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Why is modern web development so complicated?

vrk.dev

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#281

Post by porsager »

skc wrote: post #145

It's becoming so complicated that I'm struggling to come up with ideas for how to get my 13 year old nephew interested in web development. When he was born I used to dream of having him look at a button on a web page and him asking me "what actually happens when I click that button" I shudder to think where I would even begin to answer that today.

Exactly this was one of the reasons why I built https://flems.io. Flems is basically just a scratchpad that begins with 3 files — .html, .css and .js. All the current state is stored in the URL, so sharing is simply done by sending the URL to someone else - true serverless ;) Here's a simple sample you can start out on with your nephew.

https://flems.io/#0=N4IgzgpgNhDGAuEAmIBcIB0ALeBbKIANCAGYCWMY...

nb. You don't need to jump in with any of the frameworks used by companies targeting millions of users. The basics are still there...

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#283

Post by benbristow »

jimmaswell wrote: post #260
lacampbell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of any state management is a nightmare What makes the lack of state management a nightmare in the javascript world, but a complete non-issue when doing .NET or Qt apps? As someone who started with desktop apps and then moved into web dev, I never really understood why Javascript developers wanted a library to help them manage state.

The criticism makes no sense to me. jQuery is just there to make things nicer that you'd already be doing. It doesn't need to be an MVC framework.

For example, React isn’t an MVC framework. It’s a library. It allows rendering DOM declaratively based upon a state/props.

jQuery just changes the DOM. It gets very difficult to keep the DOM in sync with the JavaScript backed data when there’s multiple moving parts.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#284

Post by BubRoss »

johnchristopher wrote: post #190
gen220 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, that's a well know mantra: the best code is no code.

People don't know what that means though. It is only helpful after explaining to shoot for deeper yet simpler rules for your system along with identifying what can be separated from execution as static data.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#285

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

chrshawkes wrote: post #183
castis wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would be more helpful if I also put on a hostile attitude?

I'm not being hostile, I apologize if you took it that way. I'm just making a point about how so many dev's claim to have the right answer until you need to rely on them to get something done. Projects turn to a mess mostly due to things one single person cannot control. I don't know a single person, including myself, who've thought that their code didn't look like shit 6 months to a year down the road. I think we al…

> I apologize if you took it that way

Placing the blame on him when you were the one being hostile is hostile.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#286

Post by dpau »

syn0byte wrote: post #200
dpau wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mu…

i'm sorry but i'm really not convinced by this argument. there are many frameworks available in various languages/platforms, some created specifically to be light and fast (in the PHP example above, lumen is a possible choice). my other argument would be- why are you spending so much time on plumbing when you could be concentrating on the parts of your application that make it special?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#287

Post by jonnycoder »

Anyone take the reasonable approach lately? IMO, it involves taking the CDN version of a framework such as VueJS and slapping that bad boy as a script tag in your HTML file. No webpack, babel, sass, etc etc.

I'm developing a dashboard, nothing fancy but nothing simple. I am also reasonable and think one can build off of all the well established UI components out there such as Vuetify. I now have a lot of free time to spend on the backend API, which is what I happen to enjoy doing.

As a fan of end to end or integration testing, I could care less about test driven development on the front-end.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#288

Post by renke1 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #241
renke1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I can confirm that a lot of backend developers look down to frontend developers, but if you dig a little deeper you often (not always) see that frontend development is simply intimidating to them and they rather stick to what they know. At least in my country/region this leads to a lack of good frontend developers; good developers being those that apply well-known and established (backend) practi…

really? for some years I haven't noticed any difference between frontend and backend. that is because both frontend and backend are in js probably...

Most "enterprise" application backends are still written in Java (and probably C#) combined with a frontend based on Angular, sometimes Reacts or older technologies. I am not aware of any Node-based backend at any of our customers (medium/large German companies), except maybe for some smaller parts of the backend (microservices architecure etc.)

Ah, also, not sure if you were joking, but I don't think using JavaScript (TypeScript, that is) in both frontend and backend is a bad idea. Having a shared (domain) model can be a real boon. Admittedly, JavaScript lacks a few things that is offered by Java and the like that makes not yet fit for larger applications though (say DI, modularization and so on).

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#289

Post by Roboprog »

Roritharr wrote: post #256
Theodores wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard to update CSS. When was the last time you had a go at CSS? So much has changed since 2017. You can chuck out the pre-processor junk and just use CSS variables and CSS Grid. Productivity is 10x. You can even keep it simple so that a page just loads the CSS it needs instead of some 40,000 line ball of junk. Same with templates, if you are using CSS Grid you don't need the sea of div containers, you can just use…

Honest Question, how do I support our IE 11 Customers (8% of our MRR) with this approach?

Alas, about 50% of mine.

Many government and healthcare organizations STILL using Internet Exploder, presumably until its 2025 end of life:-(

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#290

Post by temac »

void445be54d48a wrote: post #102
afarrell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that "don't build shit software" isn't actionable advice on how to avoid building shit software. For someone seeking to be a more skillful web software engineer, there's no information there.

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

I'm a fan of that idea and I'm taking it even further:

Erase existing software, so we have less amount of shit software.

I'm actually applying that technique at work with great results (really!)

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