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Anyone who claims one language or tech stack is going to become the be-all, end-all of how we build things on the web is either naive or selling something. I'v
by cdata 5y ago
Anyone who claims one language or tech stack is going to become the be-all, end-all of how we build things on the web is either naive or selling something.
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of ignoring grandstanders and focusing my time and energy on learning how browsers work. If you understand the DOM, CSS and core JavaScript fundamentals, you can apply your skills to virtually any front-end stack.
In the end, the thing that hurts the web the most is complexity in the name of DX. We are tricked into thinking that the simple thing is too hard to learn on the one hand, while being asked to juggle multiple layers of "sophisticated" abstraction on the other. These days there are entire businesses rising on the need to reduce the cognitive load created by our layers of sophisticated abstraction. But, I bring you the good word: you can still build incredible experiences without pulling in most of the complexity (and without sacrificing as much DX as you think).
- mattlondon 5y agoIronically this is why I prefer angular to react - people say angular is more complex, but IMHO it removes complexity by being "batteries included": reduced cognitive load because and angular project is an angular project so you only need to learn angular itself, and not a zillion extra libraries or frameworks.
- rezonant 5y agoAbsolutely agreed. React is quick to learn and to be productive, but becomes difficult to maintain as the app grows, Angular has more of a learning curve but once you get over it building and maintaining large apps is much easier.
- unclebucknasty 5y agoAgree. The other thing I'd add is that we're long overdue for a more fundamental paradigm shift in webdev. That is, we've changed our goal from the original page request/response model to one of delivering native-like SPA experiences. But, the frameworks that win don't fundamentally reconsider the old technology. Instead, they stop at the DOM layer, speak heavy HTML/CSS, make us manage browser mechanics like URLs, history and back buttons, and help us to better manage those old Web constructs while keeping them in focus. So, they've added these abstraction layers that just keep piling up. At some point we have to ask whether this is fundamentally the right approach.
- jcelerier 5y agoCheck out Canonic https://www.canonic.com/ https://www.canonic.com/ for an experimental take on an alternative web
- projektfu 5y agoWas that supposed to do something other than show half a page and not respond to clicks and scrolls? iOS 15 on iPhone SE 2.
- nawgz 5y agoIndeed… double digit seconds to load and then it isn’t responsive and doesn’t respond to touch events. A bit under baked, to say the least
- csande17 5y agoOn my MacBook, canonic.com displays a few sentences of text and a few links. To do this, it takes 15 seconds to load a 25 megabyte WASM payload. The resulting page draws all of its content onto a <canvas>, scrolls backwards because it somehow ignores my system's "natural scroll direction" setting, and doesn't let me right-click to open links in a new tab. In other words, it's a demo of what Web performance and usability will be like ten years from now. Twitter and Reddit are already working on redesigning their websites to incorporate this new technology. (In all seriousness, it's a demo of a subset of Qt compiled to run in a web browser, and it seems to work better on desktop.)
- projektfu 5y agoOK, I reloaded it in Brave on Ubuntu and it had the features you mentioned. I suppose it's interesting but it's unclear what path there is to making it the standard that replaces the standard.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoGreat. Someone reinvented flash, except the plugin is dowloaded and compiled in-page every time instead of installed traditionally. Even better! All those shitty restaurant web sites that were forced to become almost useful when flash went away, can rejoice and go back to being as awful as they were.
- 88913527 5y agoAngular and React were a response to the problem of abstraction-less frontends: spaghetti jQuery, piled ten miles high. I appreciate the concern for over-abstraction introducing unnecessary complexity, but there's got to be a point on the continuum of spaghetti-jquery to react+redux+node_modules that's the sweet spot. If you're choiceful in what tools you use, you can have that in 2021. It doesn't have to be overly complex (though you certainly can make it that way). By building apps using 100% client-side rendering with GraphQL and Rest APIs, I can use tools like Storybook to build a user interface that are easy to automate testing and ultimately, and consistently, ship enterprise-grade UIs. All my apps are behind auth walls. If need SSR, there's tools like Next.js.
- cdata 5y agoI hear what you are saying. I'll offer you: people have built some great experiences with jQuery, and people have built some terrible ones with React. In the end, what makes the work product great has more to do with the team than the technology.