I can only think that modern front end development has failed • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by bawolff » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #459

bawolff wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What precisely do you think a microbenchmark taken out of context is going to prove?

That a 250,000x performance difference is a very large gap. It’s the difference between walking 1 foot or 48 miles.

Or the difference between walking 1 femtometer or a quarter of a nanometer in a day where you're planning to hike 10km. And that's assuming the relative difference holds to the same degree in a real app, which seems unlikely.

P.s. i also didn't get that level of difference when i tried to run the microbenchmark but i didn't try very hard.

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

#462

Post by HugoDaniel » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #72

ergot_vacation wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Exactly. But I am using the measure of quality that I think is relevant. We call a chef good when we like the food, not when he finds a way to enrich a fast food chain.

Do your sites include interactive graphics and storytelling like the New York Times does? By what measure of "quality" are you setting yourself as "better" than the New York Times team?

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

#463

Post by austincheney » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #412

austincheney wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away React, Vue, Angular, or similar away from most current front end developers and there is panic. When I say panic I mean full insanity panic like abandoning the profession or completely going postal. —— A simple checklist to provide superior front end applications: * Don’t use this . You (general hypothetical you) probably don’t realize how easily you can live without it only because you have never tried. Do…

I think a bit of context about `this` is important. Using `this` in a callback -- where you expect your caller to provide your local binding -- is straight-up bad juju. Pass arguments instead. Using `this` in an object instance to namespace is just fine. The entire point of having an object is that you get these nice encapsulated namespaces which can send messages to each other. One suggestion, and a related ask: rat…

https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems

40k loc. I wrote an ESLint rule to error on this in both statements and expressions.

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

#464

Post by hlandau » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #185

bit_logic wrote: post #156

What upsets and concerns me the most is when I see poorly developed SPA on really important sites. For example, government service application websites. If reddit or nytimes has a bloated, intermittently failing SPA site, that's an annoyance. When it's a form to apply for unemployment, ACA health care, DMV, or other critical services, it's a critical failure. Especially since these services are most often used by exa…

I am going to :+1: the UK census site - built on code developed by the gov.UK digital service, it has been apparently bulletproof at taking 20 million plus individual households through a moderately complex survey. sometimes it can be done right. And it uses a framework :-)

Indeed - I used this site the other day. My reaction at the time was "This is the nicest web application I've used in decades." Web design that good is so rare now, it really stands out.

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

#465

Post by throwawayfire » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #76

bryanlarsen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. One only has to look at the myriad of tv shows, video games, movies, etc. to see that we have more quality options than ever and are seeing even more niche, but commercially successful content. There’s more static too, but there’s a lot of good out there.

Everybody thinks we are in a golden age of television series, don't they?

I don't claim that these examples have the same history as music.

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

#466

Post by quonn » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #86

quonn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After minification and compression, React is about 100kb and can be cached for a long time. With all the images, videos on social media etc. it seems rather small in terms of bandwidth.

I thought it was actually around 30kb, after being minified and gzipped?

With react dom and everything?

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

#467

Post by genericstorage3 » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

darkhorse13 wrote: post #110

caseymarquis wrote: post #25

I'd like to add a bit more nuance. Modern frontend development provides many opportunities for failure. These failures often make their way into production. I, personally, get great results with modern FE development. My users are happy. I am happy. It's all very successful. All the defenders of modern FE development will likely chime in with the same sentiment. I also get great results with C, which arguably provide…

>Modern frontend development provides many opportunities for failure I think this is the important thing here. Everything feels less stable, and more prone to breaking, on the modern web. You write some simple HTML, style it with CSS, and write vanilla JS for the parts that need it, and everything feels solid. You start a new project with a framework, and it seems like there is this whole area of your project that is…

You'll eventually need js. If server side renders html, now your client is coupled to server side both on api and on html. That's bad.

Now 1 component will be: server side html, client side html, css and js.

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

#468

Post by danjac » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #185

bit_logic wrote: post #156

What upsets and concerns me the most is when I see poorly developed SPA on really important sites. For example, government service application websites. If reddit or nytimes has a bloated, intermittently failing SPA site, that's an annoyance. When it's a form to apply for unemployment, ACA health care, DMV, or other critical services, it's a critical failure. Especially since these services are most often used by exa…

I am going to :+1: the UK census site - built on code developed by the gov.UK digital service, it has been apparently bulletproof at taking 20 million plus individual households through a moderately complex survey. sometimes it can be done right. And it uses a framework :-)

gov.uk is such a glaring exception to government sites around the world I can only imagine there was some massive screw up where the developers were allowed to go off and build a fast, accessible and responsive site on their own without the requisite ten layers of committees, meetings and expensive external consultants. I hope there is a government inquiry to ensure this doesn't happen again and that taxpayers money is properly squandered on massive IT failures as per standard practice.

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

#469

Post by vbezhenar » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #20

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…

reddit.com is a slow and flickering mess even on my gaming PC. It's the worst example that comes to mind though. But if that same PC can run incredibly complex open world games while simulating (for instance) an aircraft complete with the cockpit and displays driven by emulated onboard computers at 60+ fps, it's not too much to ask the same from a webpage that "just" needs to do text layout and display a couple of im…

It's not slow for me. Took 2 seconds to show me content.

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

#470

Post by danjac » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 10:27 AM UTC

polynomial wrote: post #273

tomc1985 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do these things even need to be an SPA? What function does that serve when the standardized and infinitely more compatible form-with-a-bit-of-javascript approach works just as well if not better? I work on one such project and it absolutely drives me nuts -- it's a rails app, but the customer front-end (which is literally just a form to fill out) is a React SPA. There is nothing there that couldn't be done with T…

How can a government contractor reasonably justify a price tag that's on par with fancy bloated non-government sites, for an no nonsense form + js approach?

Because they're a business that will charge as much as they can absolutely get away with and will do their best to make the project and maintenance costs as bloated as possible.

The question is why there aren't people in the government with either the technical ability or the political clout to audit and push back at any point in the project.