5 ms·

"Modern" web development is apparently a game of Jenga.

by brazzy 6y ago

CharlesW 6y ago
I don't understand the point you're making. Mind elaborating?
- brazzy 6y ago
  There is a ridiculous number of moving parts, stacked on top of each other, interacting in unforeseeable ways to allow you to shoot yourself in the foot, and absolutely nothing is straightforward. OK, that basically describes any kind of software development, but web seems so much worse than anything else. And I say that as someone doing mainly Java backend development who's learned to live with the AbstractProxyFactoryManagerFactory jokes.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate the explanation.
lwansbrough 6y ago
It certainly feels that way sometimes. But web is rather unique. There aren't any other platforms that demand you deliver an application for "a device" (specifications unknown!) in under 1 second.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Web is indeed unique. No one else would consider a magazine article "an application".
- Frost1x 6y ago
  There's such a thing as an unreasonable, unrealistic, or downright stupid demand as well. What you often see is a house of cards hacked together to try and support such demands on the web. Sending reasonably well visually formated text is definitely a reasonable demand though.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  That's why there's all kinds of helpful features in HTML/CSS like media queries. You can serve up raw content and let the device make decisions on what resources to use to display the content. You can tell the device the most optimal resources for its particular constraints. As a for instance you your script tag can just include a bunch of @import statements. Thankfully @import statements support media queries [0]. So you get the utility of external style sheets but can load one optimized for the client device. Unlike media queries on link tags the browser doesn't load style sheets (well they're not supposed to) that don't match the media queries. It's also trivial to include a tiny bit of base styling with every page in a script tag. It doesn't blow any size budgets and makes sure a page is readable even with no external assets. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@import https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@import
wackget 6y ago
Only because developers absolutely insist on building things that way, for some reason I will never comprehend. What's the first thing most people do when starting a new project? They ask "what framework should I build this on?" and start their tiny portfolio site built upon a massively overpowered suite of enterprise-level software with a million features they'll never, ever need. Then they might drop in ten or fifteen separate external libraries because using vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is just "so 1995". Then they start thinking about AJAX and microservices because rendering an entire page on the server side is utterly unthinkable in 2021. Then they cram the site full of third-party services (because your tiny home-brew website will definitely benefit from Newrelic monitoring). Then they might start on unit testing. Finally they package everything up using at least seven different dependency managers, because a Github project without 100 useless ancillary files (grunt.js, app.yaml, travis.yml, composer.json, .gitignore, etc. etc.) is obviously not acceptable. And this is why I hate modern web development.
- xmprt 6y ago
  I remember reading a blog post about a fake conversation between two developers about web development and one way telling the other about how "easy" it is and goes through a 5 step process of how to build their 1 page website. That was written at least 5 years ago and things have only gotten worse since then.
- halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  This is such a tired take. Logic has been moved from the backend to the frontend (again) which has justified the complexity.
  - zwaps 6y ago
    I have a slow (apparently) work laptop and the web is horribly slow. Some pages feel like surfin' the pre 2000 web with all that lag and slow loading everytime anything moves. For myself, I would appreciate more such takes.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    > This is such a tired take Quite the opposite. It needs to be hammered into people. Your app isn't Notion or Google Docs. Your app is a form with a login menu and a couple of small logic elements and a date picker.
WillPostForFood 6y ago
And designing to please Google.

"Modern" web development is apparently a game of Jenga.

by brazzy 6y ago

"Modern" web development is apparently a game of Jenga.

CharlesW 6y ago

I don't understand the point you're making. Mind elaborating?

brazzy 6y ago
There is a ridiculous number of moving parts, stacked on top of each other, interacting in unforeseeable ways to allow you to shoot yourself in the foot, and absolutely nothing is straightforward. OK, that basically describes any kind of software development, but web seems so much worse than anything else. And I say that as someone doing mainly Java backend development who's learned to live with the AbstractProxyFactoryManagerFactory jokes.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  Thanks! I appreciate the explanation.

lwansbrough 6y ago

It certainly feels that way sometimes. But web is rather unique. There aren't any other platforms that demand you deliver an application for "a device" (specifications unknown!) in under 1 second.

majewsky 6y ago
Web is indeed unique. No one else would consider a magazine article "an application".
Frost1x 6y ago
There's such a thing as an unreasonable, unrealistic, or downright stupid demand as well. What you often see is a house of cards hacked together to try and support such demands on the web. Sending reasonably well visually formated text is definitely a reasonable demand though.
giantrobot 6y ago
That's why there's all kinds of helpful features in HTML/CSS like media queries. You can serve up raw content and let the device make decisions on what resources to use to display the content. You can tell the device the most optimal resources for its particular constraints. As a for instance you your script tag can just include a bunch of @import statements. Thankfully @import statements support media queries [0]. So you get the utility of external style sheets but can load one optimized for the client device. Unlike media queries on link tags the browser doesn't load style sheets (well they're not supposed to) that don't match the media queries. It's also trivial to include a tiny bit of base styling with every page in a script tag. It doesn't blow any size budgets and makes sure a page is readable even with no external assets. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@import https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@import

wackget 6y ago

Only because developers absolutely insist on building things that way, for some reason I will never comprehend. What's the first thing most people do when starting a new project? They ask "what framework should I build this on?" and start their tiny portfolio site built upon a massively overpowered suite of enterprise-level software with a million features they'll never, ever need. Then they might drop in ten or fifteen separate external libraries because using vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is just "so 1995". Then they start thinking about AJAX and microservices because rendering an entire page on the server side is utterly unthinkable in 2021. Then they cram the site full of third-party services (because your tiny home-brew website will definitely benefit from Newrelic monitoring). Then they might start on unit testing. Finally they package everything up using at least seven different dependency managers, because a Github project without 100 useless ancillary files (grunt.js, app.yaml, travis.yml, composer.json, .gitignore, etc. etc.) is obviously not acceptable. And this is why I hate modern web development.

xmprt 6y ago
I remember reading a blog post about a fake conversation between two developers about web development and one way telling the other about how "easy" it is and goes through a 5 step process of how to build their 1 page website. That was written at least 5 years ago and things have only gotten worse since then.
halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
This is such a tired take. Logic has been moved from the backend to the frontend (again) which has justified the complexity.
- zwaps 6y ago
  I have a slow (apparently) work laptop and the web is horribly slow. Some pages feel like surfin' the pre 2000 web with all that lag and slow loading everytime anything moves. For myself, I would appreciate more such takes.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > This is such a tired take Quite the opposite. It needs to be hammered into people. Your app isn't Notion or Google Docs. Your app is a form with a login menu and a couple of small logic elements and a date picker.

WillPostForFood 6y ago

And designing to please Google.