - hypertext transfer protocol. "Web dev" should be referring 100% to…

Thank god for speaking up about this. This whole thread has me contemplating a career change. I'd rather dig a hole and fill it back in. The OP is pondering what framework to use for the front end. How about you do the design/css/copy then worry about the framework.

I think the main problem is everyone insists on over engineering a fucking website.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#287

Post by ccachor »

Dash1909 wrote: post #252
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 read all of this, made a 8 paragraph long retort about the stupidity of backend devs in this thread, then deleted it. The reality is, if you don't currently serve a website 1,000,000 people want to use, just pick some terrible server side piece of crap and call it good. If you want 1,000,000+ people to use your website, you better learn that a dynamic user experience is expected, and delivered with eloquent javascr…

Yes!!!!

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#288

Post by devxpy »

gjvc wrote: post #273

This is an excellent piece of writing. The aphorism "Go slow and fix things." is brilliant. I'm stealing that. I implore people reading this thread to watch this Alan Kay video from 1997, where he rather predicts (albeit perhaps implicitly, if not explicitly) that we will reach the situation we are in today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY There is a quote from the talk which rings true with many of the c…

That talk is truly awesome. Thanks.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#289

Post by machiaweliczny »

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…

For website you don't need any libraries. You might consider some static site generator.

For SPA go with create-react-app with react router with TypeScript and MobX and you will be satisfied. If you don't need/want to configure things swap webpack for parceljs.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#290

Post by machiaweliczny »

bitL wrote: post #254
dbrgn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elm is the opposite. From this article: https://medium.com/@eeue56/why-type-classes-arent-important-... "Right now, any Elm developer can examine Elm code that another developer has written, and fully understand what is going on. I consider this a major thing that Elm has got right." And "Elm is targeted at the main source of users it has — Javascript developers. Javascript developers may be familiar with typeclasses…

Thanks! Do you know any good (Udemy?) course in Elm that won't take too much time and gets into important parts quickly and thoroughly?

I don't get why you need udemy course. Just read official tutorial with open sandbox/project.
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