Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is modern web development so complicated?

vrk.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 731 posts

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#341

Post by ModernMech »

root_axis wrote: post #331
MadWombat wrote: post #324

So... let me get this straight. You are making a website. You do need to load some changing data into it, so just a static site will not cut it. But we want to keep things simple. All we really need are a few AJAX calls and some DOM updates. And just like the author mentioned we don't want to write old clunky JS, we want to write beautiful ES6 code. So we install babel for ES6. And we install jQuery to do our AJAX an…

So using your summary at which step did the engineer make the wrong choice?

That's the point. At no time did the engineer building the application make a poor choice. He/she made the logical rational choice to get the job done. It's the same thing for the tools developers. They each made their respective tools to solve a real concrete problem and succeeded. The problem is that everyone seems to be making incremental improvements and engineering choices that locally make sense, but when you zoom out and look at the whole picture things look absurd. We're incrementally improving ourselves to a local maximum that seems to be an uncomfortable place to be. There may be a better path that will lead to a better maximum, but we can't see it from where we are.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#342

Post by temac »

root_axis wrote: post #312
temac wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fan of that idea and I'm taking it even further: Erase existing software, so we have less amount of shit software. I'm actually applying that technique at work with great results (really!)

Deleting code is not always better. I know a lot of developers who like to "refactor" code by making everything more terse and they regard that as a win even though the code is now cleverly incomprehensible.

I agree, it depends of the code, and if you need to replace it: by what.

I'm actually more found of when I don't even have to replace it: just delete the damn obsolete shit. Not replace. Delete. Most of the time it for cases where it is just dead. Sometimes it is only quasi-dead (from an incomplete previous modification) and in a few cases deleting it actually fixes some bugs.

The best patches only have - lines :D

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#343

Post by MadWombat »

root_axis wrote: post #331
MadWombat wrote: post #324

So... let me get this straight. You are making a website. You do need to load some changing data into it, so just a static site will not cut it. But we want to keep things simple. All we really need are a few AJAX calls and some DOM updates. And just like the author mentioned we don't want to write old clunky JS, we want to write beautiful ES6 code. So we install babel for ES6. And we install jQuery to do our AJAX an…

So using your summary at which step did the engineer make the wrong choice?

None. That's the point. Web development is not simple. You don't have to always use the very latest super framework, but even the minimal setup for developing a modern website has quite a few moving pieces. If you remove any component from the list above, your development experience will become harder.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#344

Post by burlesona »

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.

Logic in the templates... are you describing PHP or React?

To be fair the parent comment isn’t saying everything about his stack is perfectly elegant, but if you can deliver a website that works without stateful client side JS and associated build tooling, then it certainly is simpler, and most of the time simpler is better.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#345

Post by [deleted] »

neya wrote: post #51

Because, Webpages have become complicated. Suddenly, you have all this interactivity going on, which you didn't have a decade ago. We went from a series of simple hyperlinked inter-connected webpages to all these popups shoving onto our face, useless fake computer bots pretending to be tech-support and finally big co. tracking every single click, every pixel of your mouse movement. The web has come a long way to supp…

[deleted]

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#346

Post by bgorman »

ekzy wrote: post #338
mikekchar wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded of the Picasso story where he meets a woman in a park and makes a 30 second sketch. The woman asks how much it would cost to buy it and he replies something like $1000 (insert large amount of money for 30 seconds of work). She asks him why so much money for 30 seconds of work and he replies that it took him 30 years to draw that sketch. It's easy to build a simple website with no frills that does exactl…

It is a good analogy. In essence, achieving simplicity is hard. Simple is not easy.

Unless you use Clojure ;)

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#347

Post by _hardwaregeek »

I think there should be a new razor, we can call it the Apple razor because Apple is the most common case. Basically, when tempted to ascribe the decisions of a successful entity to stupidity, consider that you may not be considering all the facts and facets.

Yes, web development is complicated. Yes, that complexity is at times completely unwarranted. But, that does not mean that the originators of this complexity were simply being stupid. A company like Facebook has a simple requirement: keep users on the site. If that means building a completely overengineered platform or inventing a totally new front end framework, sure, go for it! As long as it keeps the experience so smooth, so seductive that people scroll for hours, absorbing ads and producing money for Facebook.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone did some user testing and the SPA with no jarring refreshes and fluid page changes scored significantly higher on user engagement.

If you look at the companies that have really fancy JS libraries, they're generally places that rely on people using their apps continuously. Netflix? They're practically the poster child for internet addiction. Twitter? Yep. Even old school media companies like the New York Times are starting to use fancy web technologies. Clicks and eyeball time is money. Stuff like React and transpiling and webpack are small prices to pay if they keep your front end developers happy and your website nice and shiny for your average user.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#348

Post by asark »

ng12 wrote: post #332
asark wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you lack a fundamental understanding what people are building obviously it seems overcomplicated. Hi. I have a fundamental understanding of what people are building. Most of it's overcomplicated and the "web app or not?" decision's very often made due to hype, résumé padding, or making a project look more impressive to other internal folks. Some of it's justifiable as a "webapp" is truly a decent choice but stil…

You think an _entire industry_ has been built up around a desire to pad resumes? I don't even know how to respond to that.

No, web development overall hasn't. Web apps specifically are largely fad-chasing vanity (manager, organizational level) or that, yeah. Which is cool because there's all kinds of dumb money flying around for them now—that part's been amazing. But it's not serving users well. Peacock feathers.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#349

Post by debaserab2 »

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…

I wonder what your brand new greenfield project is going to look like in five years when it's been passed through the hands of a few interns and contractors and survived a couple different ownership shuffles.

Think it will look as maintainable as it is today?

Or do you think a new consultant will roll through and easily sell the client on another rewrite-from-scratch project?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#350

Post by kenny87 »

root_axis wrote: post #331
MadWombat wrote: post #324

So... let me get this straight. You are making a website. You do need to load some changing data into it, so just a static site will not cut it. But we want to keep things simple. All we really need are a few AJAX calls and some DOM updates. And just like the author mentioned we don't want to write old clunky JS, we want to write beautiful ES6 code. So we install babel for ES6. And we install jQuery to do our AJAX an…

So using your summary at which step did the engineer make the wrong choice?

Apparently, when they decided developing for the web was a good idea. The bigger problem is that computing is insanely complex in the modern age. Developing for the web is on the cutting edge of that computing power. We're delivering full, non-native applications to computers people are carrying around in their pockets. And because they expect their applications to run like "real" desktop applications the UI of those "web apps" require a seamless experience. So web apps are real applications that require the same complexity in tooling as any another C++ desktop applications. Web developers are real developers. It would insane to create such complex tooling if we did not need to use it to build for those insane web browsers. Blame Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee for our current predicate, not us.
Post reply on HN