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Frank is right, of course. Staying up to date with the tooling, best practices, and user expectations of the web requires an unreasonable amount of attention if

Frank is right, of course. Staying up to date with the tooling, best practices, and user expectations of the web requires an unreasonable amount of attention if making websites is only a small part of your service offering. One reason I prefer frontend libraries like Vue and Svelte is they feel closer to the grain of the web (HTMLesque templates with JS and CSS sprinkled in), and provide a reasonable level of abstraction and magic. The learning curve and paradox of choice is also much easier to navigate than React especially for solo devs who aren't working on a huge app with a team.

MereInterest 5y ago
And this is exactly why any of my hobby projects that involve JS are done with plain JS, with as few libraries as possible. I might pull in specific libraries, but I don't want to pull in a giant framework that will be outdated the next time I decide to work on that particular project.
- rectang 5y ago
  Another thing I find weird is how bloated static typical site generator tools are. The delivery medium of static HTML is timeless. But the odds that a static site generator with dozens of dependencies will still work N years from now? Grim.
  - nanna 5y ago
    'Typically' meaning...? Jekyll? Gatsby?
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I have a couple of older static sites (one using Jekyll/Octopress, one using Middleman), and if I ever do a bundle update something is guaranteed to break. Not sure if that's the "bloat" the parent comment is talking about though.
      - cutler 5y ago
        I've been using Perl Template::Toolkit since around 2001 and it's even better since version 3 was released. Worth a try. You don't even need to know Perl to make use of it.
    - laurent92 5y ago
      Yes. I was on Jekyll 2 years ago, I don’t think I’ll be able to compile it in two years. It’s already on an old version of Ruby if I remember, if not Bundle or Gulp or... and it’s just a simple website.
    - blacktriangle 5y ago
      I've had this exact issue with my Middleman sites.
  - lenkite 5y ago
    They all started off lean and mean. Then after adding feature after feature they become bloated. Then the next lean-and-mean static HTMl generator becomes vogue.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    just write html by hand. With html5, implicit and auto-closing tags, it's really not more difficult than markdown. Then your "generator" is simply the cat program, that appends a common header and footer.
  - red_trumpet 5y ago
    Bashblog[1] is pretty lean, and doesn't use any dependencies. [1] https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog
  - vitejose 5y ago
    One of the reasons I like Hugo: it's a single executable that will basically work forever. There's no need to update to a newer version if the one you have meets your needs.
  - brunoluiz 5y ago
    That is why I've changed to Hugo (from Hexo & Gatsby). It does exactly what is supposed to, it doesn't import any dependencies and it is quite fast. Besides, no runtime is required. I thought about plain HTML, but writing blog articles with it is a bit of a pain. Hugo was quite the right balance.
  - tomgp 5y ago
    agreed, but for me the appeal of static site generation is that the input is typically just markdown and some templates so even if a particular generator ceases to be supported it should be trivial to drop in a replacement in whatever the currently fashionable language is.
- lenkite 5y ago
  A micro-library like https://redom.js.org/ https://redom.js.org/ does make things easier though. I have also given up on mega-frameworks - just too many things to keep in mind as I get older.
  - winphone1974 5y ago
    Easier through ignorance seems like cheating IMO. you're basically saying yes things are harder but I just ignore them. How would a newbie decide what's safe to skip?
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      While agree with your conclusion, I don't agree with your argument to reach it. Any software development sits on such a tall and wobbly stack of dependencies that no one human can even understand every layer, let alone build it. For most projects, I don't hand-solder together transistors into the logic layer, write my own bootstrapping compiler out of hex assembly instructions, or directly interface with graphics drivers to display the program's output. That doesn't make these be bad programs or bad projects, just because they are focused on only one part of the program space. My concern isn't in "ignorance" or "cheating", but in spending time to learn a technology or framework that may quickly become obsolete.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Here's my "femto-library" for creating DOM dynamically from JS: function ce(tag, attrs={}, children=[]){ var el=document.createElement(tag); for(var attrName in attrs){ el[attrName]=attrs[attrName]; } for(var child of children){ el.appendChild(child); } return el; };
