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The answer to "why is _ so _?", is very nearly always best when phrased as the question, "what was supposed to stop from ?" The answer is nearly alway

The answer to "why is ___ so ___?", is very nearly always best when phrased as the question, "what was supposed to stop __ from __?" The answer is nearly always...nothing. There was nothing, technologically or organizationally, preventing web development from becoming so complicated, such that websites whose desired functionality would be satisfied by static html are now several meg of thousands of lines of javascript on top of a few dozen included libraries. There was nothing preventing that. Therefore, it happened. Developers don't really feel like pointing out, "you should get rid of me and just pay for someone to do html". Managers don't really feel like pointing out "the project I'm managing doesn't really deserve a team of developers, you should take them away from me." The designers don't feel like pointing out "all we really need is to put this well-formatted text on a page with the company logo on the top and one or two image files, and that will communicate the information just fine, you can get rid of me." The even-higher-ups don't really feel like pointing out "I don't need to hire all these people, you can take this VC money and return it to the original investors". The VC's don't feel like pointing out, "there's not really a use for this much money in the tech world right now, so you can just stick it in a bank account and wait for a real need." So, it doesn't happen, because there was nothing to prevent it.

silexia 7y ago
I love your comment, but I think it does miss out on some important concepts. I used to think when I first started my company that I could just do every part of it far better than anyone else. I would push on my employees pretty hard and often denigrate their efforts. As the company is continued to grow, I now have 180 full-time employees. The reason I have all these people is that they can do enormously more work than I can and most of them are now better at doing their individual job than I am. I think your comment visits are tendency as tech people to view ourselves in the best possible light, and to view other people as not as good. We especially tend to view projects we do as big and very complex and project done by others as not impressive.
- asdf21 7y ago
  The question is, are you auditing the final work being done by your "teams" and asking whether it could have been done more efficiently / simply?
- tcgv 7y ago
  > view ourselves in the best possible light, and to view other people as not as good Remembered me of this cognitive bias: "Overestimating Our Own Importance" [1] [1] "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis", Chapter 11. Available at: - https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art14.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
majewsky 7y ago
I would add one word to this: > There was nothing anymore preventing web development from becoming so complicated The early web was much simpler because of the resource constraints of the 90s and early 2000s. Pages only started serving 10 MB of JS when browsers got to the point where they could chew through 10 MB of JS at a barely acceptable pace. Also: > Managers don't really feel like pointing out "the project I'm managing doesn't really deserve a team of developers, you should take them away from me." As a techie watching corporate politics from the sideline, this was a particularly depressing insight. I used to wonder why big companies require 50 employees to do the work that small companies need 10 employees for. I do not wonder anymore.
- cercatrova 7y ago
  Resources are allocated to their constraints. You spend as much money as you have, as much time as you have, you hire as many people as you can afford, and so on. It may be because people don't think on an absolute time scale but rather a relative one; if you make 1 million in revenue and you only have 3 employees, you might feel like you should hire more. What happens if you start making one billion in revenue? Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber if you haven't already.
  - natrik 7y ago
    Also companies aim to maximize the margins. If profit is currently $800,000/year and adding 1 software developer at $120,000/year salary (+benefits, hidden costs...) can lead to $800,001 profit, the company would do it.
    - oblio 7y ago
      And that's actually rational behavior. It's also a very simple and very materialistic explanation of why humankind evolves, bit by bit. It works the same way even for discovering new medicine or any kind of technology. The new thing must be at least a bit better than the old thing. Over time those improvements compound and you end up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
asdf21 7y ago
I love this comment. So fucking dead-on in my experience. Not to mention, saying any of those things would make you a "bad culture fit" and potentially break the "no assholes rule" if you argued the point.
noneckbeard 7y ago
This seems demonstrably untrue. Basic html development is vastly cheaper than “modern JavaScript” which would give any company w an HTML-only strategy a huge advantage. Why aren’t HTML-only companies dominating in every market?
- buboard 7y ago
  You mean like amazon or ebay or paypal or yahoo? Or like how facebook was so html that they wrote their own php interpreter?
  - mmczaplinski 7y ago
    you mean the same facebook which created react.js? If you think any of those companies is not betting heavily on JS, you're out of touch :)
    - buboard 7y ago
      maybe, but i dont think they grew because of JS. they grew despite it maybe ;)
      - reroute1 7y ago
        maybe, but it's impossible without it
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    None of those sites are static html. Not even close.
    - buboard 7y ago
      html != static
      - azernik 7y ago
        Static literally == not using JavaScript to manipulate the DOM. Once you're stuck using JS for core functionality, you really want a decent programming language. I think people are complaining about two separate things - actually-static-ish websites like newspapers, shipping 10MB, and web apps like Facebook shipping 10MB. The latter is an unavoidable outcome of shipping Serious Software; the former is mostly driven by ad networks, not development ease.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tikiman163 7y ago
I'm not sure if I fully agree with your point about developers or managers not wanting to suggest they aren't needed. You're argument relies on the idea that most business needs could be sufficiently met by static html doesn't really fit how businesses works. If a business in an industry has additional functionality on their page that gives them an edge beyond just text on a page, then it is needed. Additionally, when extra functionality is needed the whole industry is going to compete on that. Most businesses don't have enough extra funds to support unnecessary or non-competitive functionality development, so while there might be something better they could be doing with their money, it's almost never the case that what's being developed is so over complicated or over architected that it would be a better financial move to build a static page or site than what they're doing because losing that competitive edge often results in the company, division or product line failing to get enough sales to continue. You do make something of a good point about nothing preventing web development becoming over complicated, except you seem to have forgotten how much that costs. Unless there is a perceived marketable difference, people will rarely push for it to be developed at all, and given the size of the average development team's backlog that pressure to develop also has to outweigh everything in the backlog as well. The honest truth is that web development has become so complicated because that's the equilibrium point of the supply of labor to the demand for advanced features. Developing the same features from scratch using static web development methods takes exponentially longer as a function of feature complexity, and the ability to use frameworks and other more complicated tools reduces that down to being merely linear. Web development isn't complicated because nothing is stopping it from being complicated, it's complicated because consumers want features that they assume should be simple, but are in fact very complicated.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  While this is occasionally true, I believe it is most of the time not true. Many, many features (e.g. endless scrolling) get pushed out to consumers who don't want it. By and large, consumers of websites want text and images. The push to put embedded video, lots of ajaxy updating of content, etc. has happened on countless newspaper, magazine, and other websites where all the consumer wants is the words and the images. Many features, like allowing comments, are actively disliked by the vast majority of users. There are, certainly, a few corners of the web that need more than static html, but >90% of the websites in existence that are _not_ static html, should be, and the consumers would like them better that way.
la_barba 7y ago
The other thing is, programmers love re-inventing things. Its the standard programmer mindset of wanting to work on problems that are one or two levels of difficulty over their currently capability. And so, they fuck shit up, because only someone whose been in the weeds, knows the ins, outs and the corner cases, is capable actually doing a good job. (IMHO, $0.02, YMMV etc)

