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One of the reasons I moved away from web presentation projects is overwhelming frustration at just this: There is no other area of technology where there is so

One of the reasons I moved away from web presentation projects is overwhelming frustration at just this: There is no other area of technology where there is so much running to stand still: Massive amounts of make-work and "innovation" to do pretty much exactly what people did in 1999. It is extraordinary how many libraries and magical solutions can be embedded to create something that a 15 year old in Notepad threw together with basic CSS and HMTL twenty years ago. I apologize to the web community at large for the snarky, dismissive tone, but seriously it just seems extraordinary how it's just an endless march of new approaches and new silver bullets to do absolutely trivial things. Arguments about maintainability or extensibility fall by the wayside when that trend du jour is discarded next month because now it's being rebuilt on Backwind on the Spry framework using the TypelessScript stack, etc. I am absolutely in awe at the advancement in virtually every other area of technology, almost all of it worth every bit of attention and learning. Where we are building enormous, hugely complex projects. Then we have the web where after countless "toss it all and throw it all away" cycles, the community is heralding this. This is what has, to quote the linked article, " taken the frontend world by storm".

colordrops 6y ago
I have no idea about Tailwind and have never used it. That being said, your apprehension at making this statement is valid. To call it "absolutely trivial" is absurdly dismissive. Just because you don't think design and layout are important or difficult does not make it so. I know several designers that would take serious offense to you comparing their work to that of a 15 year old's throwaway. Visualization and UI design are a maturing field, and the constant iteration on HTML and CSS is to support the designer's ability to take their vision and realize it on the page.
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  "Just because you don't think design and layout are not important or difficult" I said neither of these and am not interested in debating a strawman.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    What exactly do you think all these libraries and magical solutions are trying to address then? 15 year olds putting a spinning link gif on a static HTML page?
    - wolco2 6y ago
      In fairness those pages offered more content per square inch than modern whitespace centric design.
    - rimliu 6y ago
      They try do address the fear of dealing with CSS by people who do not know nor want to know it.
  - wendall911 6y ago
    I'm not sure why your dismissive tone is somehow upvoted here. I rarely comment and do not see how this as a strawman. If this is not a strawman, then explain how a 15yo with notepad can do the same as these solutions with a defensible stance. Is it because the person replying to you wasn't nice and give you fluffy kind words? I'm not understanding why the thin skin here. If you make a bold statement, it should be able to be backed up. Problem is here that you can't, so just ad hominem instead.
    - bfgoodrich 6y ago
      You pulled this account out -- one that had been untouched for seemingly seven years -- to make these insults? If you can't separate design from Yet Another Trivial Variation on a Theme, that's a you problem. Trying to conflate the two is disingenuous.
      - destroyHN 6y ago
        Oh do fuck off, you pompous prick.
      - wendall911 6y ago
robertoandred 6y ago
I'd say that the fact that you think something thrown together in notepad 20 years ago can be comparable to modern web technologies just shows how little you understand what exactly modern web tech does or why it's useful.
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  Twenty years ago I was the lead architect of a web application -- I'm 48 now, for the ageists who would like to dismiss based upon that -- that was a power generation monitoring and control panel for distributed power across the US. We were one of the first users in the world of the XMLHttpRequest ActiveX object that the MSXML team released through subterfuge (I know because we hit every defect head first). Since then I directed development on a number of absurdly rich and powerful platforms across telecom and the financial world. We were leading the respective industries when everyone was pushing Java, Flash, XAML/WinForms, etc at various junctures (each coming and faltering). We had a better than native mobile "app" using web tech. I was one of the early and vigorous public proponents of SVG. These applications, going back up to two decades ago, demolish the overwhelming bulk of web apps people are working on today in design complexity, actual functionality, and so on. Yeah, I have a pretty good notion about "modern web technology", and often it feels like farce. Like it's a parody and I'm left wondering if I should say something because I missed the joke. The amazing self-congratulatory praise about, again, trivial nonsense just boggles.
  - robertoandred 6y ago
    Did you direct your developers to use Notepad?
  - aniforprez 6y ago
    So your comment can basically be boiled down to "old man yells at cloud" And no none of the problems that are being solved can be done in notepad
    - bfgoodrich 6y ago
      Yeah, something like that... Or, and maybe this is just my old man dementia talking, millions of extremely low-skill developers have flooded into the market, primarily building "web apps". An endless procession of "make trivial stuff easy for really incompetent developers" solutions appear to pander to them -- and their brother-in-arms "make trivial stuff seem complex and engineer-ee" solutions -- and this is a group that finds each of these variations on an obsolete theme revolutionary. Humorous that multiple people have been triggered by the notepad comment. Yet...many extremely rich pages and apps have been built in exactly such a manner! That this is seen as outlandish is pretty telling.
cuddlecake 6y ago
Your entire criticism boils down to "what waste of time trying to solve trivial things" without defining what you regard as trivial.
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  It doesn't, but you are welcome to enjoy your own bias in your interpretation.
  - cuddlecake 6y ago
    If it doesn't, surely, you can define what you mean by "trivial things"?

