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Build your own web framework

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Re: Build your own web framework

#51

Post by koluna »

sebmellen wrote: post #26
koluna wrote: post #13

The more I see these announcements, the more I wonder - what is the appeal of something like Vercel and the likes? On the surface it seems like AWS/GCP/Azure/whichever big cloud provider can replicate literally everything they build within their infrastructure quite easily. Why host your core infra in a BigCo cloud and then the site on Vercel?

The edge network of a Vercel/Netlify is very hard to replicate in cloud as a small startup.

I wasn't referring to the edge network for _startups_ to replicate. I was more wondering how AWS and others can replicate Vercel/Netlify and eat their lunch. They have no defensible moat as a company.

Re: Build your own web framework

#52

Post by upupandup »

leerob wrote: post #14
upupandup wrote: post #4

not sure how this differs with AWS, you can do more at less cost than Vercel

AWS offers a set of primitives, not frameworks. These low-level primitives can be combined to build anything you want. Vercel's Build Output API[1] is a level of abstraction higher. Consider Image Optimization. In this post, there's a `/_vercel/image` URL made available to send an image and return it compressed with a format like `.webp`, if possible based on the browser. With AWS, this would be a combination of S3 (…

didn't you just describe AWS Amplify? It also integrates with Cognito not sure if Vercel offers Auth out of the box.

also I'm not sure if I'm alone in this but I set up everything through the web console and then generate CDK or Terraform.

Re: Build your own web framework

#53

Post by dfee »

I’ve been looking a lot at RedwoodJS, but it doesn’t seem to be “just right”. Don’t know if I’m bike-shedding, either.

I do think React is a requisite for a rich application (not blog). I think auth + DB + deploy + fe/be in one asset is challenging. I certainly get why folks build their own constantly. But you burn out before you make any real progress.

I’m not sure we’re really achieving any higher level abstraction on our technologies.

Re: Build your own web framework

#54

Post by Cyberdog »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #36
moojd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am optimistic though. We are still in the early days of server-side javascript. It took 20 years for the greater php community to coalesce around a handful of quality libraries, frameworks, and solutions to things like user management instead of everyone rolling their own or using things like '$_GET["pass"] == "foo"' they they grabbed from a google search. Node is barely over a decade old. We are already seeing pat…

> early days of server-side javascript Err ... Netscape's LiveWire introduced server-side Javascript in 1996 even before Java became widely used on the server side. The module convention, the (synchronous) core modules of Node.js, and its canonical http middleware API and express.js/Connect/JSGI is from the CommonJS initiative, a co-op of 2000's SSJS framework developers [1]. [1]: https://www.commonjs.org/

This is an "um ackshually" reply. Nobody used LiveWire and it died a swift death.

And don't "um ackshually" me about saying "nobody." You know what I mean.

Re: Build your own web framework

#55

Post by skadamat »

Do we ever think we'll collapse all of the complexity layers for programming on the web? Coming from other languages, I'm finding that the agreed-upon web standards make development super hard (we have to collectively build these towers of babel on top of them, since we can't fix the underlying stuff)

I guess WASM maybe is one possible solution here

Re: Build your own web framework

#56

Post by blowski »

skadamat wrote: post #55

Do we ever think we'll collapse all of the complexity layers for programming on the web? Coming from other languages, I'm finding that the agreed-upon web standards make development super hard (we have to collectively build these towers of babel on top of them, since we can't fix the underlying stuff) I guess WASM maybe is one possible solution here

If you want to, you already can. It's what's so great about the web, you don't have to use anything beyond HTTP and HTML. But each of those layers introduces its own costs and benefits, so you can pick and choose to get what you want.

Re: Build your own web framework

#57

Post by 0x457 »

wmfiv wrote: post #2

I'm struggling with the idea that React is a primitive used to build a Web Framework.

It's because almost no one uses React the way it was created, but ultimately depends on what you mean by Web Framework. I don't think react includes enough to be a web framework.

It's a library to make components for web pages. Notably, Facebook's chat window. Later, one people decides that it's a good idea to have one giant component mounted at `body` or `div` directly underneath the body that would hold everything else and even the sun.

React didn't have much for state management and doesn't have anything for navigation support. It was released in 2013 and Create React App, which is actually a framework, was released only in 2016. Even that isn't a framework, but rather a template.

Now, Next.js and Gatsby are actually frameworks based on React. Backbone.js is an MVC framework.

Re: Build your own web framework

#58

Post by Cyberdog »

skadamat wrote: post #55

Do we ever think we'll collapse all of the complexity layers for programming on the web? Coming from other languages, I'm finding that the agreed-upon web standards make development super hard (we have to collectively build these towers of babel on top of them, since we can't fix the underlying stuff) I guess WASM maybe is one possible solution here

Well, when you start with a "tutorial" (or whatever you call this thing) like this one, you get a false idea of just how complex web development actually is.

I once wrote an e-book on how to use the now mostly defunct Kitura web framework. It started with teaching you how to make a one-file script to output a "hello world" message. After that it talked about using templates and database connectivity and all that, very iteratively. Client-side scripting or "serverless functions" (whatever those are) were not a part of it at all.

Re: Build your own web framework

#59

Post by [deleted] »

skadamat wrote: post #55

Do we ever think we'll collapse all of the complexity layers for programming on the web? Coming from other languages, I'm finding that the agreed-upon web standards make development super hard (we have to collectively build these towers of babel on top of them, since we can't fix the underlying stuff) I guess WASM maybe is one possible solution here

[deleted]

Re: Build your own web framework

#60

Post by lotw_dot_site »

skadamat wrote: post #55

Do we ever think we'll collapse all of the complexity layers for programming on the web? Coming from other languages, I'm finding that the agreed-upon web standards make development super hard (we have to collectively build these towers of babel on top of them, since we can't fix the underlying stuff) I guess WASM maybe is one possible solution here

This is exactly why I started building "Linux on the Web" about a decade ago. LOTW is meant to completely abstract away all the weird "browser-isms" that seem to overwhelm people like you who just want to sit down and do Plain Old Programming.

I am currently in the midst of supporting a good selection of game console emulators (GB, NES, and SNES are already working), and WASM is indeed a blessing for that!

https://lotw.site

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