Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
matt-rickard.com
Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
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Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#2Well most of it is for backward compatibility I guess so your newest frontend can still run in a browser as old as internet explorer by changing a few Babel settings.
Some of it is to optimize the code delivery so you're sending just the bare minimum source code and not wasting user's bandwidth.
Of course if you had just one newest browser then you could do away with most of it but at the end of the day you have to make sure your frontend can run everywhere including mobile devices, hence the complexity.
The amazing part is ever since vite has been on the scene a lot of it has been abstracted away. There is no need to even compile anything during dev which has been a game changer.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#3Well most of it is for backward compatibility I guess so your newest frontend can still run in a browser as old as internet explorer by changing a few Babel settings. Some of it is to optimize the code delivery so you're sending just the bare minimum source code and not wasting user's bandwidth. Of course if you had just one newest browser then you could do away with most of it but at the end of the day you have to m…
It's still ridiculously complicated in so many other ways, ignoring backwards compat completely.
I wish I could describe my most recent attempt at migrating our app to the new Next 13 app router for an audience, on camera, on stage. The levels of confusion and dead ends, and configuration, and error screens, and the need for truly expert-level knowledge just to get things working as one would expect made me realize there's just no way this can survive as it currently stands. It's all an abomination. React is dead. FE is dead.
Please just give me back a simple React.renderToString mounted into an express wildcard route, hooked into react router. All of these perf concerns are for the .0001% of people who even notice this shit, or need things to run so ideologically fast that they're willing to throw out every bid of common sense in service to an abstraction that is DOA as soon as you use it to do anything complicated at all, or apply it to an existing codebase.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#4I guess it starts by abusing a document system to develop interactive applications instead of using an actual application SDK.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#5Well most of it is for backward compatibility I guess so your newest frontend can still run in a browser as old as internet explorer by changing a few Babel settings. Some of it is to optimize the code delivery so you're sending just the bare minimum source code and not wasting user's bandwidth. Of course if you had just one newest browser then you could do away with most of it but at the end of the day you have to m…
It's still ridiculously complicated in so many other ways, ignoring backwards compat completely. I wish I could describe my most recent attempt at migrating our app to the new Next 13 app router for an audience, on camera, on stage. The levels of confusion and dead ends, and configuration, and error screens, and the need for truly expert-level knowledge just to get things working as one would expect made me realize t…
As an interesting contrast, I work on a WPF app professionally that has been around for sure since .NET 3.5 (with references to .NET 2.0 DLL's at times) - at least 12 years - and as much as we give MS crap for abandoning WPF, I can still crank the project open in the latest Visual Studio, probably transparently upgrade to .NET 6 - and everything just works. There are a lot of advantages to web-based frontends but sometimes I think desktop apps are underrated from a stability perspective.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#6The front end is where the greatest leverage to control user behavior is. Therefore, demand to add features there is also the strongest.
Recall that what got investors excited about the Web in the 90's was inline images. They didn't respond to hypertext, but they were looking for a next thing after "multimedia" and saw opportunities. Next thing you know, they were writing thought-leader articles about "push content", imagining the TV-ification of the Web.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#7The stack is not te problem, the problem is people using the incorrect tools and doing over-engineering.
React and others are simply a tool to pass the logic to the client. Useful in situations like apps that can run almost completely without the server or it can manage the offline situations.
All the related tools are only optional things to improve something: • transpilation for older browsers • talwindcss to manage the styles -if you are a lot of people- • redux or others to manage the application state
For other kind of applications, you can continue using the same pattern where the server has the main responsibility of generating the entire view.
In my case, I’m quite happy using htmx and avoiding frontend frameworks because usually I don’t develop offline apps.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#8I guess it starts by abusing a document system to develop interactive applications instead of using an actual application SDK.
This is the entire reason. HTML, JS, and CSS weren't designed for their current purpose and updating them requires slow coordination across browser developers.
Once you start using compile-to-JS and get out of the JS ecosystem mess, the developer experience suddenly feels much less complicated.
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#9It could have something to do with REST not meaning what you think it means.
https://htmx.org/essays/how-did-rest-come-to-mean-the-opposi...
Re: Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?
#10I guess it starts by abusing a document system to develop interactive applications instead of using an actual application SDK.
Or - on the backend there has been constant evolution of frameworks but browsers didn't provide lot of features that IMHO should have been in place such as ways to split and import into each other JS and CSS files or having variables in CSS and such.