- nirui 5y ago
  > ... are done with plain JS, with as few libraries as possible ... I was having the same opinion and practice. However, I'm kind regret it as well. Even if you done everything with plain JS, eventually, one day some idea will float into your head such as "Hey... I want to automatically compress the script file/snip", "Hey I wonder if I can polyfill all my script", "Automatically bundle assets?", "Compress assets images?" etc. Then, you start to learn Webpack/Gulp/Grunt (if the last two are still alive), and commit your entire soul to it few minutes later. I think the reason for the messy front-end tech is, the Web itself is messy. You have to consider a lots of things, networking, file management, cache management, cookie, user-side storage, security etc. Some eyes saw the problem and then built a framework to address it, then others discovered some other issues in the framework ... the circle of life. I guess we'll eventually settle down on something when people finally figure out what they want from the Web technology, or when the Web is "dead" (no dramatic changes anymore, like what happened to Desktop Applications today).
  - alanbernstein 5y ago
    I have lots of tiny hobby projects. I never want to do any of those things you mentioned. Just a simple page, with the minimum amount of javascript to make it work.
  - majewsky 5y ago
    > Hey... I want to automatically compress the script file The trick is to write so little JS that its bandwidth usage does not even register. I'm recently going as far as to include licensing headers and extensive comments in my website JS, see e.g. <https://xyrillian.de/res/chapter-marks.js https://xyrillian.de/res/chapter-marks.js>.
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      I can't find a link at the moment, but there was an article on Hacker News a few years ago defending the use of plain text web pages with minimal styling. The page loaded amazingly fast, rendered well on both desktop and mobile, and had fast interactions with the page. The author had also included the full text of Moby Dick, more content than is ever served in a typical webpage. It was a fun and cheeky demonstration that it isn't the content of a webpage that results in poor performance, but all the frameworks, ad targeting, and client-side compiling of a webpage. (Side rant: I refuse to use the term "client-side rendering", because dang it, "rendering" makes an image. "Client-side rendering" as web developers use the term doesn't actually render anything, but instead compiles the page down to HTML, which is then rendered by the browser.)
- d13 5y ago
  This should be industry standard practice.
runawaybottle 5y ago
Let’s not just pick on frontend. Has anyone seen what it takes to run something on AWS? Devops is nearing similar levels of insanity, and often for applications that won’t even have 50 users (seriously, all these companies that advertise for AWS experience for a tool that is going to be fucking internal with less than 50 users). It all builds up in me to be honest. You get the frontend complicated, then the deploy/infra gets complicated for the needless cloud dependency, and then the backend people don’t want to get left out of the party so they manage to rewrite their shitty php app in Go. It’s like a shitty third world country. Not only do the roads suck, but there’s no water or electricity half the time, and you need to bribe everyone to get something. Instead of it becoming a wasteland, the population somehow still increases (more people actually entering tech). Now you really can’t change anything because there’s too many people. How the wicked live.
- watermelon59 5y ago
  > Has anyone seen what it takes to run something on AWS? I've given up every time I've tried it on personal projects. It's just a complete poorly document mess indeed. At work we host our stuff on AWS but we have an ops team that deals with all the garbage. All I care about are APIs, endpoints and that one thing can talk to another.
  - cutler 5y ago
    Yeah, so much for the fantasy of cloud platforms eliminating the need for ops staff. The guy who used to setup and manage your Linux VPSs just switched jobs to manage your AWS infra and charges extra for it.
- qudat 5y ago
  Finally a voice of reason. The front end isnt the only thing that has become complicated. How many services are running on k8s? Now how many of them actually need it? The list goes on. The front end isnt that complicated relative to back end, there is just one ecosystem vs 10 for the back end.
- xupybd 5y ago
  I recently got asked to consult for a project. I warned not to go with AWS that the tools they were wanting to put online were not well suited to AWS. Then I got sent a 15 page deployment document outlining the AWS infrastructure they had gone with. They paid megabucks and got a rube goldberg machine. To run a zend based PHP site developed 15 years ago that has never had any significant maintenance.

