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Why is modern web development so complicated?

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#351

Post by ng12 »

asark wrote: post #348
ng12 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think an _entire industry_ has been built up around a desire to pad resumes? I don't even know how to respond to that.

No, web development overall hasn't. Web apps specifically are largely fad-chasing vanity (manager, organizational level) or that, yeah. Which is cool because there's all kinds of dumb money flying around for them now—that part's been amazing. But it's not serving users well. Peacock feathers.

So a thing nobody wants or needs became extremely commonplace because JS devs (and only JS devs, I guess the Java guys have yet to discover this) realized they could invent some new frameworks and managers would gladly pay six-figures a head for them to play around with it?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#352

Post by debaserab2 »

alkonaut wrote: post #226
vcanales wrote: post #82

These "i hate debugging wandering pixels" and "i don't want to figure out why my css doesn't work" opinions sounds like they come from people who aren't really front end developers; like they come from the kind of dev who would sit and complain about the frontend devs on their company, thinking that they're a lower class of people. I've been working on the server- and client-side of the web for about 10 years now, an…

> they come from people who aren't really front end developers I think web frontend development transitioned from "acceptably complicated" to "way too complicated" some time around that time the first person wrote "Front End Developer" on their business card.

Agencies have been hiring front end developers in as actual titles since the mid 00's.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#353

Post by bgdkbtv »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #307
popotamonga wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making top dollar remaking failed garbage react native apps to real native native. Clients love it

Out of curiosity, how do you support both iOS and Android with this approach?

With LOTS of money ;)

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#354

Post by djstein »

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…

sorry you felt that way.unfortunately you dealt with the shit-show that is Angular + TypeScript, which is not beginner friendly AT ALL. I would ask you try using create-react-app, https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/, and drop jQuery. JS is really awesome now and everything that was "in" jQuery can be achieved through standard library.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#355

Post by bgdkbtv »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #191
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.

What would you recommend instead of those?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#356

Post by mattacular »

ekzy wrote: post #338
mikekchar wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded of the Picasso story where he meets a woman in a park and makes a 30 second sketch. The woman asks how much it would cost to buy it and he replies something like $1000 (insert large amount of money for 30 seconds of work). She asks him why so much money for 30 seconds of work and he replies that it took him 30 years to draw that sketch. It's easy to build a simple website with no frills that does exactl…

It is a good analogy. In essence, achieving simplicity is hard. Simple is not easy.

"Simplicity is complexity resolved"

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#357

Post by bsaul »

tlrobinson wrote: post #294
bob1029 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, you broke into my top-secret consulting role ;) I completely agree with all of this. There is probably a billion-dollar market out there for rewriting garbage business apps that were developed using the hipster tech flavor of the week.

Which is more hipster: using the latest modern web framework, or bragging about how you don't use modern web frameworks?

That's definitely something to consider : i don't want beginners to start coding in old school php with sql statement inside html templates because they read on HN to "not use modern frameworks".

BUT, i don't think this "crude design" trend will ever have the same attractiveness to junior developers no matter how much hype it gets here. Being attracted to "new shiny things" is very intrinsic to human behavior, and tech companies will keep spending ads to sell their new tech to the market.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#358

Post by bluedino »

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…

But, can the marketing intern update it?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#359

Post by majewsky »

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.

The problem is, even if you try to contribute negative LOC, every other week your boss/customer/PM sees a new feature in their dreams or hears about a new technology at a conference and demands you put it in there right now.

Every system that I've built so far has started out with a simple, obvious set of rules (both new systems and replacements for old systems). Then the customer/PM/whatever notices just one more edge case. And another. And another. And another. The truth is that reality is frustratingly complicated. Especially if the reality you're mapping contains the internal bureaucracies of large companies.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#360

Post by dsego »

im3w1l wrote: post #326
dsego wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the multi-page forms part. As soon as you have state of some fields affect how other fields or parts of the page display it becomes complex really quickly. There is an explosion of possible states. If you've ever seen code like this, you know why more modern js frameworks were invented: onSomethingChanged() { $('#foo').prop('disabled', true); $('#spinner').removeClass('invisible'); $('#error-1').prop('hidd…

I think he would model that as POSTing. Server side PHP would render document from scratch from the state.

It's silly to do a round trip to the server just to change some local UI state, right?
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