Why is modern web development so complicated?

Post by dsego » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

winrid wrote: post #548

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…

On a side note, all that complexity in the example could be managed with adding/removing a single CSS class :p

Post by azernik » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #666

UncleMeat wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those sites are static html. Not even close.

html != static

Post by newen » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

kjsthree wrote: post #538

jacobsenscott wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely in that other industry the engineer built 100+ other basically identical items that are two or three orders of magnitude less complex and where all the costs and techniques are pretty well known. Also, those mature industries routinely overrun by millions of dollars and months or years, event though they are dealing with a fraction of the complexity and the costs and techniques are well known. Software is the…

> Software is the only industry where you are asked to build systems that have never been built before but that are more complex than anything ever built in the history of "mature industries" I have a feeling that some SpaceX engineers would have something to say about this after one of their rockets lands on a floating barge.

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

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…

Post by BlueTemplar » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #471

Razengan wrote: post #436

As other comments here have said, in different ways: "Modern web development" tries to reinvent too many wheels. I wish more developers/directors would try to approach this from the other direction: Making native OS apps as easily discoverable, installable, accessible, navigable, sharable, restorable, updatable and uninstallable, as websites: • I want to be able to type "photo editor" and see Pixelmator on macOS, Pai…

Sounds like it would be easier to enrich the browser with native-look controls than create another cross-platform ecosystem. (Let alone that none of the platform owners want to share developoers with the other platforms / they have incentive to lock them in)