I can only think that modern front end development has failed
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Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#2All software development has failed. Everyone is mindlessly copying megacorps with terrible development practices. Then when their crappy systems fail constantly, they blame the tools and demand even more complicated tools from their corporate masters... Which make their code even less reliable.
Tooling is not the problem, the problem is you and your selfish subconscious urge to create more complexity to create more work and more income for yourself.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#3Media websites are a bad way to judge the state of web app development (which sucks for its own reasons). If you manage to hire good developers on a media site, they will try to optimize how ads and the endless list of third party libraries are pulled in.
If you didn’t get some dope developers then they will just half ass dump all of the stuff needed onto the page (which is why most of the the web sucks).
What’s worse is that these sites sit under a publishing/media business, so they aren’t tech companies (the devs are second class citizens).
Everyday I run into at least one site where they couldn’t figure out a sticky header, or a decent ‘accept-cookies’ box (where it takes up half the screen, and when you hit X (if you find it), it stutters away, as if css transitions is a mind blowing concept).
Then after that, the page janks down as a whole ad gets rendered. Zero effort is being put in at some of these places. I would consider lazy loading content in the visible viewport the moon for these sites.
This is a necessary discussion because the web is becoming a tech slum with these poorly designed websites. To bring it back to the larger web development (both app and website), it can be difficult to suggest to a team a very simple question - ‘Do you not see that the end result looks and feels like shit?’. It’s too abrasive, but all of us need to start asking these basic question for quality’s sake.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#4Regardless of my tweet, that is a personal opinion based on my feelings, background and experiences, the discussions in the replies are interesting from the POV of understanding what different people think in the programming community. Some will say that critiques are only from old people, in the style "when I was young we had only zeroes! You now have ones and zeroes". Others say that the web is slow because of ADs and trackers and modern frameworks would otherwise be fast. There is who believes that the problem comes from big companies imposing new standards in order to turn the web into the new Java applets (a full fledged application platform), and so forth.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#5You cant even find a website that passes html validation these days.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#6Counterexample: Figma.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#7This sentiment of "modern web has failed" is echoed often but it is always a generalization. Do I want to stab my eyes out every time I go to a news site? Probably. But there are good websites out there, many of which are "modern." It's not about web as a technology or frameworks or even "webdev culture." Some companies just decide having a good website isnt worth it.
Sidenote: I also think there might be too many websites in general. I always kind of think between Wikipedia and archive.org and other information Freedom projects that's all we need. Maybe a little IRC as a treat :)
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#8Media websites are a bad way to judge the state of web app development (which sucks for its own reasons). If you manage to hire good developers on a media site, they will try to optimize how ads and the endless list of third party libraries are pulled in. If you didn’t get some dope developers then they will just half ass dump all of the stuff needed onto the page (which is why most of the the web sucks). What’s wors…
Media are on shoestring budgets, unlikely to sustain good developers. But it's not only media, many other services neglect the user-centric optimization. That case is probably due to proliferation of various kinds of outsourcing/seo consultants whose interests don't overlap much with users'.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#9All software development has failed. Everyone is mindlessly copying megacorps with terrible development practices. Then when their crappy systems fail constantly, they blame the tools and demand even more complicated tools from their corporate masters... Which make their code even less reliable. Tooling is not the problem, the problem is you and your selfish subconscious urge to create more complexity to create more…
I don't think greed has much to do with the complexity. Insecurity seems to cause a lot. Devs feel if they don't go with all the latest stuff to all the nines they aren't worthy.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#10I don't think that web is slow, unless you're running seriously underpowered computer. That's not the case for me. Web is not as fast as it could be. And that's because customer does not want to pay for fastest website in the world. It should be fast enough and then features matter. You can spend year making your website load in 0.1 second while your competitor will implement important features and his 2-second loading website will win.
And that's not really about web. It's about software in general. Discord launches in 8 seconds. Ventrillo launches in 1 second. But people will use Discord, because 8 seconds is not that bad and then features matter.
And that's not really about modern software, as old software was slow as well. Also it was very buggy. Windows 98 used to BSOD here and there, so you had a routine to press "Save" button every few minutes and keep few copies just in case. Emacs was expanded to "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping".
There's some old software which survived till today and it's now wicked fast, because it was made for old hardware. But people still prefer to move on to new software, because of features or just shiny new design.