The answer to "why is ___ so ___?", is very nearly always best when phrased as the question, "what was supposed to stop __ from __?" The answer is nearly alway

silexia 7y ago

I love your comment, but I think it does miss out on some important concepts. I used to think when I first started my company that I could just do every part of it far better than anyone else. I would push on my employees pretty hard and often denigrate their efforts. As the company is continued to grow, I now have 180 full-time employees. The reason I have all these people is that they can do enormously more work than I can and most of them are now better at doing their individual job than I am. I think your comment visits are tendency as tech people to view ourselves in the best possible light, and to view other people as not as good. We especially tend to view projects we do as big and very complex and project done by others as not impressive.

asdf21 7y ago
The question is, are you auditing the final work being done by your "teams" and asking whether it could have been done more efficiently / simply?
tcgv 7y ago
> view ourselves in the best possible light, and to view other people as not as good Remembered me of this cognitive bias: "Overestimating Our Own Importance" [1] [1] "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis", Chapter 11. Available at: - https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art14.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

majewsky 7y ago

I would add one word to this: > There was nothing anymore preventing web development from becoming so complicated The early web was much simpler because of the resource constraints of the 90s and early 2000s. Pages only started serving 10 MB of JS when browsers got to the point where they could chew through 10 MB of JS at a barely acceptable pace. Also: > Managers don't really feel like pointing out "the project I'm managing doesn't really deserve a team of developers, you should take them away from me." As a techie watching corporate politics from the sideline, this was a particularly depressing insight. I used to wonder why big companies require 50 employees to do the work that small companies need 10 employees for. I do not wonder anymore.