MereInterest 5y ago

And this is exactly why any of my hobby projects that involve JS are done with plain JS, with as few libraries as possible. I might pull in specific libraries, but I don't want to pull in a giant framework that will be outdated the next time I decide to work on that particular project.

rectang 5y ago
Another thing I find weird is how bloated static typical site generator tools are. The delivery medium of static HTML is timeless. But the odds that a static site generator with dozens of dependencies will still work N years from now? Grim.
- nanna 5y ago
  'Typically' meaning...? Jekyll? Gatsby?
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    I have a couple of older static sites (one using Jekyll/Octopress, one using Middleman), and if I ever do a bundle update something is guaranteed to break. Not sure if that's the "bloat" the parent comment is talking about though.
    - cutler 5y ago
      I've been using Perl Template::Toolkit since around 2001 and it's even better since version 3 was released. Worth a try. You don't even need to know Perl to make use of it.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    Yes. I was on Jekyll 2 years ago, I don’t think I’ll be able to compile it in two years. It’s already on an old version of Ruby if I remember, if not Bundle or Gulp or... and it’s just a simple website.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    I've had this exact issue with my Middleman sites.
- lenkite 5y ago
  They all started off lean and mean. Then after adding feature after feature they become bloated. Then the next lean-and-mean static HTMl generator becomes vogue.
- enriquto 5y ago
  just write html by hand. With html5, implicit and auto-closing tags, it's really not more difficult than markdown. Then your "generator" is simply the cat program, that appends a common header and footer.
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  Bashblog[1] is pretty lean, and doesn't use any dependencies. [1] https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog
- vitejose 5y ago
  One of the reasons I like Hugo: it's a single executable that will basically work forever. There's no need to update to a newer version if the one you have meets your needs.
- brunoluiz 5y ago
  That is why I've changed to Hugo (from Hexo & Gatsby). It does exactly what is supposed to, it doesn't import any dependencies and it is quite fast. Besides, no runtime is required. I thought about plain HTML, but writing blog articles with it is a bit of a pain. Hugo was quite the right balance.
- tomgp 5y ago
  agreed, but for me the appeal of static site generation is that the input is typically just markdown and some templates so even if a particular generator ceases to be supported it should be trivial to drop in a replacement in whatever the currently fashionable language is.
lenkite 5y ago
A micro-library like https://redom.js.org/ https://redom.js.org/ does make things easier though. I have also given up on mega-frameworks - just too many things to keep in mind as I get older.
- winphone1974 5y ago
  Easier through ignorance seems like cheating IMO. you're basically saying yes things are harder but I just ignore them. How would a newbie decide what's safe to skip?
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    While agree with your conclusion, I don't agree with your argument to reach it. Any software development sits on such a tall and wobbly stack of dependencies that no one human can even understand every layer, let alone build it. For most projects, I don't hand-solder together transistors into the logic layer, write my own bootstrapping compiler out of hex assembly instructions, or directly interface with graphics drivers to display the program's output. That doesn't make these be bad programs or bad projects, just because they are focused on only one part of the program space. My concern isn't in "ignorance" or "cheating", but in spending time to learn a technology or framework that may quickly become obsolete.
- grishka 5y ago
  Here's my "femto-library" for creating DOM dynamically from JS: function ce(tag, attrs={}, children=[]){ var el=document.createElement(tag); for(var attrName in attrs){ el[attrName]=attrs[attrName]; } for(var child of children){ el.appendChild(child); } return el; };
nirui 5y ago
> ... are done with plain JS, with as few libraries as possible ... I was having the same opinion and practice. However, I'm kind regret it as well. Even if you done everything with plain JS, eventually, one day some idea will float into your head such as "Hey... I want to automatically compress the script file/snip", "Hey I wonder if I can polyfill all my script", "Automatically bundle assets?", "Compress assets images?" etc. Then, you start to learn Webpack/Gulp/Grunt (if the last two are still alive), and commit your entire soul to it few minutes later. I think the reason for the messy front-end tech is, the Web itself is messy. You have to consider a lots of things, networking, file management, cache management, cookie, user-side storage, security etc. Some eyes saw the problem and then built a framework to address it, then others discovered some other issues in the framework ... the circle of life. I guess we'll eventually settle down on something when people finally figure out what they want from the Web technology, or when the Web is "dead" (no dramatic changes anymore, like what happened to Desktop Applications today).
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  I have lots of tiny hobby projects. I never want to do any of those things you mentioned. Just a simple page, with the minimum amount of javascript to make it work.
- majewsky 5y ago
  > Hey... I want to automatically compress the script file The trick is to write so little JS that its bandwidth usage does not even register. I'm recently going as far as to include licensing headers and extensive comments in my website JS, see e.g. <https://xyrillian.de/res/chapter-marks.js https://xyrillian.de/res/chapter-marks.js>.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    I can't find a link at the moment, but there was an article on Hacker News a few years ago defending the use of plain text web pages with minimal styling. The page loaded amazingly fast, rendered well on both desktop and mobile, and had fast interactions with the page. The author had also included the full text of Moby Dick, more content than is ever served in a typical webpage. It was a fun and cheeky demonstration that it isn't the content of a webpage that results in poor performance, but all the frameworks, ad targeting, and client-side compiling of a webpage. (Side rant: I refuse to use the term "client-side rendering", because dang it, "rendering" makes an image. "Client-side rendering" as web developers use the term doesn't actually render anything, but instead compiles the page down to HTML, which is then rendered by the browser.)
d13 5y ago
This should be industry standard practice.

