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Why is modern web development so complicated?

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#671

Post by swiley »

nsfmc wrote: post #87
swiley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t get simpler than Python and tkinter (or just strait TCL/tk.) Packaging these without depending on preinstalled software is hard (you probably shouldn’t even bother trying on Linux, everyone there expects installing weird stuff to involve using either git or a container anyway.) As far as I can tell the main reason people don’t use it is that it can’t make iPhone apps.

great, now you have a native client but now your customers will expect that it works offline, so now you're building a sync system for your app. additionally, if your app has any design/layout issues, now you need to hire for people that can do visual layout using tcl/tk. If your app consumes rich text, you're in for a real treat as you are now on the hook for figuring out how to manage that as well (in addition to s…

Oh sure yes, 90% of the things people want are really just a few HTML forms and a back end.

My point was that desktop development isn't any harder than web development. Most of what you've mentioned involve adding features and the same features would be just as dificult to implement in a web app.

>but people demand a lot from basic apps of any stripe these days, and as those requirements increase, so does the amount of complexity that developers need to manage at all stages of the pipeline.

I think most of these demands are misunderstood.

RE: "syncing": Most people just want to work with their data offline. Traditionally this was done by interacting with the filesystem rather than a thick client manipuliting the state on a server (like many modern web apps are.) There's no need for "syncing" or complex protocols.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#672

Post by jasonlotito »

diminoten wrote: post #251
jasonlotito wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dev…

I don't think someone nitpicking between the definition of the words "framework" and "library" is engaging in this conversation honestly, and I'm pretty sure that your failure to address the "this is but one of hundreds of examples, not all of which are covered by standard libraries in PHP" comment I made is further justification of that belief.

> I don't think someone nitpicking between the definition of the words "framework" and "library" is engaging in this conversation honestly

I think it is, especially since you are nitpicking on it. I'll explain.

If the original poster is using libraries but not frameworks, and feel there is a distinction (and judging by the post, it's clear they feel that way), then they are using libraries, just not frameworks.

Therefore, when you say this: "a one-man development team using no 3rd party libraries" in the context of the discussion, you are making stuff up. No where does the original post suggest or otherwise say that they aren't using 3rd party libraries (quite the opposite).

For your comment to hold up, you need framework and libraries to be the same. However, by pointing out that often times developers see them as different (generally libraries make up frameworks), I'm making it clear that your conclusion is misinformed.

> I'm pretty sure that your failure to address the "this is but one of hundreds of examples, not all of which are covered by standard libraries in PHP" comment I made is further justification of that belief.

I addressed directly the one example you provided. You didn't provide hundreds. You provided one. I provided the answer out of courtesy, as you asked a direction question. Saying answering your direct question is justification of my dishonesty is insulting and childish.

Further, the fact that you are mistaken on the concept of the common use of library vs framework, I felt that your claim of "hundreds of examples" was hyperbole and ignorance. Maybe you can provide hundreds of examples where PHP and libraries written in PHP cannot solve problems that only fully fledged frameworks can provide? Keep in mind that libraries exist for many different things and since frameworks are made up of libraries, there is almost nothing relevant that a framework can do that libraries can't.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#673

Post by apta »

aswanson wrote: post #615
iamwil wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't protection against de-referencing null pointers a good reason?

Yeah, but I've been around the block enough times to avoid those types of bugs.

It's much more than just null pointer dereferencing. Time and time again, it's been proven that Rust protects even very experienced C++ programmers from bugs they didn't realize they're even making.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#674

Post by MadWombat »

jdnenej wrote: post #585
MadWombat wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most tools out there allow you to shoot yourself in the face. In this case, the guy replaced client-side JavaScript (very notorious for its amazing face shooting abilities) with server-side PHP (also, a very notorious face shooter).

The real metric of quality is does it do what you expected. PHP is a gun that sometimes shoots backwards with no sensible reason where as rust has a gyroscope that can work out when the gun is pointing at your face and requires that you turn off the safety first. Entire classes of bugs simply don't exist in better languages.

