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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

#31

Post by runawaybottle »

jackson1442 wrote: post #24
runawaybottle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is true until it isn’t. Ask all the stock trading apps how Robinhood out-UXed them. When the out-user-experienceing happens, you pretty much will lose your entire business if you don’t undertake a paradigm shift. Stay ahead of the curve a bit.

I think it could be argued that Robinhood’s UX is a sort of feature on its own. Stock trading isn’t simple by any means, and Robinhood found a way to make it really approachable for everyone and that’s almost admirable. Everything else about their business sucks, but that one piece was truly impressive.

I’ve echoed this point a few times too. There’s a lot of apps that can barely figure out a todo-list (every glorified note take app/PM software), and here’s a company that boiled down Derivatives (with a capital D) trading in about two or three screens.

It’s an absolute masterclass.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#32

Post by noxer »

542458 wrote: post #12
noxer wrote: post #5

You cant even find a website that passes html validation these days.

I like valid HTML as much as the next guy and try to always write valid HTML myself, but it’s not the be-all-end-all: if Safari, Chrome and Firefox can parse your site 99% of users are happy. No end-user cares if you have charset set on a script that doesn’t have a src attribute, or that you’re technically not supposed to put style tags inside noscript tags.

I know that its not functionally required but after who knows haw many years of "html isn't written by humans" why is it still not following the rules. I get that humans make errors, I get that they are lazy and dont add alt text and all that stuff. But software that exists to generate html should clearly generate valid html.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#33

Post by reader_mode »

runawaybottle wrote: post #15
vbezhenar wrote: post #10

I 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 loadi…

All of that is true until it isn’t. Ask all the stock trading apps how Robinhood out-UXed them. When the out-user-experienceing happens, you pretty much will lose your entire business if you don’t undertake a paradigm shift. Stay ahead of the curve a bit.

I thought robinhood got popular because they marketed the shit out of comission free trading for the little guy.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#34

Post by barrkel »

notjustanymike wrote: post #26
antirez wrote: post #4

Regardless 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…

I read it and feel it's the same as how we perceive modern music. Everyone says music "used to be better" but that's just survival bias. Just like music, there was a LOT of trash web development back in the day as well. Sites built with tables in dreamweaver best viewed on netscape navigator at 800x600 with animated gifs bogging the download speed existed long ago. What we have today are the same problems with a new…

We had functional applications for forms and the like, in the 90s, running on machines with 8MB or 16MB of memory. They weren't as pretty, but they had simple development paradigms, VB and Delphi, easy to get started.

HTML has been the wrong place to make creating UIs (as opposed to marked up text) for such a long time. Things are getting better from multiple angles, but it's still very uneven.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#35

Post by softwarebouwer »

peanut_worm wrote: post #11

It makes me really angry when a simple informative site is a bloated SPA app for no good reason.

Me too. Recently I was visiting what should have been a "simple" site, but for some reason maxing out my cpu because of some refresh loop. Maybe a bug, but the whole site could have been static html.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#36

Post by noxer »

Touche wrote: post #23
noxer wrote: post #5

You cant even find a website that passes html validation these days.

Validation has been unimportant for about 20 years. That has nothing to do with why websites are bad nowadays.

No one said its the reason, its just sign of how bad stuff is.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#37

Post by futureproofd »

swader999 wrote: post #9
cryptica wrote: post #2

All 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.

I have to agree with this, but I think insecurity may affect junior developers more so than their seniors. Most of the new, in-demand tech that companies require of their applicants can be learned within a week or two, to be able to successfully contribute. That is, if you're already experienced with a number of complex frameworks or libraries. Then, It's simply a matter of reading the manual to figure out how to move the data from one place to another.

On the other hand, for a junior dev trying to break into the workplace, selecting the correct technology could be considered an important investment of their time, and ultimately their livelihood.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#38

Post by jackson1442 »

runawaybottle wrote: post #31
jackson1442 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it could be argued that Robinhood’s UX is a sort of feature on its own. Stock trading isn’t simple by any means, and Robinhood found a way to make it really approachable for everyone and that’s almost admirable. Everything else about their business sucks, but that one piece was truly impressive.

I’ve echoed this point a few times too. There’s a lot of apps that can barely figure out a todo-list (every glorified note take app/PM software), and here’s a company that boiled down Derivatives (with a capital D) trading in about two or three screens. It’s an absolute masterclass.

I’m personally impressed by how terrible the other trading apps are comparatively. Obviously they have more features etc but you’d think Vanguard & co. would try to follow in their footsteps.

Vanguard’s beta app, Beacon, is a step in the right direction, but I can already tell it won’t even compete with Robinhood’s design.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#39

Post by scrose »

I started out working primarily on the front end when React was still in its v0 days, and it still amazes me how many options there are to build a simple form, how often it’s done wrong, and how often what could be a 2 hour MVP turns into sprints worth of bike-shedding on the tools to use.

I now work pretty much exclusively on backend systems and I’ve never felt better.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#40

Post by leephillips »

I am not an expert chef. I can cook pretty well, and my guests enjoy my food. But it doesn’t compare to what a professional chef can do.

I am not an expert abdominal surgeon. If we are in Antarctica and your appendix becomes inflamed, I will try to save you by cutting it out. But you will probably die.

I am not an expert front-end developer. I make sites for myself, for others, and have even been paid for it a few times. But I know I am basically an amateur. However, my sites are far, far better than almost all sites in the wild, created by teams of full-time, professional front-end developers. They work identically in all browsers, are fast, easy to navigate, and people say they look good. They validate, too, except for a few nonstandard htmx attributes.

There is something very strange in the WWW, when a self-taught amateur like me can make a site that is better than the New York Times’.

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