runawaybottle 5y ago

Let’s not just pick on frontend. Has anyone seen what it takes to run something on AWS? Devops is nearing similar levels of insanity, and often for applications that won’t even have 50 users (seriously, all these companies that advertise for AWS experience for a tool that is going to be fucking internal with less than 50 users). It all builds up in me to be honest. You get the frontend complicated, then the deploy/infra gets complicated for the needless cloud dependency, and then the backend people don’t want to get left out of the party so they manage to rewrite their shitty php app in Go. It’s like a shitty third world country. Not only do the roads suck, but there’s no water or electricity half the time, and you need to bribe everyone to get something. Instead of it becoming a wasteland, the population somehow still increases (more people actually entering tech). Now you really can’t change anything because there’s too many people. How the wicked live.

watermelon59 5y ago
> Has anyone seen what it takes to run something on AWS? I've given up every time I've tried it on personal projects. It's just a complete poorly document mess indeed. At work we host our stuff on AWS but we have an ops team that deals with all the garbage. All I care about are APIs, endpoints and that one thing can talk to another.
- cutler 5y ago
  Yeah, so much for the fantasy of cloud platforms eliminating the need for ops staff. The guy who used to setup and manage your Linux VPSs just switched jobs to manage your AWS infra and charges extra for it.
qudat 5y ago
Finally a voice of reason. The front end isnt the only thing that has become complicated. How many services are running on k8s? Now how many of them actually need it? The list goes on. The front end isnt that complicated relative to back end, there is just one ecosystem vs 10 for the back end.
xupybd 5y ago
I recently got asked to consult for a project. I warned not to go with AWS that the tools they were wanting to put online were not well suited to AWS. Then I got sent a 15 page deployment document outlining the AWS infrastructure they had gone with. They paid megabucks and got a rube goldberg machine. To run a zend based PHP site developed 15 years ago that has never had any significant maintenance.