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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

#61

Post by futureproofd »

LandR wrote: post #30

I run no script, if i cant get it working allowing no or very minimal js, i close the tab. Life is too short for shitty slow, bloated websites and buggy apps. Just dont use this trash, if the devs aren't going to up their game and prioritize user experience over profits then fuck them. The only way web developers are going to improve is if they start losing users and money. Until then they'll keep crapping out garbag…

I'd argue that life is too short to use no-script. And why point the finger directly at web developers. Product managers throw a requirement over the fence and web developers figure out how to satisfy their wants, while squeezed into sometimes unrealistic time constraints.

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

#62

Post by toyg »

throwawayfire wrote: post #45
notjustanymike wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Everyone says music "used to be better" but that's just survival bias. Not "just" survival bias. I think it's quite reasonable to take a position that there was more innovation and creativity in pop music in 1950-2000. As the genre has matured, popular/commercially successful music has depended more and more on fewer and fewer producers. Indeed, there are fewer commercially successful artists: the US Billboard Hot…

> it's quite reasonable to take a position that there was more innovation and creativity in pop music in 1950-2000.

A lot of people said the same in 1990, except their cutoff was 1980. All that synth is just rubbish, man, what about Led Zeppelin, that was new! Except they were just raiding blues and laying some electric guitar on top, of course, so really the cutoff is 1960; but to be honest them bluesmen were just recording stuff that had been sung in the cotton fields forever, so really the cutoff is the beginning of the slave trade; but really those melodies were just brought all the way from Africa, so really... etc etc etc

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

#63

Post by Touche »

noxer wrote: post #36
Touche wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it's not, validators are extremely outdated. It's not "bad" to forget to close the body tag, it actually doesn't matter at all.

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

#64

Post by rantwasp »

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…

you are probably right that there is a lot of complexity for complexity sake. it’s sad actually. also solving problems that you don’t have and you’ll never going to have (k8s I’m looking at you)

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

#65

Post by coldtea »

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…

>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.

Well, if the top 100 tracks from, say, 1961 to 2021 progressively get less musically diverse, with simpler chords, less harmonies, less timbral variety, lesser melodies, more repeatition, less dynamics, less genre variety, more infantile lyrics (something that has been studied and measured several time, e.g: ), etc, then it's not some "survival bias".

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346997561_Why_are_s...

https://newatlas.com/pop-music-trends/23535/

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521

https://www.res.org.uk/resources-page/economics-of-music-cha...

https://pudding.cool/2018/05/similarity/

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

#66

Post by wlesieutre »

gpanders wrote: post #58
okareaman wrote: post #14

I recently lost my internet provider, so while I wait for a new one I'm tethering from my phone. The Verizon unlimited data plan actually throttles me to modem speed, about 56k, so it's actually not unlimited. Anyway, it's been interesting to judge various websites by how fast they load at that speed. Hacker News comes right up. Twitter is acceptable. Facebook is terrible and often does not even load at all. The same…

Funny, I just went through a similar experience and had to tether off a Verizon connection for almost two weeks. I certainly felt the pain of a slow connection too and felt frustrated at how badly this affected the experience on so many sites. Here’s an idea: web developers should test their sites on the slowest connection speed still commonly available (ie 3G) and make sure the experience is still acceptable. I know…

No idea if they're still doing this, but Facebook has done "2G Tuesdays" for just that reason

https://engineering.fb.com/2015/10/27/networking-traffic/bui...

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

#67

Post by ergot_vacation »

leephillips wrote: post #40

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 ti…

Your sites are better at being tools ordinary human beings can use to their own benefit. They are (probably) terrible at generating money via ad revenue and tricking people into buying subscriptions that are then nearly impossible to cancel.

Making a site to share info and have fun is easy. Nearly anyone can do it. Making a site to actively exploit people in the most intense way possible while still being legal(ish) takes highly-trained experts.

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

#68

Post by bryanlarsen »

throwawayfire wrote: post #45
notjustanymike wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Everyone says music "used to be better" but that's just survival bias. Not "just" survival bias. I think it's quite reasonable to take a position that there was more innovation and creativity in pop music in 1950-2000. As the genre has matured, popular/commercially successful music has depended more and more on fewer and fewer producers. Indeed, there are fewer commercially successful artists: the US Billboard Hot…

I think you've got that completely backwards. 2000 is about the time that the "long tail" exploded, where Youtube and Spotify made non-top 40 music a lot easier to find. In consequence there is a lot more really good music available today than there was pre-internet and it's a lot easier to find. It's not on the radio, but that's always been the case.

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

#69

Post by okareaman »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #42
okareaman wrote: post #14

I recently lost my internet provider, so while I wait for a new one I'm tethering from my phone. The Verizon unlimited data plan actually throttles me to modem speed, about 56k, so it's actually not unlimited. Anyway, it's been interesting to judge various websites by how fast they load at that speed. Hacker News comes right up. Twitter is acceptable. Facebook is terrible and often does not even load at all. The same…

Search for "Facebook Lite", it's their lightweight frontend for lower-bandwidth connections.

It appears to be an app for a phone? I have no throttling problem on the phone in case that wasn't clear, but I don't care to look at the small screen and want to use my desktop.

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

CM30 wrote: post #22

This topic seems to come up on Hacker News every few months or so. Not saying the post is necessarily wrong there, but it's certainly something people here love discussing nonetheless. As for why front end development may be a bit of a mess here? Well, it's really a problem that doesn't have just one cause. On the one hand, business pressures likely have a huge impact here. Companies love analytics, tracking, ads, et…

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