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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?

#481

Post by [deleted] »

mikekchar wrote: post #309
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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#482

Post by ScottFree »

rvn1045 wrote: post #451
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…

The point of using a good framework is that conventions and best practices are enforced. If your building a Rails sits there are a set of conventions everyone follows. When a new developer onboards onto the project they know how to extend the code base.

Are you familiar with the concept of a crab basket?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#483

Post by scarface74 »

minism wrote: post #476
scarface74 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite combination for dead simple sites is HandlebarsJS. 1. Render model from your JS object. 2. attach events 3. Change model 4. Go to step 1

You're just describing MVC which is essentially what most frameworks contain at their core on some level.

I know. I use server side rendering all of the time - well at least until I got back to my safe place doing back end work. It was one project for $reasons I had to use a very light framework that I could copy paste the entire library into the page. I couldn’t depend on the device having an internet connection. I could also precompile the templates.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#484

Post by elboru »

GordonS wrote: post #122
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…

I take a similar approach for 9/10 of the enterprise web apps I build, but use ASP.NET Core MVC instead of PHP, and I also favour SASS. Point is that SSR (Server-Side Rendering), with a sprinkling of simple JavaScript and XHR calls as required, is enough for almost everything I do, and it means build are really simple. Doubly so with a strongly typed language like C#. I've worked on Angular and Vue projects, and the…

Have you tried Razor Pages? I used it in my last project and I loved it, it was a lot simpler and subjectively more fun than using regular MVC.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#485

Post by buboard »

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.

there is a UI framework on top of a document platform, running on a VM inside a browser program running in a sandbox of a host operating system . Occam would be furious, and i think this extreme duplication of UI functions is bad for the environment, bad for the users' nerves and bad for the MTBF of computers.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#486

Post by cutler »

popotamonga wrote: post #62
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.

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

How do you identify these apps/clients?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#487

Post by buboard »

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 think it is more likely that "real" developers who started working as web devs missed the hierarchical ecosystem and built up one out of straws. Of course, that's a cargo cult.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#488

Post by NateEag »

wolco wrote: post #257
fizixer wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becom…

I think the discussion point was php was too easy and that encouraged new developers or less hardcore developers to adopt it. Some of the defaults like globals being turned on by default led to security holes. How people were creating sql statements at the time concating strings led to sql injection issues. There were never any bad parts . There are new features like the spread operator that are newer and not availab…

I have been paid to write PHP for several years of my career. More than any other language, I think, neck and neck with JS.

I have also written heavy amounts of Python and Java at various points in my career. A few other languages too.

PHP has many, many bad spots. It's easily the ugliest, clumsiest language I have been paid to use.

It's slightly dated, but this is still the best summary I know of:

https://eev.ee/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#489

Post by Roboprog »

spaced-out wrote: post #316
Roboprog wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, about 50% of mine. Many government and healthcare organizations STILL using Internet Exploder, presumably until its 2025 end of life:-(

>presumably until its 2025 end of life Oh you sweet summer child...

Wishful thinking?

PS - this “child” started working as a developer, at least part time, back in 1985

C++ eventually passed into a bad memory, and so will MSIE.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#490

Post by cutler »

dsego wrote: post #360
im3w1l wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Don't underestimate pjax/turbolinks as a first approach. This way you get to render on the server without refreshing the whole page. For most business websites this is more than enough to keep rendering snappy.
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