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I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

baldurbjarnason.com

81–90 of 245 posts

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#81

> Everybody seems to have an opinion on how you do your web dev and how websites and web apps should be structured. It’s true and it leads to many annoying unproductive arguments, IMO the reason is a fundamental lack of a scientific mindset in evaluating techniques and tooling. We don’t have theories or testable hypotheses, we have opinions. On one level I like and agree with the author’s idea that results are what r…

I'm in complete agreement with you. At this point, I also endorse threats of flogging for someone who tries to introduce a new framework to a project after the actual work has started.

And actual flogging for the management team if they accept that framework.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#82
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves?

You can build bad apps with good tools and good apps with bad tools. Just because it gets easier for the web dev doesn't makes it easier for the user and vice versa.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. At this point I'm a little bewildered at what iOS and Android has brought to mobile development that wasn't already in j2me, at least in a preliminary way. At the start of iOS it was "look, pretty icons" and "no more permission popups". But, most platforms had icons anyway, and all the apps now get the annoying popups for the same set of permissions (except for networking) that was the bug bear of j2me (at the…

This is true, I started with Java ME too with Eclipse IDE then proceeded to integrating Blackberry SDK and then it started from there. Mobile development's phase right Blackberry disappeared never recovered, it went 0 to 100 real quick from that very moment. I was still hacking some J2ME for a Nokia app then Samsung released an Android phone and I was like wtf is an Android.

> and I was like wtf is an Android.

Did you ever find that out? :D

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#84
post #54

The author complains that developers argue about their tools and methods, insist on their favorite techniques, but produce (more) worse apps. Particularly for the amount of time and effort expended on developing the apps. The thing is: the debates aren’t naive. They’re exactly trying to workout the details. When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows…

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

Web devs are typically arguing which produced assembly is better. Granted, we have come a long way, as the typical react site gave up on terse html a long time ago.

But, consider, dream weaver and early design tools were ridiculously advanced compared to what most of us are creating in web sites. Flash tooling was a whole other level.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#85
post #76

I was just thinking about this exact topic less than an hour ago. We seem to be slowly reaching a consensus on various best practices and tools, and it's obvious which ones are winners and will be here to stay for the foreseeable future, despite the inevitable churn. There will always be discussion (and disagreements) on how to make things better, and when I was less experienced, I (ironically) used to be way more op…

I think the author's points are very valid. Despite the continuous debate and ever shifting landscape of what is fashionable in web development (which I find very tiresome to keep track off), most web apps pale in comparison to native apps. Why is that? Whatever it is, it seems elusive for web developers to come close in quality and experience. And they seem stuck in endless iterations of "maybe this will work ... nope".

And of course with web assembly, you can actually replicate a lot of that native experience in a browser and even run very slick 3D games or emulators running entire desktop operating systems. So, it's not necessarily true that browsers are not technically able to do a better job because they clearly are. It's just that web developers and web developer tool makers are just not doing a great job leveraging those capabilities judging from most popular web apps.

My personal observation as somebody who focuses on backend mostly but also needs to worry about having a decent frontend for that backend is that we are being limited by an industry that is perpetually suffering from maturity issues. Both at the technical and personal level (I agree with the author on this).

A lot of the technologies and tools are simply not great when compared to native app tooling and they only compare to each other. So, you get these elm, angular, vue, react, etc. proponents each arguing how their preferred thing is better than the other thing and why. What they should be debating is the huge gap with native apps that none of them come close to bridging and why that gap fundamentally is still a thing in 2022. Why do people have to reinvent so many wheels to build a simple web app? And why is delivering a slick web app experience such an elusive goal?

The future is 25 years ago when any idiot with an MBA could open up Visual Basic, Delphi or whatever and click together a working native app in an hour or so. A lot of really bad enterprise software was created that way. But nothing similarly usable ever really got popular for the web and I'd argue using most enterprise web apps is a similarly dreary and miserable experience as it was a quarter of a century ago. It's gotten harder to build those but they still suck.

