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In Defense of the Modern Web

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Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#181

Post by filleduchaos »

snowoutside wrote: post #114
filleduchaos wrote: post #42

I was disappointed to find that this post falls into the same pit a number of these defences of the modern web fall into - creating a false dichotomy between "literally no JavaScript whatsoever" and "a framework-authored site with client-side routing". None of the features mentioned in that particular paragraph - user interaction analytics, preloading data and content [on link hover], transitions, avoiding full page…

I recently started using Sapper for a personal site and have been enjoying it immensely. I find that the abstractions that Sapper/Svelte make in order to avoid full page loads, preload data, etc allow me to write the site in a component-oriented way while not shipping 5MB of JS to the browser. And, Sapper scales as the app gets bigger in a way that a raw static site just can't. Rich seems to be advocating for a JS mi…

I don't mean to sound rude, and I apologise if I come across that way, but this is the exact sort of "JavaScript über alles" tunnel blindness that I'm tired of. Sapper/Svelte is _far_ more complex (especially in terms of overhead/learning curve for the site creator) than a tool a user wants to use to create enhanced static sites has any right to be.

Not everything is an app, and frankly I think we build a lot of non-apps as if they are apps because we enjoy the feeling that we've engineered something.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#182

Post by eximius »

fleddr wrote: post #145

Another angle I'd like to add to this discussion is something that gets near zero attention: longevity. Many SPA developers rapidly move from project to project. Every once in a while, they learn yet another JS framework, and then hop between jobs to use that. They never look back. They never truly need to take responsibility for a tech choice. Try to hire an Angular 1 developer to work on 300K lines of code today. Y…

This is just the COBOL problem in newer clothes. Raise the pay and someone will decide it's worth their time.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#183

Post by fleddr »

robertoandred wrote: post #170
fleddr wrote: post #136

Like most deep in the SPA bubble, this author cannot imagine any other outcome than SPA-everything. Meanwhile, any alternative view is put aside as being an anti-JS crusader (which misses the point entirely), simply being old, or even barbaric whilst he continues to high five his bubble inhabitants on Twitter. SPA as the status quo is a myth. It's a Fermi paradox. Where are they? Almost nothing of any importance is a…

The idea that some bad implementations of an idea serve as an indictment of the idea as a whole is utterly ridiculous. Some images on the web are poorly optimized, but that doesn't mean we should not have images.

No, it's not ridiculous, it's sane.

The whole point of a SPA is to give a user a better experience. If on average this does not materialize in the real world, and often achieves the exact opposite, the entire concept fails.

Bad SPA implementations are the standard. Saying that it's possible to make a good SPA implementation doesn't change the real world outcome that most often, they don't deliver.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#185

Post by fleddr »

eximius wrote: post #182
fleddr wrote: post #145

Another angle I'd like to add to this discussion is something that gets near zero attention: longevity. Many SPA developers rapidly move from project to project. Every once in a while, they learn yet another JS framework, and then hop between jobs to use that. They never look back. They never truly need to take responsibility for a tech choice. Try to hire an Angular 1 developer to work on 300K lines of code today. Y…

This is just the COBOL problem in newer clothes. Raise the pay and someone will decide it's worth their time.

Sure, but timelines are different.

Angular becomes a front-end COBOL in just a few years, not 3 or 4 decades.

There's more. A typical front-end architecture depends on a complex interwoven tool chain with a lifespan of at best years, sometimes even months.

