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Why is modern web development so complicated?

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Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#491

Post by dpcan »

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…

Very similar thing is happening for me as well, only for a large property management company.

Their old sites were weighed down with an incredible amount of confusing technology.

I redid the whole thing with PHP/HTML/CSS/JS/MySQL as well, and it's incredibly easy for them to update and work with now. Super simple admin interface, attractive front-end, and the top brass at the company has taken notice.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#492

Post by Aeolun »

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #65
orf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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’d argue that it depends mostly on the organization. A great developer is still going to produce shit if the organization doesn’t work with them.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#494

Post by mirimir »

bpicolo wrote: post #465
mirimir wrote: post #423

> Why is modern web development so complicated? Although lots of cool stuff is possible, I suspect that very often, it's about profiling and tracking users, and not about delivering content. That's certainly my experience as a user. I routinely browse sites that call resources from numerous sites, and want to run multiple scripts. And all they're ostensibly doing is displaying some text and images.

Ironically, many actions are drastically easier to track on the server side. Frontend pageview tracking is trivially knocked out by ad block. Backend pageview tracking is impossible to block.

True. But lots of third-party tracking is harder, right?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#495

Post by asark »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #307
popotamonga wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making top dollar remaking failed garbage react native apps to real native native. Clients love it

Out of curiosity, how do you support both iOS and Android with this approach?

Secretly leave the Android one React Native since it does a decent job of papering over Android's worst rough spots, despite how often React Native breaks and how LOLWTF its ecosystem and release management is?

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#496

Post by asark »

dsego wrote: post #360
im3w1l wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he would model that as POSTing. Server side PHP would render document from scratch from the state.

It's silly to do a round trip to the server just to change some local UI state, right?

In theory, yes. In practice, by the time you get your whole web-app game on, the full round trip is often at least as fast, and frequently faster.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#497

Post by kareninoverseas »

Awesome! I had quite the experience setting up a react app workflow with a friend. If you don't get your versions of tools to all line up or you use a tool which is slightly unconventional, or sometimes if you're developing on not-Mac, things can go very wrong very quickly. Nice to have a post overviewing how to pick and choose (and why you shouldn't do that anyways).

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#498

Post by asark »

debaserab2 wrote: post #349
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?

Framework-dependent projects tend to go stale and become "ew I don't wanna touch that, it's so last year, we should probably replace it with [newer version of framework that's gonna end up being much harder to upgrade than expected / other framework]" surprisingly fast once eyes are off them, in my experience. Without someone competent doing continual upkeep, the next guy/gal's gonna try to sell the re-write anyway. May not succeed, but they'll try. Framework or no.

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#499

Post by Aeolun »

Townley wrote: post #76
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…

Recognizing the right tool for the job landed you job security for the next two years (and you're deserve it!) But it could have very easily gone the other way. If your website had complicated validation rules on multi-page forms (not unheard of in healthcare) the site would be better off for some basic state management interacting with a standardized authentication/authorization framework that you didn't have to wri…

> But sometimes, it does have to be complicated.

It almost never has to be complicated. People just enjoy making it so.

Looks at their inventory management system

Re: Why is modern web development so complicated?

#500

Post by cutler »

chaoticmass wrote: post #222
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 have a similar story. I got hired on to replace some PHP web apps, each one written using a different framework. Each one out of date, unpatched, unknown dependencies, no easy way to bring up to date-- tied to specific old PHP versions. A big mess. The IT director was pretty savvy and said he wanted a clean rewrite without frameworks, something I was all too happy to do.

What did you replace it with?
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