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I would fund a rigorous study of frontend development with a team of academics who would gather details from a very large sample of organizations about frontend
by say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
I would fund a rigorous study of frontend development with a team of academics who would gather details from a very large sample of organizations about frontend development projects. My theory that I would seek to validate is that the vast majority of frontend work was unnecessary, overly complex, costly, and shouldn't have ever been funded. Chasing new approaches creates new problems. Following FAANG solutions to problems no one has is costing everyone time, effort, and money. Myths need to be debunked. Anecdotal evidence consisting exclusively of success stories is concealing the truth. It feels as if the entire frontend world has gone crazy and received financial support to fund an expensive addiction to unnecessary complexity.
- ketzo 7y agoCan you give some specific examples of this problem? Frontend developer curious what kind of trends/solutions you mean.
- chubot 7y agoHere's my take on it from a few months ago: ---- ... Claim: Most sites are mostly static content. For example, AirBNB or Grubhub. Those sites could be way faster than they are now if they were architected differently. Only when you check out do you need anything resembling an “app”. The browsing and searching is better done with a “document” model IMO. Ditto for YouTube... I think it used to be more a document model, but now it’s more like an app. And it’s gotten a lot slower, which I don’t think is a coincidence. Netflix is a more obvious example – it’s crazy slow. To address the OP: for Sourcehut/Github, I would say everything except the PR review system could use the document model. Navigating code and adding comments is arguably an app. On the other hand, there are things that are and should be apps: Google Maps, Docs, Sheets. edit: Yeah now that I check, YouTube does the infinite scroll thing, which is slow and annoying IMO (e.g. breaks bookmarking). Ditto for AirBNB. https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault#c_wucxv3 https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault#c_wuc... context: https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault I haven't used sourcehut much but the UI is going in the right direction IMO. It looks nice and is functional, at 5% of the weight and 20x the speed of similar sites.
- noahtallen 7y agoIsn’t Github following the document model? At least, that’s my impression of how the UI works (I.e. none of the consistent UI elements stick around as you navigate)
- chubot 7y agoYes Github looks pretty close to the document model. I think that's why they were able to optimize it over time. It isn't exactly fast, but I think it's gotten faster over time. On the other hand there are lots of blogs that won't even render without JS turned on. Those are apps, but IMO they should be static content.
- btown 7y agoWhat about when you need an editing interface with an instant preview, though? You would want to reuse the component that renders the static content. So it’s simpler, and leads to happier devs, to treat both as an app from the beginning, and if you need to (for SEO or performance), server-side-render using the same codebase. Is this silly? Absolutely. Is it a global optimum? Possibly.
- chubot 7y agoI don't really see what you're saying. That doesn't appear to apply to any of the examples I gave: AirBNB, Grubhub, Github, YouTube, etc. Or if it does, it applies to a small part of the site. Again, the claim is: most sites are mostly static content.
- richajak 7y agoFor this specific example, I would use event listener to sync the content. All done manually in DOM, no shortcut, some codes duplicated. I think that's what SPA frameworks and its components try to promote, single point of update. Personally, I like the vannila JS approach, a bit tedious, but I know what I will get.
- bazza451 7y agoCould you expand on this? I’m interested in the opinion