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I fell in love with web development over 15 years ago because it was just a request to the browser and an answer. I've worked on windows applications and just

I fell in love with web development over 15 years ago because it was just a request to the browser and an answer. I've worked on windows applications and just hated it. All this code handling the state of controls depending on the input/action. Sometimes I have the feeling I'm doing this stuff on the web again which I haven't for over 10 years and it just feels wrong.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
What's difficult about it? The underlying model is incredibly simple. You have a visual model/datastore that you manipulate and the UI changes as a result. Interactions with the UI drive events which might call out to a server or do a calculation, which in turn changes the view model/datastore and that changes the UI and so on and so forth... You probably get that, but I've down programming with wxPython, Qt, etc. I've done Django, Rails, Flask, etc. and frontend frameworks are so much more powerful and easier to use than those old models and getting them up and running takes a few minutes. When I see how much difficulty and how much anxiety this new tech is causing people it makes me wonder if the frameworks are just covering up how easy all this stuff is and how powerful it is. It's really exciting stuff, it sucks if people are missing that.
- skyisblue 9y ago
  Are you still using Django, Rails, or Flask to provide API end points to your front end? If not, what do you use?
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Not a big fan of Ruby or Python as the backend server given the choice, there's just a lot of languages that do it better (Elixir, Clojure, Go for example). Django and Rails have a lot of extra stuff you don't need. But if you just want to get an api up quickly its really hard to beat Flask or even Bottle (not sexy but very simple) and I've never used it but Sinatra is supposed to be great, too. Microframeworks are great.
    - gkya 9y ago
      > Django and Rails have a lot of extra stuff you don't need. Oh yeah your OS and libc too have them, the computer itself has them. You don't need the things you don't need to not exists in order to make use of what you need.
- rimliu 9y ago
  Your comment reminds me "how to draw an owl" joke. Yes model is simple. But the devil is in the details and web has a loooooot of details.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

aaron-lebo 9y ago

What's difficult about it? The underlying model is incredibly simple. You have a visual model/datastore that you manipulate and the UI changes as a result. Interactions with the UI drive events which might call out to a server or do a calculation, which in turn changes the view model/datastore and that changes the UI and so on and so forth... You probably get that, but I've down programming with wxPython, Qt, etc. I've done Django, Rails, Flask, etc. and frontend frameworks are so much more powerful and easier to use than those old models and getting them up and running takes a few minutes. When I see how much difficulty and how much anxiety this new tech is causing people it makes me wonder if the frameworks are just covering up how easy all this stuff is and how powerful it is. It's really exciting stuff, it sucks if people are missing that.

skyisblue 9y ago
Are you still using Django, Rails, or Flask to provide API end points to your front end? If not, what do you use?
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Not a big fan of Ruby or Python as the backend server given the choice, there's just a lot of languages that do it better (Elixir, Clojure, Go for example). Django and Rails have a lot of extra stuff you don't need. But if you just want to get an api up quickly its really hard to beat Flask or even Bottle (not sexy but very simple) and I've never used it but Sinatra is supposed to be great, too. Microframeworks are great.
  - gkya 9y ago
    > Django and Rails have a lot of extra stuff you don't need. Oh yeah your OS and libc too have them, the computer itself has them. You don't need the things you don't need to not exists in order to make use of what you need.
rimliu 9y ago
Your comment reminds me "how to draw an owl" joke. Yes model is simple. But the devil is in the details and web has a loooooot of details.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]