Mobile developers have had visual UI tools like that available all along even though many would prefer not using those. But in terms of the underlying component frameworks, mobile development is a lot more similar to how Delphi and VB worked 25 years ago than modern react development. IMHO, those component frameworks are a key reason people like the "native" experience. The web based equivalent component frameworks (there are many) are just a lot hackier, messier and ux challenged.

Ironically, with Blazor, you can target the web and get your good old VB code to run in a browser. Not sure if that's the future but it sure seems to work. Again, the problem is not browser limitations but tools. If MS can target browsers with their decades old tools, web developers can raise the ambition level a lot more as well. Why don't they? Apple and Google have a stake in the current status quo of the web sucking more than their mobile walled gardens. So don't look to them for answers.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#86

> Everybody seems to have an opinion on how you do your web dev and how websites and web apps should be structured. It’s true and it leads to many annoying unproductive arguments, IMO the reason is a fundamental lack of a scientific mindset in evaluating techniques and tooling. We don’t have theories or testable hypotheses, we have opinions. On one level I like and agree with the author’s idea that results are what r…

Sorta. It isn't a lack of a scientific mindset. I argue it is a premature quantification of data such that you can objectively look at it in a scientific way.

We are taught that you can compare things objectively in most school level science classes. This leads folks to thinking their perspective is valid scientifically. Especially if they can put numbers to it. After all, isn't that native empiricism?

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking to me how little data there seems to be to support what many consider to be "best practice". About the only real data point I see thrown around is that bugs per LOC being fairly constant. Thus, you get people saying long, two-page functions are bad and should be broken up. But never have I seen someone backup such an exhortation with data. Let alone more nebulous rules like "objects should be open for e…

Breaking up code can increase your LOC, so the remedy doesn't even follow the premise.

I really wish more folks understood that point.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

This is surprisingly not true, have you tried ? When you start from scratch you realize you have a tiny minuscule surface and securing that very small hole is much easier than say... fixing the log4j 20th level transitive dependency of your giant Spring Framework that was secretly able to interpret random input from logs or someth. Especially if all you wanted was to show a quick html output. It's incredibly common t…

I'm living this right now.

It's why when I have greenfield I do vanilla web components, with a little lit-html sprinkled in for fast rendering.

I've seen so many developers complain about how complex vanilla web components are, and they'll turn around and do React / Vue / Angular and Redux or (shudder) rxjs, etc...

I just don't get it.

Like, if you need reactivity... Stick a render call into the setter of a plain old property.

If you don't, use a variable.

The whole computed() thing with Vue makes things so complex... I have to deal with a huge rabbit hole of that stuff all the time.

I think to myself... I could just use a property, and I wouldn't need a whole painful build step, type definitions, framework version specific DSLs, massive complex source maps that don't work, Rube Goldberg state machines, crazy pseudo DOM elements that aren't really DOM elements, unless they are, or a ref to something magic that might end up being a DOM element someday, obscure dependency injection cruft that's done way better by just using dynamic imports...

I remember when I couldn't wait for Proxy to be widely supported by browsers.

Now I'd do anything to be able to shove that toothpaste back into the tube.

I don't know.

I don't see any of this providing any value.

I feel like the emperor has no clothes, but everyone else thinks he's wearing Armani.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#89
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves? You can build bad apps with good tools and good apps with bad tools. Just because it gets easier for the web dev doesn't makes it easier for the user and vice versa.

you're making a point here and the counterpoint is that building good apps with bad tools requires extra effort that costs money that the business owners don't have because the market won't support it (ie nobody is willing to pay more for higher quality stuff - you need to figure out how to make high quality easier)

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#90
post #67
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Note: I work on Lighthouse). > Lighthouse measures that first second or first few seconds after you visit a site at position 0/0. It doesn't care about how much bloat comes after you scroll. It discourages you to pre-load resources (including JS and CSS) which you don't _immediately_ need for that first hit. This is true - or rather, was true. We're making lots of progress on a mode to measure performance beyond the…

Thanks for the work you and your team are doing. Lighthouse, while not perfect, is a helpful tool. It sounds like it would be a fun project to work on.

Thanks! And yup, developer tooling at Chrome definitely has a lot of fun things to work on.
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