colordrops 6y ago

I have no idea about Tailwind and have never used it. That being said, your apprehension at making this statement is valid. To call it "absolutely trivial" is absurdly dismissive. Just because you don't think design and layout are important or difficult does not make it so. I know several designers that would take serious offense to you comparing their work to that of a 15 year old's throwaway. Visualization and UI design are a maturing field, and the constant iteration on HTML and CSS is to support the designer's ability to take their vision and realize it on the page.

bfgoodrich 6y ago
"Just because you don't think design and layout are not important or difficult" I said neither of these and am not interested in debating a strawman.
- colordrops 6y ago
  What exactly do you think all these libraries and magical solutions are trying to address then? 15 year olds putting a spinning link gif on a static HTML page?
  - wolco2 6y ago
    In fairness those pages offered more content per square inch than modern whitespace centric design.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    They try do address the fear of dealing with CSS by people who do not know nor want to know it.
- wendall911 6y ago
  I'm not sure why your dismissive tone is somehow upvoted here. I rarely comment and do not see how this as a strawman. If this is not a strawman, then explain how a 15yo with notepad can do the same as these solutions with a defensible stance. Is it because the person replying to you wasn't nice and give you fluffy kind words? I'm not understanding why the thin skin here. If you make a bold statement, it should be able to be backed up. Problem is here that you can't, so just ad hominem instead.
  - bfgoodrich 6y ago
    You pulled this account out -- one that had been untouched for seemingly seven years -- to make these insults? If you can't separate design from Yet Another Trivial Variation on a Theme, that's a you problem. Trying to conflate the two is disingenuous.
    - destroyHN 6y ago
      Oh do fuck off, you pompous prick.
    - wendall911 6y ago

robertoandred 6y ago

I'd say that the fact that you think something thrown together in notepad 20 years ago can be comparable to modern web technologies just shows how little you understand what exactly modern web tech does or why it's useful.

bfgoodrich 6y ago
Twenty years ago I was the lead architect of a web application -- I'm 48 now, for the ageists who would like to dismiss based upon that -- that was a power generation monitoring and control panel for distributed power across the US. We were one of the first users in the world of the XMLHttpRequest ActiveX object that the MSXML team released through subterfuge (I know because we hit every defect head first). Since then I directed development on a number of absurdly rich and powerful platforms across telecom and the financial world. We were leading the respective industries when everyone was pushing Java, Flash, XAML/WinForms, etc at various junctures (each coming and faltering). We had a better than native mobile "app" using web tech. I was one of the early and vigorous public proponents of SVG. These applications, going back up to two decades ago, demolish the overwhelming bulk of web apps people are working on today in design complexity, actual functionality, and so on. Yeah, I have a pretty good notion about "modern web technology", and often it feels like farce. Like it's a parody and I'm left wondering if I should say something because I missed the joke. The amazing self-congratulatory praise about, again, trivial nonsense just boggles.
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Did you direct your developers to use Notepad?
- aniforprez 6y ago
  So your comment can basically be boiled down to "old man yells at cloud" And no none of the problems that are being solved can be done in notepad
  - bfgoodrich 6y ago
    Yeah, something like that... Or, and maybe this is just my old man dementia talking, millions of extremely low-skill developers have flooded into the market, primarily building "web apps". An endless procession of "make trivial stuff easy for really incompetent developers" solutions appear to pander to them -- and their brother-in-arms "make trivial stuff seem complex and engineer-ee" solutions -- and this is a group that finds each of these variations on an obsolete theme revolutionary. Humorous that multiple people have been triggered by the notepad comment. Yet...many extremely rich pages and apps have been built in exactly such a manner! That this is seen as outlandish is pretty telling.

cuddlecake 6y ago

Your entire criticism boils down to "what waste of time trying to solve trivial things" without defining what you regard as trivial.

bfgoodrich 6y ago
It doesn't, but you are welcome to enjoy your own bias in your interpretation.
- cuddlecake 6y ago
  If it doesn't, surely, you can define what you mean by "trivial things"?