Same for modules. It's normalized to have an absurd dependency tree of hundreds to thousands of inter-depending modules. The vast majority of which will be abandoned in a few years.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#186

Post by pseudalopex »

perilunar wrote: post #116
naavis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that comes to mind is that I can use them offline. I don't need the internet to draw or play most games. EDIT: I do understand you can make web apps that work offline by jumping through enough hoops. But then again, why would you? Why try to unnecessarily shoehorn everything into the web paradigm? Let's take an iPad drawing app that is super well integrated with Apple Pencil. What benefit would forcin…

Web apps are: * platform agnostic * can't be blocked by a central platform gate-keeper * generally much smaller (download size) than native apps * don't take up permanent space on your device (good for things you only use occasionally) * always up-to-date Personally I prefer native apps for tools I use frequently. Everything else I prefer the web.

iOS can offload unused apps.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#187

Post by Guidii »

amw-zero wrote: post #32
rich_harris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your 10k npm dependencies Believe me, you're preaching to the choir. Nor am I advocating for every website to have an API. But unfortunately we part ways here: > The web is a success The web is not a success. It's dying. Consumers vastly prefer native apps — one recent study ( https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-the-mobile-web/ ) tells us that 90% of mobile time is spent in apps vs 10% in browsers.

Well, I think this is really hyperbolic. I think it depends on the application, and the consumer. And the web is a tremendous success. You should take a step back and look at how your entire life is affected by the web. It seems really, really off the mark to say that the web is not a success. You can criticize it, sure. But - you are using a computer 100% because of the web, not because of spreadsheet software. Now,…

"I exclusively use apps."

Curious. Did you post this using a native app?

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#188

Post by fleddr »

rephrase wrote: post #130
Isomorpheus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that's just confirmation bias and I just don't notice it as much on sites that do it well This seems to me to be the key phrase. I sympathize with all the "JS has gone too far" people in this thread. I also hate bloated JS apps. But, "almost all SPAs are bloated trash" is a distinct claim from "SPAs are intrinsically trash". In my experience it is possible to have lean, high-performance, accessible SPAs witho…

Do you know of good SPAs? Sites that feel snappy even though they're SPAs. Most sites I visit that are SPAs are consistently slow so I've learned to make the same association: SPA = bad.

I love this question, in another comment I call it the Fermi paradox of SPAs. Where are they?

The simple question as to where are all these inspiring SPAs that truly push the web to next levels...is completely unanswered.

We get docs sites, demos and blogs. Where when clicking on a link...wow!...it loads without a page refresh. Something possible using simple ajax some 15 years ago.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#189

Post by fleddr »

rich_harris wrote: post #14
grey-area wrote: post #3

This author seems to think the only competitor to react is other js frameworks, when in fact most of the web's largest sites work just fine with small amounts of what he calls 'artisanal js'. You probably don't need your js framework, your 10k npm dependencies, or your complex mix of server and client side rendering. Not every website needs an api and clients to consume it, and not everything needs to be an app. The…

> your 10k npm dependencies Believe me, you're preaching to the choir. Nor am I advocating for every website to have an API. But unfortunately we part ways here: > The web is a success The web is not a success. It's dying. Consumers vastly prefer native apps — one recent study ( https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-the-mobile-web/ ) tells us that 90% of mobile time is spent in apps vs 10% in browsers.

Such a poor take. Consumers mass spending time in chat and Netflix doesn't mean the web is dying.

Consumers hate apps. The average they install per month is zero. 90% of their installed apps are completely unused. Almost any new app they do install has single usage, and is then abandoned forever.

Re: In Defense of the Modern Web

#190

Post by fleddr »

quantummkv wrote: post #50
rich_harris wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your 10k npm dependencies Believe me, you're preaching to the choir. Nor am I advocating for every website to have an API. But unfortunately we part ways here: > The web is a success The web is not a success. It's dying. Consumers vastly prefer native apps — one recent study ( https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-the-mobile-web/ ) tells us that 90% of mobile time is spent in apps vs 10% in browsers.

> The web is not a success. It's dying. Consumers vastly prefer native apps — one recent study ( https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/mobile-apps-vs-the-mobile-web/ ) tells us that 90% of mobile time is spent in apps vs 10% in browsers. That's a very weird assumption to make considering that the web was intended for sharing information, not running applications. The fact that customers prefer native apps does not mean that…

Even the word "prefer" is questionable. The typical consumer gets an Android phone which comes with pre installed apps. Should they somehow still by choice end up at a web property, they are aggressively pulled towards the native app.

What do you mean "prefer"? The correct word is pushed.

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