4 ms·

From a developer perspective, changes in frontend web development have been pretty dramatic: CSS Grid / Flexbox, React, WASM, extensions to the web API, lots of

From a developer perspective, changes in frontend web development have been pretty dramatic: CSS Grid / Flexbox, React, WASM, extensions to the web API, lots of new JS features, countless frameworks, plugins and build tools more homogeneity between browsers. There is always lots of change and excitement. I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. As a programmer, I get a bit cynical about having 50 ways to do the exact same thing. What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land? If we think about users first, maybe we can feel a bit less guilty of not having deployed React Hooks to prod yet?

chooseaname 6y ago
> I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. It makes a huge difference in terms of usability. Some sites are just plain awful to experience now. Not to mention battery hogs on mobile.
- mxschumacher 6y ago
  in the negative, I agree. I see all the hype around React but when I use Facebook.com I am thoroughly underwhelmed.
  - phailhaus 6y ago
    Eh? You can't "tell" what framework a site is using just by interacting with the site. What you see is what the designers decided. A better proxy, though weak, would be the number of UI bugs you encounter. The best metric would require you to have insider knowledge, to see how much work is saved by reusing components and writing them declaratively.
    - RL_Quine 6y ago
      You can usually tell react based things from the poor performance and bad handling of network conditions.
      - valand 6y ago
        Nah, this is just because tutorials for these new frameworks does not include network handling. It's far more easier to put todo list app or counter app to your blogs. Really, we need people to come together to build a proper knowledge base rather than fighting for influence with hype and easy blog posts
    - traverseda 6y ago
      Might just be a firefox thing, or a symptom of my ad-blocker, but facebook and the reddit redesign are both pretty terrible performance wise. The thingiverse redesign seems performant though so I don't know.
    - noisem4ker 6y ago
      When a website loads displaying a spinner or a splash screen, you know it was made with some heavy framework, it's going to be slow, it's going to break a number of estabilished web UX paradigms (such as scrolling, history or the ability to open links in new tabs) and your phone will feel warm in your hand. You just know.
      - phailhaus 6y ago
        Python lets you write clunky, slow, and bloated programs. That doesn't mean that all Python programs are clunky, slow, and bloated. It just lets you get away with it. Those obnoxiously clunky sites most probably use a popular JS framework, but they made the poor decisions to override scrolling, history, links, etc.
phailhaus 6y ago
> What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land? Declaratively writing components and reusing behavior (e.g., hooks) across components/applications was basically impossible with the tools of 10 years ago. The benefit to the user is more stable interfaces and a faster release rate.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > benefit to the user is more stable interfaces Doubt. Websites are constantly redesigning their interfaces so that they can use the latest trendy technology.
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Why blame developers? Why not the designers or product managers?
  - phailhaus 6y ago
    Is that the fault of the frameworks for existing? That's like saying we'd be better off if we didn't have so many programming languages.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tobyhinloopen 6y ago
  I totally disagree. Reusable components were already there using jquery plugins. Everyone used them and they were easy to use and easy to install. They were deployed as a single file, with optional CSS. Try writing a reusable component now. You have to target all major frameworks and tooling.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    I think you may be conflating components and good old fashioned libraries. You can certainly make a component into a library but that's not their main use case. Their main use-case is for organization and reusability within a singular codebase. I write reusable components all the time inside my codebases. I never have to target anything except the stack I'm using for my project.
duxup 6y ago
Flexbox certainly allows me to accomplish things faster / in ways I couldn't (or wasn't going to hack together with tables) before. Is that for the user, I don't think they care, but they do get changes faster / more features because I'm not pulling my hair out over tables....
d0m 6y ago
Analogy: Like looking at stock prices. As javascript developers, we see all the tiny changes every day and it can feel overwhelming. However, looking at with a long-term view, there are only a few major spikes and it seems to be nicely growing.
onion2k 6y ago
I want to break this list of things down a bit; CSS Grid / Flexbox - Flexbox was defined in 2009, and was added to browsers about 10 years ago and iterated since. It was literally in the first public version of Chrome. This is not some new tech that's blindsided everyone. Grid is a couple of years old. React - First released 7 years ago and iterated since. Reasonably mainstream for 5 years. That's not a very dramatic change. WASM - Around for a few years now in browsers but tooling for different languages is still patchy. Entirely unnecessary for 99.9% of web development. Most people are still in the "use it because it's cool" phase rather than "use it because it's actually useful". extensions to the web API - Various, obviously. Can't really argue this point. lots of new JS features - Various, but not actually very fast moving with new features. Most things are made available earlier through transpilers, so you can use a feature without it being in mainstream JS engines if you want to. Can't really blame the web if you make that choice though. countless frameworks - You don't need to learn them all. Pick any number to use between zero and all of them depending on how much time you want to spend learning frameworks. Again, this is a choice, and if you're finding it overwhelming it's because you picked the wrong number of frameworks to learn. plugins and build tools - Same answer again. Pick something and learn it. Update your skills every few years if you think your tooling is holding you back. more homogeneity between browsers - This reduces complexity. To complain about that in a list of things to taking up your time is weird. The web isn't that fast moving. I completely agree with your point about focusing on things that benefit the user though. I would argue that frameworks and build tools that enable me to iterate features faster do that though.
- Elinvynia 6y ago
  There is always some lag when it comes to being safe to use certain features, while it's true that flexbox is quite old, consider that at the time it was released many people still had to support browsers like IE6/7.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    There was also a problem that the spec changed so at one point you had to support two versions, which put a lot of people off adopting it for a long time. The point is still that this stuff isn't new though. Browsers don't change very quickly, especially for the fundamental building blocks of how you get a website on a screen.
Ataraxy 6y ago
I would also argue in direct contrast to the author that it makes a difference in terms of keeping interest. The new thing to learn in a dynamic ever changing landscape is also a way of staving off monotony. I legitimately don't care about React hooks though one way or another and it's a bizarre thing to draw a line at.

