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I do things "the hard way". I agree, except that I would argue it’s often the easier way. If I had to give a one sentence answer to the original question, it w

I do things "the hard way". I agree, except that I would argue it’s often the easier way. If I had to give a one sentence answer to the original question, it would be, “Front-end [web] development is so unstable because people introduce so much accidental complexity.” For example, while I don’t disagree with Meredydd that there can be awkward mismatches between the layers he described, I also think several of those layers only exist if you presuppose an object model in your programming languages. Arguments about object-relational mismatch have been made as a criticism of OO for far longer than we’ve been building substantial front-ends for web apps. If instead you stay closer to the real data, your architecture reduces to the more traditional persistence and presentation layers. Since you’re on the web you have a distributed system so you also need a protocol for the remote communication between those layers. However, there aren’t any inherent mismatches in that combination, any more than there are if you build native applications or distributed systems using something other than web technologies.

tracker1 8y ago
I think a lot of the disconnect can go further away as JSON data types (regardless of actual serialization such as BSON etc) and use are more well supported at the database layer. When I did more C#, and Entity Framework came out, I'd add an XML column to most of my tables, as well as a base class wrapper for my own use... that allowed by to write extension properties that wrapped around XML nodes under the covers. So I could extend with extra properties for things that didn't need to be queried on. It worked pretty well, of course I actually started doing it because getting schema changes at my workplace was a painful endeavor. I agree that a lot of the disconnect is induced by developers. It's also part of why I'm a pretty big proponent of a JS UI talking to a service written in JS. It allows for a lot less cognitive adjustment. I remember doing HTML/CSS/JS with Flash/Flex, with .Net, T-SQL, and VB6 in one workplace regularly. I swear every time I had to change from one to another, I was typing the wrong way for a good 15-20 minutes... answering questions at times took 2 minutes just to shake my brain out of whatever I was working in. I started using less stored procedure code and the DB more as dumb storage, and embraced node pretty early on. Even if it is a "lesser" language, there's something to be said for one language to rule them all. (I do like modern JS though.)

tracker1 8y ago

I think a lot of the disconnect can go further away as JSON data types (regardless of actual serialization such as BSON etc) and use are more well supported at the database layer. When I did more C#, and Entity Framework came out, I'd add an XML column to most of my tables, as well as a base class wrapper for my own use... that allowed by to write extension properties that wrapped around XML nodes under the covers. So I could extend with extra properties for things that didn't need to be queried on. It worked pretty well, of course I actually started doing it because getting schema changes at my workplace was a painful endeavor. I agree that a lot of the disconnect is induced by developers. It's also part of why I'm a pretty big proponent of a JS UI talking to a service written in JS. It allows for a lot less cognitive adjustment. I remember doing HTML/CSS/JS with Flash/Flex, with .Net, T-SQL, and VB6 in one workplace regularly. I swear every time I had to change from one to another, I was typing the wrong way for a good 15-20 minutes... answering questions at times took 2 minutes just to shake my brain out of whatever I was working in. I started using less stored procedure code and the DB more as dumb storage, and embraced node pretty early on. Even if it is a "lesser" language, there's something to be said for one language to rule them all. (I do like modern JS though.)