Well, yes. You can write a web application in Haskell and enjoy the beautiful and flexible type system, first order functions, monads and all the other wonderful things. But you shouldn't. Because when you leave, the client will never be able to find someone to maintain the damn thing and chances are they will hire someone else to rewrite it yet again in PHP. And possibly hire someone to make a voodoo doll of you and stick pins up its ass.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#675

Post by I_complete_me »

eropple wrote: post #667
collyw wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could get away from the fashion show in this industry. Currently we have a React frontend, which just adds extra complexity for no real benefit. But its fashionable.

React (and other SPAs) may be fashionable , but I generally contend that--when written well or even passably , which obviously requires an asterisk lest the Scotsmen come by but I don't think is a very high bar--if nothing else it requires developers to treat a web application as a client of an API rather than tightly integrating it. It enforces a level of separation of concerns that, IME, tends to encourage loose co…

Off topic this but your phrase "lest the Scotsmen come by" intrigued me. It sounds vaguely idiomatic but I don't know the reference. Any enlightenment available?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#676

Post by hajile »

buboard wrote: post #463
hajile wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flexbox? That's way easier than float design and both of those are way easier than designing everything with tables.

i love tables. in fact tables can be more responsive than "responsive" layouts. They were from the start. Pity that some purists ostracized them

If you took that exact table design and implemented it using flexbox (or even floats), the performance of the site would increase.

Tables require two (sometimes more) separate reflows. Minor changes in one cell can potentially force the entire table (and all its contents) to re-render. I also don't miss the days of slicing up images into tables for the performance and load-time gains either.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#677

Post by euoia »

rixed wrote: post #622
cercatrova wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resources are allocated to their constraints. You spend as much money as you have, as much time as you have, you hire as many people as you can afford, and so on. It may be because people don't think on an absolute time scale but rather a relative one; if you make 1 million in revenue and you only have 3 employees, you might feel like you should hire more. What happens if you start making one billion in revenue? Read…

Also known as "Parkinson's law". Also the name of the little funny book where you will find the origin of "bikeshedding". More pleasant and timelesd a book than "bullshit job", IMHO.

What's the full title of the book? I searched on Amazon and there are a few titles containing "Parkinson's Law". Thanks.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#678

Post by hinkley »

majewsky wrote: post #373
rossdavidh wrote: post #265

The answer to "why is ___ so ___?", is very nearly always best when phrased as the question, "what was supposed to stop __ from __?" The answer is nearly always...nothing. There was nothing, technologically or organizationally, preventing web development from becoming so complicated, such that websites whose desired functionality would be satisfied by static html are now several meg of thousands of lines of javascrip…

I would add one word to this: > There was nothing anymore preventing web development from becoming so complicated The early web was much simpler because of the resource constraints of the 90s and early 2000s. Pages only started serving 10 MB of JS when browsers got to the point where they could chew through 10 MB of JS at a barely acceptable pace. Also: > Managers don't really feel like pointing out "the project I'm…

I really did enjoy my brief times working on embedded devices. Design conversations are quite a bit easier when physics is on your side.

I wish the IoT space weren't such a dumpster fire. I should go back to my plan to run a website on a cluster of nanoPi's.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#679

Post by jonnycoder »

robertoandred wrote: post #550
jonnycoder wrote: post #287

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…

That’s only “reasonable” if you have a simple, cookie-cutter site.

Can you go into more detail? With Vuetify, I add my colors and generate a new theme. Hardly any new css is needed, especially with the grid systems that come with it. The compiled Vuejs gives proper errors in chrome developer tools, so it's been easy thus far.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#680

Post by steve_g »

I_complete_me wrote: post #675
eropple wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React (and other SPAs) may be fashionable , but I generally contend that--when written well or even passably , which obviously requires an asterisk lest the Scotsmen come by but I don't think is a very high bar--if nothing else it requires developers to treat a web application as a client of an API rather than tightly integrating it. It enforces a level of separation of concerns that, IME, tends to encourage loose co…

Off topic this but your phrase "lest the Scotsmen come by" intrigued me. It sounds vaguely idiomatic but I don't know the reference. Any enlightenment available?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
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