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> As an experienced front-end developer I must say that I don't really understand why the complexity of building websites is growing instead of going down. Com

> As an experienced front-end developer I must say that I don't really understand why the complexity of building websites is growing instead of going down. Complexity of building dynamic documents is actually going down. If you are to build a typical web site from 200x using modern browsers, you wont need jquery or anything like that. Networking, security - everything became 100 times easier and faster. But if you want to build a desktop application using DOM as a rendering layer, then it is a different story.

koboll 7y ago
I challenge anyone who believes "the complexity building websites is growing" to go ahead and build a web app relying on multiple complex state machines with imperative jQuery calls, and then tell me it's less complex than the equivalent in React.
- wolco 7y ago
  The complexity comes from getting the tooling installed now and packages. If I can't just include a file things are going to get more complex. State machines are a method to solve a problem that could be expressed in other ways to make it fit the language better.
  - woat 7y ago
    What is complex about the tooling? If I want to implement a rich text editor in my website, it will be as easy as 'npm install ...' and an import statement in the relevant file. Is there an advantage to make a state machine to solve this?
  - ratww 7y ago
    > If I can't just include a file things are going to get more complex. But the tooling and npm packages are all optional. You can import React from a CDN and use stuff like htm [1] or domz [2] instead of a JSX compilation step. Or you can use Vue instead of React (their tutorial starts by using Vue via CDN). If you're able to only support 95% of the browsers, you can use most modern ES6 features, including ES Modules and async/await. If you still need the tooling, there are options like Parcel [3] or Poi.js [4] that require zero configuration. You don't really need the complexity of Webpack. -- [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/htm https://www.npmjs.com/package/htm [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/domz https://www.npmjs.com/package/domz [3] https://www.npmjs.com/package/parcel https://www.npmjs.com/package/parcel [4] https://www.npmjs.com/package/poi https://www.npmjs.com/package/poi
    - wolco 7y ago
      I've used vue by including it. I've used react by including it and babel. When I tried to include other packages they were only available through npm (some had cdn versions but most did not). You don't get access to the entire ecosystem without the tooling.
      - tmzt 7y ago
        You can use a site like https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ to include files from most npm packages using a script tag.
- deleted 7y ago
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koboll 7y ago

I challenge anyone who believes "the complexity building websites is growing" to go ahead and build a web app relying on multiple complex state machines with imperative jQuery calls, and then tell me it's less complex than the equivalent in React.

wolco 7y ago
The complexity comes from getting the tooling installed now and packages. If I can't just include a file things are going to get more complex. State machines are a method to solve a problem that could be expressed in other ways to make it fit the language better.
- woat 7y ago
  What is complex about the tooling? If I want to implement a rich text editor in my website, it will be as easy as 'npm install ...' and an import statement in the relevant file. Is there an advantage to make a state machine to solve this?
- ratww 7y ago
  > If I can't just include a file things are going to get more complex. But the tooling and npm packages are all optional. You can import React from a CDN and use stuff like htm [1] or domz [2] instead of a JSX compilation step. Or you can use Vue instead of React (their tutorial starts by using Vue via CDN). If you're able to only support 95% of the browsers, you can use most modern ES6 features, including ES Modules and async/await. If you still need the tooling, there are options like Parcel [3] or Poi.js [4] that require zero configuration. You don't really need the complexity of Webpack. -- [1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/htm https://www.npmjs.com/package/htm [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/domz https://www.npmjs.com/package/domz [3] https://www.npmjs.com/package/parcel https://www.npmjs.com/package/parcel [4] https://www.npmjs.com/package/poi https://www.npmjs.com/package/poi
  - wolco 7y ago
    I've used vue by including it. I've used react by including it and babel. When I tried to include other packages they were only available through npm (some had cdn versions but most did not). You don't get access to the entire ecosystem without the tooling.
    - tmzt 7y ago
      You can use a site like https://unpkg.com/ https://unpkg.com/ to include files from most npm packages using a script tag.
deleted 7y ago
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