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I can only think that modern front end development has failed

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Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#511

Post by jevgeni »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #340
jevgeni wrote: post #295

I started going to Awwwards to find what to avoid doing.

Interesting take.. I love going to that site because I want to see new things that push the limits of the browser. I would love the opportunity to build some of the sites that are showcased there, just to try new things. I don't think these types of sites are "broken" at all. Most of them work very nicely in my experience and use clever ways to hide load time or other negatives. I wouldn't ever use most of the cuttin…

Oh, those are impressive websites, don't get me wrong.

But I think that the intent and purpose in design matters. And awwwward website's purpose is pretty vacuous. The websites there are ad brochures. A single short sentence in huge font above the fold, a compelling image - the purpose there is to grab attention, while offering little information. Compare it with densely packed, more honest and less thirsty websites of the 90s and you'll see why a lot of people are nostalgic.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#512

Post by withinboredom »

y2bd wrote: post #281
withinboredom wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it’s fair to say that we often put too much business logic into the front end. As a back-end dev, this reminds me of the time I used our own product and saw a read-only field on the UI. It was some interesting bit of data that only existed in the database (we didn’t expose it in the API) and I brought it up how cool it was that we were doing that now. The front end dev said, “oh, it’s not from the database,…

Man I’d love it if our backend teams were that willing to make changes for us. So often I stumble across bizarre, complicated business logic in our various client code bases and ask the devs “why is this here? surely this is better put on the backend/already exists on the backed” and am greeted with “we agree, but when we asked the backend teams to make a change on their end they told us it would be done in the next…

Can you not propose a PR to the backend code?

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#513

Post by gls2ro »

mmcnl wrote: post #502
gls2ro wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Time to market is greatly improved Can you please clarify this? If you are referring to a web app time to market I mostly see otherwise. Here is an example: create a form to edit user settings. In Rails/Django it is pretty simple straightforward. But if you go React then you have an API and a component in React and have to think about routes and security of API and validations on both FE and BE. There are advantage…

Backend and frontend are different species and require different skillsets. It's much easier to scale from an organizational perspective using SPA's, especially in companies where software is not the core product (think non-tech Fortune 500).

Yes, I agree with you that organisational scaling is easier when having BE and FE handled by different people.

I am not yet convinced that optimising for organisational scaling could be technical benefits.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#514

Post by vagrantJin »

varrock wrote: post #510
vagrantJin wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant agree more. I could cry. Ive been on a crusade for over a year to scale back diddly js frameworks because 'scale'. Ive heard many bullshit excuses before but sacrificing performance and reliability for being "scalabable" is beyond mind boggling. It gives me a panic attack when medium articles are the chief architect and purveyors of software development truths. I live and work in developing countries and could…

How would you personally go about building a sophisticated web application?

By first figuring out if I need to build a web application.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#515

Post by joelellis »

uncledave wrote: post #233
bit_logic wrote: post #156

What upsets and concerns me the most is when I see poorly developed SPA on really important sites. For example, government service application websites. If reddit or nytimes has a bloated, intermittently failing SPA site, that's an annoyance. When it's a form to apply for unemployment, ACA health care, DMV, or other critical services, it's a critical failure. Especially since these services are most often used by exa…

Yes definitely. I was surprised recently as I had to fill in a massive form based site for UK NHS mental health survey stuff. The site appeared as a flat background old style early 2000’s sort of thing with bits of comic sans in it. I nearly died when I first saw it expecting a shit show. But it turned out to be responsive and fast. It worked perfectly from end to end and had little to no JavaScript. It was by far th…

> The site appeared as a flat background old style early 2000’s sort of thing with bits of comic sans in it.

That's surprising - even external stuff usually has to follow the NHS's design system.

https://service-manual.nhs.uk/design-system

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#516

Post by mmcnl »

gls2ro wrote: post #513
mmcnl wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backend and frontend are different species and require different skillsets. It's much easier to scale from an organizational perspective using SPA's, especially in companies where software is not the core product (think non-tech Fortune 500).

Yes, I agree with you that organisational scaling is easier when having BE and FE handled by different people. I am not yet convinced that optimising for organisational scaling could be technical benefits.

Time-to-market is 99% an organizational problem.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#518

Post by CRConrad »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #340
jevgeni wrote: post #295

I started going to Awwwards to find what to avoid doing.

Interesting take.. I love going to that site because I want to see new things that push the limits of the browser. I would love the opportunity to build some of the sites that are showcased there, just to try new things. I don't think these types of sites are "broken" at all. Most of them work very nicely in my experience and use clever ways to hide load time or other negatives. I wouldn't ever use most of the cuttin…

> I love going to that site because I want to see new things that push the limits of the browser.

Browsers are so hugely (over-)capable nowadays that anything that comes even close to "push[ing] the limits of the browser" has to be at least as huge and complex as, say, MS Excel.

99.9... Well, "five nines" ring a bell? -- percent of web sites are light-years from needing anything like that. Sounds like complexity for complexity's sake. Web wankery.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#519

Post by ajani »

Yes, just as cooking has failed. With so many recipe books how can you have bad cooks?!

Just as architecture has failed. Just look at those buildings!

Art has failed! What happened?! Where are the Michelangelos? The Leonardos? The Picassos?

There are many more people writing code now. History will only remember the greats, and forget the rest.

There were always websites that loaded poorly. Even "back then". And there were good ones too. Same as today.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#520

Post by toss1 »

vagrantJin wrote: post #501
toss1 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, all these rapid-dev frameworks and tools may be fantastic for rapidly developing and refining a prototype. But that is just the beginning of the process, the job is barely half done. The devs must then focus on exactly what is needed in the code to refactor and strip out every unnecessary instruction and byte of download. Page load times and refresh times that are more than 3-digit milliseconds rapidly become un…

Your sarcasm is well and truly appreciated but misplaced. The idea is that these libs and framework make an honest attempt at making web apps. Also well intentioned but wide off the mark. Most people access the internet through mobile phones[1] with dodgy broadband connectivity, hence don't need an app running inside another app - do you understand the redundancy and the pitfalls of janky, horrible UIs for the margin…

Ha! I think we actually agree pretty strongly.

Except that I'm not even sure that the next Instagram or whatever should be a web app - it should be a native app.

I saw the beginning of the "write once - run anywhere" concept decades ago. Sounded fantastic. Yet here we are and it is more like "write once - stumble and crawl someplace".

It is most discouraging that many major houses do it so badly, and even their native apps are similar bloatware...

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