cercatrova 7y ago
Resources are allocated to their constraints. You spend as much money as you have, as much time as you have, you hire as many people as you can afford, and so on. It may be because people don't think on an absolute time scale but rather a relative one; if you make 1 million in revenue and you only have 3 employees, you might feel like you should hire more. What happens if you start making one billion in revenue? Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber if you haven't already.
- natrik 7y ago
  Also companies aim to maximize the margins. If profit is currently $800,000/year and adding 1 software developer at $120,000/year salary (+benefits, hidden costs...) can lead to $800,001 profit, the company would do it.
  - oblio 7y ago
    And that's actually rational behavior. It's also a very simple and very materialistic explanation of why humankind evolves, bit by bit. It works the same way even for discovering new medicine or any kind of technology. The new thing must be at least a bit better than the old thing. Over time those improvements compound and you end up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U

asdf21 7y ago

I love this comment. So fucking dead-on in my experience. Not to mention, saying any of those things would make you a "bad culture fit" and potentially break the "no assholes rule" if you argued the point.

noneckbeard 7y ago

This seems demonstrably untrue. Basic html development is vastly cheaper than “modern JavaScript” which would give any company w an HTML-only strategy a huge advantage. Why aren’t HTML-only companies dominating in every market?

buboard 7y ago
You mean like amazon or ebay or paypal or yahoo? Or like how facebook was so html that they wrote their own php interpreter?
- mmczaplinski 7y ago
  you mean the same facebook which created react.js? If you think any of those companies is not betting heavily on JS, you're out of touch :)
  - buboard 7y ago
    maybe, but i dont think they grew because of JS. they grew despite it maybe ;)
    - reroute1 7y ago
      maybe, but it's impossible without it
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  None of those sites are static html. Not even close.
  - buboard 7y ago
    html != static
    - azernik 7y ago
      Static literally == not using JavaScript to manipulate the DOM. Once you're stuck using JS for core functionality, you really want a decent programming language. I think people are complaining about two separate things - actually-static-ish websites like newspapers, shipping 10MB, and web apps like Facebook shipping 10MB. The latter is an unavoidable outcome of shipping Serious Software; the former is mostly driven by ad networks, not development ease.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tikiman163 7y ago

I'm not sure if I fully agree with your point about developers or managers not wanting to suggest they aren't needed. You're argument relies on the idea that most business needs could be sufficiently met by static html doesn't really fit how businesses works. If a business in an industry has additional functionality on their page that gives them an edge beyond just text on a page, then it is needed. Additionally, when extra functionality is needed the whole industry is going to compete on that. Most businesses don't have enough extra funds to support unnecessary or non-competitive functionality development, so while there might be something better they could be doing with their money, it's almost never the case that what's being developed is so over complicated or over architected that it would be a better financial move to build a static page or site than what they're doing because losing that competitive edge often results in the company, division or product line failing to get enough sales to continue. You do make something of a good point about nothing preventing web development becoming over complicated, except you seem to have forgotten how much that costs. Unless there is a perceived marketable difference, people will rarely push for it to be developed at all, and given the size of the average development team's backlog that pressure to develop also has to outweigh everything in the backlog as well. The honest truth is that web development has become so complicated because that's the equilibrium point of the supply of labor to the demand for advanced features. Developing the same features from scratch using static web development methods takes exponentially longer as a function of feature complexity, and the ability to use frameworks and other more complicated tools reduces that down to being merely linear. Web development isn't complicated because nothing is stopping it from being complicated, it's complicated because consumers want features that they assume should be simple, but are in fact very complicated.

rossdavidh 7y ago
While this is occasionally true, I believe it is most of the time not true. Many, many features (e.g. endless scrolling) get pushed out to consumers who don't want it. By and large, consumers of websites want text and images. The push to put embedded video, lots of ajaxy updating of content, etc. has happened on countless newspaper, magazine, and other websites where all the consumer wants is the words and the images. Many features, like allowing comments, are actively disliked by the vast majority of users. There are, certainly, a few corners of the web that need more than static html, but >90% of the websites in existence that are _not_ static html, should be, and the consumers would like them better that way.

la_barba 7y ago

The other thing is, programmers love re-inventing things. Its the standard programmer mindset of wanting to work on problems that are one or two levels of difficulty over their currently capability. And so, they fuck shit up, because only someone whose been in the weeds, knows the ins, outs and the corner cases, is capable actually doing a good job. (IMHO, $0.02, YMMV etc)