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Why is modern web development so complicated?

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#231

Post by marcosdumay »

ayushgp wrote: post #37
eswat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’ve done a great job of convincing each other within our tech bubble than everyone wants a SPA. Not sure the general public cares for our enthusiasm though.

Everyone(well almost) wants a SPA or at the very least non reloading pages. No one wants to reload the page with every action they perform or if only a part of the area on screen needed to be updated and the page was reloaded anyways.

I've never met one of those users that care wether you reload a page or not.

I've seen people that care if you create a SPA that shows a spinner for 10s before allowing the user to get any of your content, but those are not as numerous as Google's webmaster tools makes one think.

I've seen plenty of people that are perfectly fine with a page spinning for 90s before getting any content if the page has the data they care about.

So, any out of context claim like "everyone wants a SPA" is wrong.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#232

Post by PunchTornado »

fma wrote: post #133
goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Webdevs tend to suffer from an inferiority complex, that they are not considered “real” developers by the rest of the community. So they have responded by making the simple things they do monstrously complicated to try to prove something to the C++ guys, who simply don’t care, until they try to use the dumpster fire that is any modern website, that is. Then it has the opposite of the intended effect! Someone else men…

Backend dev here. I tried to create a simple Angular app. I got into some kind of dependency hell on something simple. Going from Angular 7 to 8 broke some junk? Then trying to get Angular Bootstrap to work was hellish as well, especially when some kind of polyfills junk screwed up for IE. Ended up just linking to it directly to the jquery and bootstrap CDN... It's been a long time since I did any kind of major front…

good, just leave the complex angular stuff for the frontend dev, the real engineers.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#233

Post by jdashg »

slx26 wrote: post #11
heyoni wrote: post #2

I don't know, but I do know I would rather fix a race condition on a multithreaded application than figure out how flexbox works or even understand all the different parts of the DOM.

Heh. I kinda felt: "hey, I agree with that", so I started asking myself why. What's the difference? Somehow, it looks like the difference is that on one side you have a very complicated problem but in a potentially well defined and bounded environment, and on the other you may have "smaller" problems, but on an environment so vast and complex that's kinda impossible to assert that you are doing things "properly". The…

Known unknowns vs unknown unknowns. "I know how this should work but something's wrong" vs "how am I supposed to do this? Should I do this? Will this other thing change?" Hackers are fine with it, but system architects hate that uncertainty.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#234

Post by mattlondon »

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…

For one-dev sized projects (i.e. simple crud type apps) this may well work.

However I would be concerned about a couple of things if this were me and I was doing anything beyond the absolute most basic web app:

- long term maintenance. Doing something only you understand and only you can maintain (that job security you mention) is a bit of an unprofessional dick move IMO.

- if you need to get other people in to help, you now have to spend more time training then up on your custom system that they don't understand and keep an eye on them to make sure they are doing it right and not introducing security issues

- When your client wants to integrate with some common third party thing ("hey can we put Google maps in here?"/"we need to integrate with stripe payments") you'll need to reinvent the wheel from scratch to do it using your custom system rather than just use a well-supported off the shelf library.

- you'll need to stay 100% up to date on all security issues/approaches/classes of vulnerability to make sure your custom system is secure. Your audit was ok this time, but everytime you make a change to your custom library (e.g. to support Google maps or stripe) you're now going to need to go through the audits again to be sure you've not opened up any new security holes (and perhaps new ones you've not ever heard of because you are only working in this weird little custom system/thiefdom for the past 2 years)

- how to support the INEVITABLE requests for extra features that require something client-side that cannot be easily done with only PHP and static pages. It is not the 90s any more - the cat is out of the bag regarding interactivity ... the requests for client-side nicities that users are used to in other things WILL COME! Clients always want more! :-)

Still anyway I guess you don't need my good luck wishes as I am sure you are correct and that you really have out-thought and out-coded all of the well-supported and well-funded frameworks that have been built by many thousands of people and have been battle-tested in the field for years (e.g. Laravel, .net MVC, struts etc). Because otherwise if you hadn't totally out-smarted the entire industry, I'd be shitting myself and checking my professional liability insurance about now.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#235

Post by ng12 »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #9

Because we're no longer making websites, we're making apps. Sure if you just need a simple website, make it from scratch, but good luck maintaining a full blown app using jQuery. It's not just web development that is hard. You can't honestly say any toolchain on the desktop side is any easier. That said, web development is getting easier now that the dust is settling and only a few major frameworks are used. Get star…

I hate that you're downvoted. So many people on HN are truly ignorant about what web development is about.

