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Why is modern web development so complicated?

vrk.dev

271–280 of 731 posts

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people say they are, but when you actually measure it you find engagement metrics are better for SPA sites, especially for ecommerce and social. Quite simply people spend more money if they can click fewer times. And thus we have things like infinite scrolling and ajax.

Engagement metrics measure what people do. That may not be what they want.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#272

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…

For one-dev sized projects (i.e. simple crud type apps) this may well work. However I would be concerned about a couple of things if this were me and I was doing anything beyond the absolute most basic web app: - long term maintenance. Doing something only you understand and only you can maintain (that job security you mention) is a bit of an unprofessional dick move IMO. - if you need to get other people in to help,…

I think people are assuming he wrote a pile of hot PHP garbage, but it's entirely possible he just wrote it using Symfony or Drupal and well understood PHP libs and just has no 'modern javascript' to do it, which if he did would cover all of your points. If you haven't gone back to current gen PHP in a while there are some quite solid models that are very maintainable, have security updates (via composer) and so on. It's entirely possible that he didn't do a crazy thing but we'll never know.

A decently structured PHP application is often maintained by nontechnical people with a limited understanding of programming but they can get by with just a text editor and a codebase. I have not come across any nontechnical person who could easily get a react/modern js framework pipeline going to do a small change, not to mention dealing with npm changes. I would almost feel like it would be a jerk move to leave someone without a technical department a pile of react/npm soup right now.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#273
Because people have no time or incentive to make it simple. In fact, the incentive is to make it as complex as possible so you could charge more (and then charge more still for maintenance), and create a moat that "lesser" developers won't be able to cross.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#276
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questions for PHP, and MySQL folks (not meant in a negative way): - PHP: A few years ago I heard about how PHP was needlessly complex. I wonder what the recent status of the programming language is. Specifically, do experienced PHP programmers stick to a subset of PHP, as in "PHP: The good parts"? (similar to "Javascript: The good parts"). (side note: As a diehard python person frustrated due to latest versions becom…

I think the discussion point was php was too easy and that encouraged new developers or less hardcore developers to adopt it. Some of the defaults like globals being turned on by default led to security holes. How people were creating sql statements at the time concating strings led to sql injection issues. There were never any bad parts . There are new features like the spread operator that are newer and not availab…

> There were never any bad parts .

There where, and continue to be, large numbers of bad parts. Magic methods that do random things in certain cases, terribly defined interfaces (array_search), ridiculous typing, an impossibly incoherent standard library, etc.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#277
Webdev isn't complicated. Its actually pretty simple. Because its simple, you can use the extra time you saved to solve complicated problems. Which then brings it back up. When the platform makes THOSE problems simple, you just move on to solve other more complicated problems.

Basically, developers can support complexity . No matter what you do to simplify it, you'll always push toward , just getting more value out in the process. If you don't, your competitors will.

Also, even the most complex rollup/webpack/react/redux/styled-component/npm/blah/blah/blah setup has nothing on the kubernetes/kafka/databases/queues/whatever infrastructures of the world.

It just turns out that while your little pet project that cuts every corners to get something working has little on software development that requires everything to line up, be fast, reliable, comply with all the laws and regulations, and scale once your company grows and you suddenly have hundreds or thousands of people that need to work on the same stuff.

One thing to add: some people actually like setting stuff and optimizing infrastructure, build processes, setup, and pushing it to its limits. So development stacks quickly get optimized for a very common way to staff organizations: have a team that handles all the setup and infra, and a bunch of teams that build on top. So when you try to have 1 person or 1 team do everything, it feels like too much.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#278
post #59

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.

If something works well for the business and customers it isn't garbage. Fast websites that don't break are good for everyone.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#279

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…

This sounds like you wrote something extremely limited. The client will inevitably ask for some modification to it, and if you're not there to do it the next developer is going to curse at you for writing such a brain dead application. I've seen comments like this on HN and then I've seen these types of applications in the wild. I call it the most dishonest form of consulting you can do. You've put a real shine on so…

A simple custom php site is extremely easy to follow if you have a programming background.

If I'm the next developer I would thank him.

Ever deal with 5 versions of jQuery that are conflicting. Trust me life is easier in vanilla php.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#280

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 build a CMS from scratch or is it simpler than that?
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