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The attitude has changed as people have realized the web isn't going away and isn't qualitatively changing. Fifteen years ago you could ask, "Why on earth woul

by dkarl 8y ago

The attitude has changed as people have realized the web isn't going away and isn't qualitatively changing. Fifteen years ago you could ask, "Why on earth would a programmer put up with that incoherent mishmash of shitty technologies? For God's sake, if you have any taste at all, work in a different domain." Now the why is clear, and anyone who had a snobbish attitude (I won't hold my breath while the rest of us out themselves) probably feels a little dumb. I peeked inside the web UI domain a long time ago and said "noooooo thank you, I will come back when this shit gets sorted out." I figured in five or ten years there would be something entirely different (something that made sense) and I would start from scratch on an even playing field, and HTML/CSS and Javascript would end up like Cobol. Now instead of feeling smart for skipping it, I just feel behind, and the people who slogged through that era have earned (really, really earned) a deeper understanding of the technology behind our generation's most influential way of reaching people with information and ideas.

Zelphyr 8y ago
As someone who has slogged through it for 20 years, I wouldn't say I've earned much other than to realize that its all an even bigger mess than what it used to be. The solutions people come up with to combat it (frameworks, JSX, CSS-in-JS) only exacerbate the complexity in my opinion. I truly feel like we're headed in the wrong direction when it comes to web development. I haven't figured out what the right direction is yet, short of going back to the drawing board with HTML.
- idontpost 8y ago
  > I haven't figured out what the right direction is yet, short of going back to the drawing board with HTML. That's almost certainly what's needed. The fundamental structure of the HTML-CSS-JS triad is the problem that all this complexity tries to abstract around. Separation of concerns is only good if you're separating the right concerns. Back when web pages were really PAGES (ie documents), the Content-Styling-Interactivity division made sense. But now that web pages are applications that division makes very little sense. All the different solutions represent different approaches to redefining the separation of concerns, but what they all agree on is that Content-Styling-Interactivity is the wrong separation.
  - chubot 8y ago
    There are some sites that are applications, and there are some sites that are documents. I'll go as far as to say that will never change. Applications are only one part of the web; the other parts matter too. I care more about reading documents on the web, and I'm glad it has a nice simple way of presenting them (HTML) and styling them (CSS). CSS works OK as long as you aren't trying to control things pixel-for-pixel, which is not what it's meant for. It obviously could be better, but the problem is not easy by any means.
    - idontpost 8y ago
      >There are some sites that are applications, and there are some sites that are documents. >I'll go as far as to say that will never change. Applications are only one part of the web; the other parts matter too. That's true, but it's also not the problem domain. No one is having trouble creating document websites on the internet. That problem is, more or less, solved to the point that almost anyone with no technical background can do it. Application-type sites are where all the pain points lie.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Given the model that the web has committed to, I also don’t think it is going to get much better.
erik_seaberg 8y ago
I think part of the attitude comes from watching this incoherent mishmash kill the World-Wide Web and wear its skin. There used to be flamewars about abusing non-semantic markup around content, but now it's common for a document to lack any content at all, just a bootloader for a javascript app that never needed to be an app.

by dkarl 8y ago

Zelphyr 8y ago

As someone who has slogged through it for 20 years, I wouldn't say I've earned much other than to realize that its all an even bigger mess than what it used to be. The solutions people come up with to combat it (frameworks, JSX, CSS-in-JS) only exacerbate the complexity in my opinion. I truly feel like we're headed in the wrong direction when it comes to web development. I haven't figured out what the right direction is yet, short of going back to the drawing board with HTML.

idontpost 8y ago
> I haven't figured out what the right direction is yet, short of going back to the drawing board with HTML. That's almost certainly what's needed. The fundamental structure of the HTML-CSS-JS triad is the problem that all this complexity tries to abstract around. Separation of concerns is only good if you're separating the right concerns. Back when web pages were really PAGES (ie documents), the Content-Styling-Interactivity division made sense. But now that web pages are applications that division makes very little sense. All the different solutions represent different approaches to redefining the separation of concerns, but what they all agree on is that Content-Styling-Interactivity is the wrong separation.
- chubot 8y ago
  There are some sites that are applications, and there are some sites that are documents. I'll go as far as to say that will never change. Applications are only one part of the web; the other parts matter too. I care more about reading documents on the web, and I'm glad it has a nice simple way of presenting them (HTML) and styling them (CSS). CSS works OK as long as you aren't trying to control things pixel-for-pixel, which is not what it's meant for. It obviously could be better, but the problem is not easy by any means.
  - idontpost 8y ago
    >There are some sites that are applications, and there are some sites that are documents. >I'll go as far as to say that will never change. Applications are only one part of the web; the other parts matter too. That's true, but it's also not the problem domain. No one is having trouble creating document websites on the internet. That problem is, more or less, solved to the point that almost anyone with no technical background can do it. Application-type sites are where all the pain points lie.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Given the model that the web has committed to, I also don’t think it is going to get much better.

erik_seaberg 8y ago

I think part of the attitude comes from watching this incoherent mishmash kill the World-Wide Web and wear its skin. There used to be flamewars about abusing non-semantic markup around content, but now it's common for a document to lack any content at all, just a bootloader for a javascript app that never needed to be an app.