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Why is modern web development so complicated?

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#191

Post by mixmastamyk »

reaperducer wrote: post #38

It doesn't have to be complicated, if you get support from above. A few weeks ago I launched a new web site for a health care company. HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. No frameworks. No javascript. No garbage. It replaced a site that was a mess of javascript libraries on top of frameworks on top of a half dozen jquery version and on and on and on. The company administrators, doctors, practitioners, etc... are so happy with…

> PHP, MySQL

Agreed in general, but there are better free/libre choices. I don't recommend these for greenfield projects.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#192

Post by adt2bt »

icedchai wrote: post #21
amiga-workbench wrote: post #7

Because web developers have massive a chip on their shoulder about not being """real""" developers. So now we have meme frameworks and transpilers and hysterical build toolchains all for a platform for sharing documents.

I disagree with the first part (they are real developers!), but agree with the second. We have grafted an application platform on top of a document delivery platform.

What would an application platform look like that isn’t a ‘document’ delivery platform? In my opinion, the ability of your browser to be essentially the OS of the web was responsible for the second great explosion in usefulness of computers (the first being the PC itself). Mobile apps were the third, but it’s unclear to me if there’s any benefit to rewriting many (most?) web applications as desktop applications. Discoverability, complexity and debugging costs all go up in such a world.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#193

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

castis wrote: post #167
enraged_camel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is actionable about it? Just curious.

Google the inverse question "how to build good software" and dont stop reading until you die?

That's like googling "how to eat right" - it's going to be 99% unhelpful and contradictory.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#194

Post by jtms »

gen220 wrote: post #142
void445be54d48a wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't build software and then we won't have shit software

I know this was probably meant as tongue-in-cheek, but I think this is a powerful idea. I think it should be a more widespread idea that people should aim to leave a company with a net-negative `cloc` contribution.

Yes. Deleting code is my favorite type of programming.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#195

Post by wolco »

Townley wrote: post #76
reaperducer wrote: post #38

It doesn't have to be complicated, if you get support from above. A few weeks ago I launched a new web site for a health care company. HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. No frameworks. No javascript. No garbage. It replaced a site that was a mess of javascript libraries on top of frameworks on top of a half dozen jquery version and on and on and on. The company administrators, doctors, practitioners, etc... are so happy with…

Recognizing the right tool for the job landed you job security for the next two years (and you're deserve it!) But it could have very easily gone the other way. If your website had complicated validation rules on multi-page forms (not unheard of in healthcare) the site would be better off for some basic state management interacting with a standardized authentication/authorization framework that you didn't have to wri…

If it is just validation a js framework would be overkill.

jQuery would fit well here.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#196

Post by adt2bt »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #33
icedchai wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the first part (they are real developers!), but agree with the second. We have grafted an application platform on top of a document delivery platform.

I should probably rephrase that part, because yes you are right, they are real developers. But there is this misunderstanding that what they do is simple and it couldn't be further from the truth. So off they go and try to prove that perception wrong by piling on the complexity.

I don’t think added complexity is a ‘feature’ us front end devs strive for. Instead, there are a lot of useful UX abstractions that are increasingly expected by users and are becoming extraordinarily tricky to roll on your own. Yeah there’s tons of extra crap, but the 8000+ projects in most node_modules has become more or less the standard library for that projects developer. It’s nuts, but JavaScript is the Wild West so it’s what we deal with.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#197

Post by orf »

wolco wrote: post #189
orf wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing this one post on HN from some PHP consultancy that had open sourced some kind of PHP web app that was "engineered from the start to be secure". I took a look at the code on GitHub and it was absolutely horrible. They basically built their own mini-framework, poorly, with mixed concerns and poor, ad-hoc and inconsistent validation everywhere. Terrible. I left an issue on GitHub with my findings and g…

Messy code is not insecure code and clean looking code is not secure code by default. It could be a signal of sloppyness or writing it in vim.

I totally agree. My point was:

> This is not engineering a project to be "simply secure", in the sense that it is definitely not simple and probably not secure!

Messy, duplicated code that re-invents the wheel hides security bugs.

Saying "Windows has security issues, so I'm going to write my own operating system for my software" doesn't mean you can't knock it out of the park and make the most secure operating system ever... but I wouldn't exactly bet on that being the case.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#198

Post by fizixer »

reaperducer wrote: post #38

It doesn't have to be complicated, if you get support from above. A few weeks ago I launched a new web site for a health care company. HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. No frameworks. No javascript. No garbage. It replaced a site that was a mess of javascript libraries on top of frameworks on top of a half dozen jquery version and on and on and on. The company administrators, doctors, practitioners, etc... are so happy with…

Questions for PHP, and MySQL folks (not meant in a negative way):

- PHP: A few years ago I heard about how PHP was needlessly complex. I wonder what the recent status of the programming language is. Specifically, do experienced PHP programmers stick to a subset of PHP, as in "PHP: The good parts"? (similar to "Javascript: The good parts"). (side note: As a diehard python person frustrated due to latest versions becoming bloated in features, I fully acknowledge that I'm in the "Python: The good parts" camp right now).

- MySQL is owned by a company lately. I wonder if PostgresQL is clearly a better alternative?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#199

Post by meesterdude »

chrshawkes wrote: post #174

Simply put, the web and all it's related technologies move at a much more rapid pace than Java, C++, .NET etc. We can complain about it all we want but if you drop out of this for a few years, good luck. I know tons of senior dev's who have no idea what modern tools to use. They don't understand modules, loaders, config files. Trust me on this, the front-end guys like myself, hate the backend guys that come along and…

us backend guys come from a time when buttons worked when you clicked on them. It's a concept we are adamant to share with you new front-end folks :)

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#200

Post by syn0byte »

dpau wrote: post #75
orf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you consider that the next developer might well come along and post a similar comment: > It replaced a site that was pretty much a home-grown PHP framework written by a single developer. Random mixed logic in templates, hard to update CSS and a poorly designed 'not-an-ORM' ORM. Not to say that your rewrite is like that, but one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

was just about to comment along these lines! i never understood those eschewing frameworks... in the above example a PHP framework like Laravel is in constant development by lots of people, with security updates and refinements pushed out on a regular basis. even if u are an uber-developer, in what situation is rolling your own ever the right choice? is your project that different from everyone else's?

Why don't you drive an 18 wheeler to work every day? They are used by millions of professional people every day who's job it is to drive! Why would you be different from all those people that you think you need to use a little car instead?

The answer is obvious in both cases; You don't need it and it would be wasteful. If I don't have a huge database with constant read/write calls, If I don't have to try to manage multiple end users submitting content, if I don't need super async real-time snappy UIs to compete with the latest android app fad or session tracking of tens of thousands of users, why would I need laravel?

If nobody rolled their own specifically for what they needed, we would still be writing ASM/APL/Raw hex.

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