> Because we're no longer making websites, we're making apps

This is exactly right. Some projects should be SPAs, some SSR, some just a little HTML and jQuery. Use the right tools for the job.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#236

Post by vcanales »

fma wrote: post #133
goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Webdevs tend to suffer from an inferiority complex, that they are not considered “real” developers by the rest of the community. So they have responded by making the simple things they do monstrously complicated to try to prove something to the C++ guys, who simply don’t care, until they try to use the dumpster fire that is any modern website, that is. Then it has the opposite of the intended effect! Someone else men…

Backend dev here. I tried to create a simple Angular app. I got into some kind of dependency hell on something simple. Going from Angular 7 to 8 broke some junk? Then trying to get Angular Bootstrap to work was hellish as well, especially when some kind of polyfills junk screwed up for IE. Ended up just linking to it directly to the jquery and bootstrap CDN... It's been a long time since I did any kind of major front…

Well, choosing the right tool for the job is part of being any kind of developer. If you could solve the problem with no framework/lib/state manager, why go that way? The fact that those tools exist doesn't mean you _have_ to use them.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#237

Post by sh-run »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #113
madhadron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't honestly say any toolchain on the desktop side is any easier. Why, yes. Yes, I can. Delphi, for example. Visual Basic. Frankly, I think Cocoa and Gtk+ are easier.

1) Install NodeJS 2) npx create-react-app demo How many steps does it take to start from scratch with other toolchains?

1) Install Django

2) django-admin startproject mysite

Edit: To be completely fair this doesn't anything for the front end, unlike create-react-app. I'm not a web developer so I don't really have a dog in this fight.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#239

Post by [deleted] »

goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Webdevs tend to suffer from an inferiority complex, that they are not considered “real” developers by the rest of the community. So they have responded by making the simple things they do monstrously complicated to try to prove something to the C++ guys, who simply don’t care, until they try to use the dumpster fire that is any modern website, that is. Then it has the opposite of the intended effect! Someone else men…

[deleted]

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#240

Post by jasonlotito »

diminoten wrote: post #184
crumpets wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're not right. How you render CSS and the page have very little to do with how secure your app is. SQL escaping, session handling, etc all come easily with standard php libraries. So "I didn't bother with any PHP frameworks" doesn't mean the dev wrote an SQL connector.

I'm sorry if you thought I meant CSS rendering was the source of potential vulnerabilities, but for any website that has, say, users, if you're not using any PHP frameworks or external libraries you might have to implement some crypto of your own to store passwords securely, just for starters. I don't think PHP offers a standard library to do that, does it? There are a hundred examples that are specific to whatever a…

> I don't think PHP offers a standard library to do that, does it?

https://www.php.net/manual/en/password.installation.php

"There is no installation needed to use these functions; they are part of the PHP core."

The functions are common knowledge in the community, and made to be easy to use.

> Further, the expertise I do bring to this conversation is in software development, and I can say assuredly that a one-man development team using no 3rd party libraries is definitely creating a codebase nigh unmaintainable by other people down the line.

They said, "No frameworks." They didn't say no libraries. Some people make a distinction between the two, others don't. You are taking the stance that they mean they mean the same thing. Realize that others don't consider them the same thing.

Further, the expertise I do bring to this conversation is in software development, and I can say assuredly that someone who doesn't know the nuances between libraries and frameworks in the software development world can't make the claim to have expertise in the software development world. =)

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