chooseaname 6y ago

> I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. It makes a huge difference in terms of usability. Some sites are just plain awful to experience now. Not to mention battery hogs on mobile.

mxschumacher 6y ago
in the negative, I agree. I see all the hype around React but when I use Facebook.com I am thoroughly underwhelmed.
- phailhaus 6y ago
  Eh? You can't "tell" what framework a site is using just by interacting with the site. What you see is what the designers decided. A better proxy, though weak, would be the number of UI bugs you encounter. The best metric would require you to have insider knowledge, to see how much work is saved by reusing components and writing them declaratively.
  - RL_Quine 6y ago
    You can usually tell react based things from the poor performance and bad handling of network conditions.
    - valand 6y ago
      Nah, this is just because tutorials for these new frameworks does not include network handling. It's far more easier to put todo list app or counter app to your blogs. Really, we need people to come together to build a proper knowledge base rather than fighting for influence with hype and easy blog posts
  - traverseda 6y ago
    Might just be a firefox thing, or a symptom of my ad-blocker, but facebook and the reddit redesign are both pretty terrible performance wise. The thingiverse redesign seems performant though so I don't know.
  - noisem4ker 6y ago
    When a website loads displaying a spinner or a splash screen, you know it was made with some heavy framework, it's going to be slow, it's going to break a number of estabilished web UX paradigms (such as scrolling, history or the ability to open links in new tabs) and your phone will feel warm in your hand. You just know.
    - phailhaus 6y ago
      Python lets you write clunky, slow, and bloated programs. That doesn't mean that all Python programs are clunky, slow, and bloated. It just lets you get away with it. Those obnoxiously clunky sites most probably use a popular JS framework, but they made the poor decisions to override scrolling, history, links, etc.

phailhaus 6y ago

> What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land? Declaratively writing components and reusing behavior (e.g., hooks) across components/applications was basically impossible with the tools of 10 years ago. The benefit to the user is more stable interfaces and a faster release rate.

dahfizz 6y ago
> benefit to the user is more stable interfaces Doubt. Websites are constantly redesigning their interfaces so that they can use the latest trendy technology.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Why blame developers? Why not the designers or product managers?
- phailhaus 6y ago
  Is that the fault of the frameworks for existing? That's like saying we'd be better off if we didn't have so many programming languages.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tobyhinloopen 6y ago
I totally disagree. Reusable components were already there using jquery plugins. Everyone used them and they were easy to use and easy to install. They were deployed as a single file, with optional CSS. Try writing a reusable component now. You have to target all major frameworks and tooling.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  I think you may be conflating components and good old fashioned libraries. You can certainly make a component into a library but that's not their main use case. Their main use-case is for organization and reusability within a singular codebase. I write reusable components all the time inside my codebases. I never have to target anything except the stack I'm using for my project.

duxup 6y ago

Flexbox certainly allows me to accomplish things faster / in ways I couldn't (or wasn't going to hack together with tables) before. Is that for the user, I don't think they care, but they do get changes faster / more features because I'm not pulling my hair out over tables....

d0m 6y ago

Analogy: Like looking at stock prices. As javascript developers, we see all the tiny changes every day and it can feel overwhelming. However, looking at with a long-term view, there are only a few major spikes and it seems to be nicely growing.

onion2k 6y ago

I want to break this list of things down a bit; CSS Grid / Flexbox - Flexbox was defined in 2009, and was added to browsers about 10 years ago and iterated since. It was literally in the first public version of Chrome. This is not some new tech that's blindsided everyone. Grid is a couple of years old. React - First released 7 years ago and iterated since. Reasonably mainstream for 5 years. That's not a very dramatic change. WASM - Around for a few years now in browsers but tooling for different languages is still patchy. Entirely unnecessary for 99.9% of web development. Most people are still in the "use it because it's cool" phase rather than "use it because it's actually useful". extensions to the web API - Various, obviously. Can't really argue this point. lots of new JS features - Various, but not actually very fast moving with new features. Most things are made available earlier through transpilers, so you can use a feature without it being in mainstream JS engines if you want to. Can't really blame the web if you make that choice though. countless frameworks - You don't need to learn them all. Pick any number to use between zero and all of them depending on how much time you want to spend learning frameworks. Again, this is a choice, and if you're finding it overwhelming it's because you picked the wrong number of frameworks to learn. plugins and build tools - Same answer again. Pick something and learn it. Update your skills every few years if you think your tooling is holding you back. more homogeneity between browsers - This reduces complexity. To complain about that in a list of things to taking up your time is weird. The web isn't that fast moving. I completely agree with your point about focusing on things that benefit the user though. I would argue that frameworks and build tools that enable me to iterate features faster do that though.

Elinvynia 6y ago
There is always some lag when it comes to being safe to use certain features, while it's true that flexbox is quite old, consider that at the time it was released many people still had to support browsers like IE6/7.
- onion2k 6y ago
  There was also a problem that the spec changed so at one point you had to support two versions, which put a lot of people off adopting it for a long time. The point is still that this stuff isn't new though. Browsers don't change very quickly, especially for the fundamental building blocks of how you get a website on a screen.

Ataraxy 6y ago

I would also argue in direct contrast to the author that it makes a difference in terms of keeping interest. The new thing to learn in a dynamic ever changing landscape is also a way of staving off monotony. I legitimately don't care about React hooks though one way or another and it's a bizarre thing to draw a line at.