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Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

paramaggarwal.substack.com

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Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt I'll ever voluntarily use one of those frameworks for web dev. > I do, however, like this thing called, Svelte. Svelte is just another one of “those frameworks”, except with a vastly smaller community: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=svelte%20i...

It's better than everything else because people have never heard of it. When did software engineers become hipsters?

>When did software engineers become hipsters?

Hacker News is the epicenter of software engineer hipsterdom, come on.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#232

There's nothing wrong with static HTML/CSS/JS. There's also nothing wrong with a rich SPA. And again, there's nothing wrong with using some kind of dynamic server-side HTML/CSS/JS presentation (like WordPress). Where there is a problem is the culture of software engineering, and the tendency to select the newest technology stack of the day for inappropriate applications. I think any seasoned software engineer has acq…

We're back to "The boring solution has a long list of inconveniences and uglinesses that everyone knows about. If we chose the new solution, nobody would know where the bugs are and we can have exciting new ones."

Really the problem is that the standard solution hasn't improved. Backends are still a hassle in the 2020s. People keep reinventing CGI.

Every now and again I think "why doesn't someone just produce a simple standardised solution that would be cheap to host and easy to write", and have to lie down until the madness goes away.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#233
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A management system my photographer friend can use without learning what "CLI" or "GitHub" are. They just login and make changes.

my photographer friend can use ftp

my photographer friend can also add tags to static html documents.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#234
post #232

There's nothing wrong with static HTML/CSS/JS. There's also nothing wrong with a rich SPA. And again, there's nothing wrong with using some kind of dynamic server-side HTML/CSS/JS presentation (like WordPress). Where there is a problem is the culture of software engineering, and the tendency to select the newest technology stack of the day for inappropriate applications. I think any seasoned software engineer has acq…

We're back to "The boring solution has a long list of inconveniences and uglinesses that everyone knows about. If we chose the new solution, nobody would know where the bugs are and we can have exciting new ones." Really the problem is that the standard solution hasn't improved. Backends are still a hassle in the 2020s. People keep reinventing CGI. Every now and again I think "why doesn't someone just produce a simpl…

This makes me remember how annoying Django and its third party packages sometimes get.

Say I want to spin up a simple project that: - has a few new fields for the User model, thus requiring to create a custom user model - has registration APIs (signup) requiring the new fields in User model - has authentication APIs (login, logout) but using a new field in the User model - has user authentication management APIs (change password, forgot password, etc)

Enter DRF, and django-rest-auth.

One would think that they will make your life easy. But hell no.

Having a custom model and requiring their integration in the APIs provided thereby by rest-auth is a huge pain in the ass.

First of all, allauth some how comes into play. Then, you have to write a funky new custom account adapter that replaces the one allauth uses by default Then, define custom serializers and views and urls for registration, login, logout, etc.

And run into many other problems revolving around setting some X_Y_Z settings local to the third party package.

It's truly mind boggling that this hasn't been solved yet.

Maybe I'll just write something that does all that so that I don't have to cry in pain when using rest-auth and drf with Django for basic project already setup with custom user registration, and authentication and authentication management.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#235
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a response from a seasoned backend engineer. Seasoned frontend developers value user experience and design — thus the tendency to go "back to static" and rarely back to WordPress.

To me Wordpress sounds exactly a suggestion you'd get from someone who doesn't have to maintain it. I.e. frontend dev.

On the other hand, Wordpress is for the reality that most people don't have a developer on hand (nor should need one) to update their website.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#236
post #232

There's nothing wrong with static HTML/CSS/JS. There's also nothing wrong with a rich SPA. And again, there's nothing wrong with using some kind of dynamic server-side HTML/CSS/JS presentation (like WordPress). Where there is a problem is the culture of software engineering, and the tendency to select the newest technology stack of the day for inappropriate applications. I think any seasoned software engineer has acq…

We're back to "The boring solution has a long list of inconveniences and uglinesses that everyone knows about. If we chose the new solution, nobody would know where the bugs are and we can have exciting new ones." Really the problem is that the standard solution hasn't improved. Backends are still a hassle in the 2020s. People keep reinventing CGI. Every now and again I think "why doesn't someone just produce a simpl…

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Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#238
post #232

There's nothing wrong with static HTML/CSS/JS. There's also nothing wrong with a rich SPA. And again, there's nothing wrong with using some kind of dynamic server-side HTML/CSS/JS presentation (like WordPress). Where there is a problem is the culture of software engineering, and the tendency to select the newest technology stack of the day for inappropriate applications. I think any seasoned software engineer has acq…

We're back to "The boring solution has a long list of inconveniences and uglinesses that everyone knows about. If we chose the new solution, nobody would know where the bugs are and we can have exciting new ones." Really the problem is that the standard solution hasn't improved. Backends are still a hassle in the 2020s. People keep reinventing CGI. Every now and again I think "why doesn't someone just produce a simpl…

Backends are still a hassle? In what way do you feel Spring (Boot), ASP.NET Core and the like don't solve the problem adequately?

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#239
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a response from a seasoned backend engineer. Seasoned frontend developers value user experience and design — thus the tendency to go "back to static" and rarely back to WordPress.

To me Wordpress sounds exactly a suggestion you'd get from someone who doesn't have to maintain it. I.e. frontend dev.

How so? I maintain two WordPress websites and really "maintaining" means I get an email telling me it automatically updated every so often. I spend more time on it restarting the server because it was updated to a newer kernel (it runs on Debian Stable, to give you an idea for how often that happens).

I do agree that if you need plug ins, that appears to get messy very fast, but the default WordPress site does everything I want and requires very little for maintenance.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#240
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this typical use case, a statically rendered page with some kind of editing interface would work great, no need for databases.

Why is this downvoted? I'm a big fan of PHP, but I feel something like Netlify CMS + Jekyll on Netlify is appropriate for this. It would be super fast (statically generated and on Netlify CDN) and secure (no database or app scripts) and includes an editing interface. With WordPress I don't worry about the PHP part, but for the tendency of people to bloat it by installing plugins and not updating it enough.

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