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The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

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Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#101

Post by egfx »

keithwhor wrote: post #64

I’m gonna be “that jerk on HN,” but this is that idea that just keeps getting rehashed every couple of years then fizzles out. The reason that it’s so attractive is because as developers we love to build and save time, and we think, “imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to ask for data from remote servers...” The problem is that stateful connections suck and create artificial complexity when you don’t need them…

You sound like someone that gets it and after reading further it appears you have built an app in this space, and this makes sense. I have too and your right, the coolness of the realtime web is also it's achilles heel. It's not that the web wouldn't be better off realtime, it's just that there is unlikely to be in most cases a time when more than one person if any at all will consume a shared resource. And now you have to account for the most sensible case being the static state of the app where you are over-engineering the realtime features that are not really going to be used that often. In my app I had a a channel state (realtime) and a snapshot state (static). Only thing that made sense in the end was the static snapshot state for content consumption.

Here is a short demo of the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwkgGBrK_tA

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#102

Post by phaedryx »

anderspitman wrote: post #43

I used to love WebSockets a lot more. At some point I got deeper into implementing HTTP servers and proxies, and realized how much of a special case WebSockets are to implement. They're cool, but I prefer Server-Sent Events on HTTP/2 whenever I can get away with it, which is pretty much always (binary data being a big exception, and even then I consider long-polling first). I think there's value in keeping our protoc…

I'm also sad that SEE's don't get the attention and love they deserve.

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#103

Post by fayten »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #54
fayten wrote: post #15

As an alternative that still relies on REST instead of web sockets is intercooler.js. It's a nice little framework for annotating html to give it more power. This little library seemed to have some buzz at the time it was first released, but I haven't seen it brought up in years. I decided to look it up and Intercooler is still supported, but there is a successor now called htmx. I have not shipped anything with eith…

htmx is great, it's come up a few times on HN and has good commentary. There's a small set of web folks that look at all the ridiculous complexities of react, virtual DOM, etc. and nope right out back to good old server side rendering. htmx is perfect for primarily server rendered stuff. And ironically, now we see react going full circle back to investigate a server side approach with their recent react server compon…

I fooled around with a Spark java, j2html, and Bulma css web app for a prototype back in 2017 (2018?) and it killed me how nice it was. The only tooling I needed was Intellij and the app started in milliseconds along with supporting hot reloading.

Modern web development is a big reason, I left my job at the end of 2019 and went back to school.

I'm tempted to try something with Javalin(a fork of Spark), j2html + htmx, and Tachyons css now. I think together those would make a beautiful stack.

http://sparkjava.com

https://javalin.io

https://j2html.com

https://tachyons.io

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#104

Post by jack_riminton »

nom wrote: post #99
jack_riminton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you’re the one whose decided to dedicate so much attention to it. If it’s a prediction you don’t agree on just ignore it The fact that it’s touched a nerve is more interesting to me

Seems more like your nerve was touched. If you can't handle critique and do not want attention why are you posting your article here?

Firstly it’s not my article

Secondly I don’t even agree with it

It’s an interesting (and apparently provocative) prediction. I’ve enjoyed reading the responses

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#105

Post by networkimprov »

keithwhor wrote: post #64

I’m gonna be “that jerk on HN,” but this is that idea that just keeps getting rehashed every couple of years then fizzles out. The reason that it’s so attractive is because as developers we love to build and save time, and we think, “imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to ask for data from remote servers...” The problem is that stateful connections suck and create artificial complexity when you don’t need them…

I built a localhost web app, where the app runs locally and displays its UI in one or more browser tabs. [1]

It uses websockets & JSON to connect the SPA UI (in Vue.js) to the app (in Go). That works well, and I can't imagine any advantages to generating HTML with Go, except perhaps less JS code :-)

[1] https://github.com/networkimprov/mnm-hammer

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#106

Post by kdunglas »

anderspitman wrote: post #43

I used to love WebSockets a lot more. At some point I got deeper into implementing HTTP servers and proxies, and realized how much of a special case WebSockets are to implement. They're cool, but I prefer Server-Sent Events on HTTP/2 whenever I can get away with it, which is pretty much always (binary data being a big exception, and even then I consider long-polling first). I think there's value in keeping our protoc…

And using SSE with Hotwire is even easier than using WebSockets: https://mercure.rocks/docs/ecosystem/hotwire

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#107

Post by viklove »

iomcr wrote: post #83
anderspitman wrote: post #43

I used to love WebSockets a lot more. At some point I got deeper into implementing HTTP servers and proxies, and realized how much of a special case WebSockets are to implement. They're cool, but I prefer Server-Sent Events on HTTP/2 whenever I can get away with it, which is pretty much always (binary data being a big exception, and even then I consider long-polling first). I think there's value in keeping our protoc…

I feel like websockets get waaay too much hype and attention compared to SSE, especially for use cases that are barely interactive at all.

Future-proofing is a good use case though. As a developer I don't want to maintain both SSE and WebSockets, since they solve similar problems and WebSockets are a superset of SSE. Even though my WebSockets implementation is currently unidirectional (server to client), I still opted for that over SSE because I'll probably need send data the other way at some point in the future. Why learn two tools when I can just learn one?

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#108

Post by Martinsos »

keithwhor wrote: post #64

I’m gonna be “that jerk on HN,” but this is that idea that just keeps getting rehashed every couple of years then fizzles out. The reason that it’s so attractive is because as developers we love to build and save time, and we think, “imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to ask for data from remote servers...” The problem is that stateful connections suck and create artificial complexity when you don’t need them…

Do you have any preferences regarding a direction to simplify web development, remove some of the complexity introduced with client-server separation?

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#109

Post by qbasic_forever »

fayten wrote: post #103
qbasic_forever wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

htmx is great, it's come up a few times on HN and has good commentary. There's a small set of web folks that look at all the ridiculous complexities of react, virtual DOM, etc. and nope right out back to good old server side rendering. htmx is perfect for primarily server rendered stuff. And ironically, now we see react going full circle back to investigate a server side approach with their recent react server compon…

I fooled around with a Spark java, j2html, and Bulma css web app for a prototype back in 2017 (2018?) and it killed me how nice it was. The only tooling I needed was Intellij and the app started in milliseconds along with supporting hot reloading. Modern web development is a big reason, I left my job at the end of 2019 and went back to school. I'm tempted to try something with Javalin(a fork of Spark), j2html + htmx,…

Yep, and if you squint serverless stuff like AWS Lambda, knative, etc. is basically a slicker more modern take on plain old CGI scripts. I don't view that as a bad thing--the less friction there is between "here's a function/code block.. please run it on this web request" the better.

Re: The future of web software is HTML over WebSockets

#110

Post by fartcannon »

Martinsos wrote: post #108
keithwhor wrote: post #64

I’m gonna be “that jerk on HN,” but this is that idea that just keeps getting rehashed every couple of years then fizzles out. The reason that it’s so attractive is because as developers we love to build and save time, and we think, “imagine what we could do if we didn’t have to ask for data from remote servers...” The problem is that stateful connections suck and create artificial complexity when you don’t need them…

Do you have any preferences regarding a direction to simplify web development, remove some of the complexity introduced with client-server separation?

Use as little tech as you can. Write HTML, CSS and if you absolutely have to, javascript.
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