Why is modern web development so complicated? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#111

Post by TAForObvReasons » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

justbaker wrote: post #94

afarrell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that "don't build shit software" isn't actionable advice on how to avoid building shit software. For someone seeking to be a more skillful web software engineer, there's no information there.

It means the underlying problem is not the tooling, but the use of the tooling. In other words, "I can choose the correct tool but still fail from poor approach of problem."

There's no guarantee that good approaches in 2019 will still be good approaches in 2029 and beyond. OOP was considered a good approach many years ago, and now in many circles it is derided and bashed.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#112

Post by goatinaboat » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

renke1 wrote: post #100

goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Webdevs tend to suffer from an inferiority complex, that they are not considered “real” developers by the rest of the community. So they have responded by making the simple things they do monstrously complicated to try to prove something to the C++ guys, who simply don’t care, until they try to use the dumpster fire that is any modern website, that is. Then it has the opposite of the intended effect! Someone else men…

Who is considered a "real" developer these days?

Developers who don’t care if anyone thinks they’re real developers, I guess!

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#113

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

madhadron wrote: post #69

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #9

Because we're no longer making websites, we're making apps. Sure if you just need a simple website, make it from scratch, but good luck maintaining a full blown app using jQuery. It's not just web development that is hard. You can't honestly say any toolchain on the desktop side is any easier. That said, web development is getting easier now that the dust is settling and only a few major frameworks are used. Get star…

> You can't honestly say any toolchain on the desktop side is any easier. Why, yes. Yes, I can. Delphi, for example. Visual Basic. Frankly, I think Cocoa and Gtk+ are easier.

1) Install NodeJS

2) npx create-react-app demo

How many steps does it take to start from scratch with other toolchains?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#114

Post by blhack » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Webdevs tend to suffer from an inferiority complex, that they are not considered “real” developers by the rest of the community. So they have responded by making the simple things they do monstrously complicated to try to prove something to the C++ guys, who simply don’t care, until they try to use the dumpster fire that is any modern website, that is. Then it has the opposite of the intended effect! Someone else men…

I think this is it more than anything. People wanted to make the web complicated because it made them feel cooler developing it.

Some SPAs are cool. Easyeda.com is pretty cool.

But also: storing information about a page in the URL is pretty cool too. It makes it possible to link to the page, for instance!

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#115

Post by B4TMAN » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

I have been trying to learn web dev on my own for a while and I just can't make it past CSS. I don't get it. How do I even organise it? I get JS as I have done significant C/C++?java/Python. But it still seems a little too evovled on its own. I always end up creating the backend APIs and never the UI.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#116

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #59

reaperducer wrote: post #38

It doesn't have to be complicated, if you get support from above. A few weeks ago I launched a new web site for a health care company. HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. No frameworks. No javascript. No garbage. It replaced a site that was a mess of javascript libraries on top of frameworks on top of a half dozen jquery version and on and on and on. The company administrators, doctors, practitioners, etc... are so happy with…

Did you consider that the next developer might well come along and post a similar comment: > It replaced a site that was pretty much a home-grown PHP framework written by a single developer. Random mixed logic in templates, hard to update CSS and a poorly designed 'not-an-ORM' ORM. Not to say that your rewrite is like that, but one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

I'm sure it's possible. Someone may come along who is all into DrupalPress and Agilereactboxqueryhack and think it's primitive.

But they won't be able to say it's not maintainable, upgradable, or scalable. And it's documented out the wazoo, all the way down to the CSS both in code and in the accompanying PDFs. The last developer gave zero thought to who would come next. I've given great thought, and included the occasional quotation in the code comments from Goethe where appropriate.

But if the company wants to pay him/her to blow away my work, then that's neither my business, nor my problem.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#117

Post by goatlover » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

ayushgp wrote: post #37

eswat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’ve done a great job of convincing each other within our tech bubble than everyone wants a SPA. Not sure the general public cares for our enthusiasm though.

Everyone(well almost) wants a SPA or at the very least non reloading pages. No one wants to reload the page with every action they perform or if only a part of the area on screen needed to be updated and the page was reloaded anyways.

If it's a traditional website and not an app, then I'm totally fine with it reloading every time you navigate to a new page or submit a form. Modern servers and browsers are plenty fast for full page reloads, as long as there isn't anything extra slowing down the load or rendering.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#118

Post by non-entity » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

president wrote: post #77

As someone who hasn't done much web development in the last 10 years, it is mind-boggling how much you need to know in order to be a full-stack engineer these days. I tried to start a project a few months ago and just trying to decide on a technology was difficult. Npm, Gulp, Grunt, Webpack, React vs Vue vs Angular...I don't even know what half of these tools even do, why they're needed, not to mention the learning c…

I got really jaded along with a few other things and let my skills stagnate for a few years and now I'm looking at jobs and I'm unqualified for all the half decent ones. I'm personally trying to switch out of development, but I kinda wish I had made an effort to at least understand some of the new(ish) stucc

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#119

Post by ct520 » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

avgDev wrote: post #98

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's the trick to not building shit software: don't build shit software. It's a crude way to put it, but the reality is that you can build bad websites in any framework (including old PHP stuff and new JavaScript hype). You can also build good websites in any framework. It depends way more on the organisation or team developing it than on the libraries you use.

I agree as I build some terrible applications in .Net MVC, which is a decent framework. I think you have to build shit software not to build shit software. First, professional web app I developed 3 years ago is still being build upon now. Even though it is pure garbage and I hate touching it, because I "made it work". As I gained experience and got burned because I did something a certain way I slowly but surely look…

" am I gonna use it once and forget it? " Always comes back to bite me in the a$$. Also taking over projects that were built this way always a pain. Now and days I just refuse to do the work if they pushing to cut corners.All in all I say my quality of life and the sense of being proud of work has increased.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#120

Post by sedeki » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

vcanales wrote: post #82

These "i hate debugging wandering pixels" and "i don't want to figure out why my css doesn't work" opinions sounds like they come from people who aren't really front end developers; like they come from the kind of dev who would sit and complain about the frontend devs on their company, thinking that they're a lower class of people. I've been working on the server- and client-side of the web for about 10 years now, an…

I believe I am one of the devs that complain a lot about frontend devs, generally speaking...

Don’t get me wrong — being a skilled developer (in the traditional sense) with significant competence in frontend development is extremely attractive. But this profile is actually quite uncommon imo.

I have to ask, do you really think the problem with frontend development is about performance? That FE is hard because of the code is executed on unknown machines?

This does not resonate with my experience.