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I feel odd dissing this article, because there's nothing wrong with it: Saying that you should consider your audience, focus on your content, and use "rich" (oh

I feel odd dissing this article, because there's nothing wrong with it: Saying that you should consider your audience, focus on your content, and use "rich" (oh man, I remember when RIA was the buzz-de-jour) websites when, and only when, appropriate, is not controversial. That said, I don't feel like there's much actually said. Just restating what is commonly advised (if not practiced) best practices, and not really doing anything to address WHY it isn't practiced. It also failed to mention the differences when you have an application that DOES benefit from being "rich", how progressive enhancement is still a good theory (I'll be honest, none of my workplaces have DONE it). I've seen plenty of dismissive "web coders are trash" and "lol, Js, learn to code" comments (paraphrasing) in various discussions, as well as more informed discussions as to what is and is not a real cost/benefit of various approaches, but I've not seen much in-depth discussion about why the best practices really are rare, and how to fix that. I wish the author had gone beyond the basics and addressed that.

_hardwaregeek 8y ago
Yep. There's a proliferation of reductive posts that essentially repeat the same truisms we've all heard: You don't need a SPA; NPM is a ghetto; Front end web development has too much churn. Who cares? If you don't like the state of web dev, leave or learn to make it better. If someone were to write yet another NPM sucks article, BUT include in it a description of a PR they opened to improve the process, I'd happily upvote them. But instead people seem to be satisfied with complaining with little action.
- cnorthwood 8y ago
  I'm not sure how you drew the last 2 conclusions from this article. The point is to make sure people think twice before they default to an SPA to make sure it's the right decision - in my experience a lot of people are jumping to the SPA pattern without considering the alternatives. Do you not think an article like this, which aims to increase awareness of non-SPA architectures, is helping to make it better? What else would you like to have seen this article cover?
  - _hardwaregeek 8y ago
    The last two points are not specific to the article but to the category of vaguely contrarian points about modern web development in which the article resides. And I’m a little skeptical of the premise, which is that we need to increase awareness of non-SPA architectures. Even though there is a lot of hype around SPA’s and fancy front end driven architectures, I’d bet that the vast majority of code written and new developers minted are primarily focused on server side web applications. It’s just nobody ever says “yknow what’s new and hot and the thing everybody should use? Java servers!”

_hardwaregeek 8y ago

Yep. There's a proliferation of reductive posts that essentially repeat the same truisms we've all heard: You don't need a SPA; NPM is a ghetto; Front end web development has too much churn. Who cares? If you don't like the state of web dev, leave or learn to make it better. If someone were to write yet another NPM sucks article, BUT include in it a description of a PR they opened to improve the process, I'd happily upvote them. But instead people seem to be satisfied with complaining with little action.

cnorthwood 8y ago
I'm not sure how you drew the last 2 conclusions from this article. The point is to make sure people think twice before they default to an SPA to make sure it's the right decision - in my experience a lot of people are jumping to the SPA pattern without considering the alternatives. Do you not think an article like this, which aims to increase awareness of non-SPA architectures, is helping to make it better? What else would you like to have seen this article cover?
- _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  The last two points are not specific to the article but to the category of vaguely contrarian points about modern web development in which the article resides. And I’m a little skeptical of the premise, which is that we need to increase awareness of non-SPA architectures. Even though there is a lot of hype around SPA’s and fancy front end driven architectures, I’d bet that the vast majority of code written and new developers minted are primarily focused on server side web applications. It’s just nobody ever says “yknow what’s new and hot and the thing everybody should use? Java servers!”