Don’t worry, you can make a server rendered site slow too. It’s not the tech, it’s that “good enough” is measured in seconds for human willingness to wait.
I can only think that modern front end development has failed
481–490 of 521 posts
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#482What 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…
The New York Times used to be a mess on mobile where swiping back was a 5 second wait until the SPA synced. It is much better today, so either they ditched the SPA or have now fully simulated a browser’s back and forward behavior.
The founder of SvelteJS works at the NYT. SvelteJS works well on underpowered devices.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#483What 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…
Yeah what's weird is that there's is an entire generation of developers who think of SPA as the default. They think that server side is slower because you have to send down more data, or you have to wait for the server to generate HTML. Quite the contrary, it's slower to send down 1 MB or 10 MB of JavaScript to render a page, than to simply send down a 100 KB HTML page. Even if you need some JS also, browsers know ho…
I believe Svelte has the best outlook for developers wanting to build with JS as it doesn’t load an entire framework upfront (Angular/React/etc). In regards to server side languages being slow, as you pointed out, it’s really not the case; in my experience the culprit to slow applications is the database design.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Figma makes heavy use of WASM, WebGL and Web Workers it’s much more complicated than just rendering some shapes on a canvas with a scene graph.
We have to distinguish websites from web applications. Websites have no reason to use JavaScript. They should be a collection of documents, possibly generate dynamically on the server side, but to the user HTML+CSS that can be viewed in a browser, downloaded with curl, viewed as source code, etc. Web applications have no reason to exist. Basically we are turning the browser into a JVM, a way to run code portably. But…
>Websites have no reason to use JavaScript
Put another way: "websites have no reason to execute code". Is a document with an embedded form a website or a webapp? what if one of the inputs is custom and requires some custom validation logic is the expectation from your train of thought that this logic must only execute on the backend?
Websites are interactive documents and they have been since the inception of the hyperlink. I struggle to draw a line where a website becomes a web app outside of the obvious examples at far ends of the spectrum.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#485I 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…
Neither your cookings or your websites have no pressure from business side, right?
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#486I have around 25 years of web development experience and I'd also put some of the blame on PMs and growth hackers who want to build rich UI experiences where often a simple site would suffice. Add UX people with limited knowledge of HTML and CSS, or backend engineers who only want to build APIs. All the trackers and auto playing videos do not help either. Ah well...
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking about it a bit more, Reddit is a really good example because it launched and got popular before the iPhone or the App Store existed (2006 or so). It was a fast and minimal site back then, similar to what Google used to be. Either the existence of the mobile app, or the drive to get people to install it, ruined the website. It's slower and has poorer usability than 5 years ago, and also 15 years ago. Twitter…
Imo Reddit ruined their site on purpose as that makes users go to the app instead which adblockers have a hard time blocking ads on (unless you have pi hole setup). They also added a ton of extra wasted space to make users scroll longer and thus stuff more ads in and increase user times.
This isn't an opinion, this is a proven fact given that Reddit blocks many subreddits from being accessed from the browser when using the default UI, redirecting to their app, for no reason other than moving users to the app. They do not even pretend for there to be any other reason for they have never given any explanation as to why they do this. It's some of the most user-hostile behaviour I've seen, even the usual suspects don't block basic access.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#488Earlier 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?
It's really the people writing the requirements who are driving a lot of these things. Customers are used to Gmail, FB etc. and want similar experiences.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#489I'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…
I love modern frontend development. I can build apps that scale easily to hundreds of thousands of users. They are fast where they need to be fast, and building components means complexity lives only where it's needed. Static parts are rendered statically, dynamic parts are rendered dynamically. I can write all code for the entire stack in Javascript. The entire workflow is streamlined in a simple way (webpack really…
Whenever this topic comes I only hear praise from devs. Devs only care about what they can do, never thinks from user's side. That's why we have shitty js infested sites, people who thinks all people have latest gadgets, sits in ac rooms, have unlimited fibre net just like them. Devs live in a bubble. It failed users.
Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
This entire read seems to be that things are much better for YOU, the front-end developer. And yes, that makes a difference, you can deliver more features, faster, more reliably. But, if those sites just bog down and take double-digit seconds to load, even when properly deployed on scaleable delivery architectures, with fiber-optic speeds, and CAD/gamer-level power machines, they are junk. And I increasingly see exac…
I cant agree more. I could cry. Ive been on a crusade for over a year to scale back diddly js frameworks because 'scale'. Ive heard many bullshit excuses before but sacrificing performance and reliability for being "scalabable" is beyond mind boggling. It gives me a panic attack when medium articles are the chief architect and purveyors of software development truths. I live and work in developing countries and could…
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