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I've never quite understood the gripe people have with modern web development. React took off in ~2015 and the only thing that has really changed about it is ho

by czhu12 5y ago

I've never quite understood the gripe people have with modern web development. React took off in ~2015 and the only thing that has really changed about it is how you do state management (flux -> redux -> hooks). Plenty of frontends still rely on jQuery which can easily be sprinkled into a frontend, and the API hasn't really changed in nearly 20 years. What is the author advocating that we adopt this html-only approach for? Just personal blogs? Is it really a problem on the internet that personal blogs have way too much Javascript and CSS and therefore we need to throw out javascript? I would love to see someone try to build something even remotely complex or valuable without using Javascript and CSS. I would expect that if Banking portals, EHR's, CRM's (name any other service even moderately complex) were stitched together with a series of html documents and forms, customers wouldn't be as excited about that.

throwaway984393 5y ago
> I would love to see someone try to build something even remotely complex or valuable Why though? Just make it simple and functional. No need to get complex. > I would expect that if Banking portals, EHR's, CRM's (name any other service even moderately complex) were stitched together with a series of html documents and forms, customers wouldn't be as excited about that. Why should customer excitement force us to create over-complicated solutions?
- czhu12 5y ago
  Because most software exist to provide solutions to customers and not to satisfy the developers. If you're going through a 40 page mortgage application, and an accidental page refresh loses everything you've filled in, thats not ideal. If you're trying to catch an uber, and the status isn't updated in real time, thats not ideal. If you're a customer support agent, and incoming messages require a page refresh to see, that not ideal.
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    That is a great answer: because we're trying to solve users' problems. So we need to make things complex enough to solve a user's problem, and no more. I think the difficulty we run into is that last bit.
mystiick 5y ago
> I would love to see someone try to build something even remotely complex I think they are advocating we stop trying to constantly make things that are complex, or can one day handle potential complexity, and try to make things more simple from the get-go. Sure not everything can be Simone [simple*] html, but anecdotally, I can see the value in advocating more simplicity (but not at a raw html level). So much of what I need to work on and maintain are over architected "just in case"
- czhu12 5y ago
  I think thats fair, but thats also becomes a truism since no one sets out to over-architect things. My biggest annoyance with this series of posts that show up every few days on HN is just how disconnected they are from the actual challenges of software that people use on a daily basis. The number of support tickets that I've seen in the past from users who: Weren't able to see a button dead center on the page without adding a bit of animation Didn't realize there was a form error above without an auto-scroll. Help text that needed to be contextual so as to not overwhelm the user. Dropdowns that are too unwieldy to navigate without a typeahead. etc etc All these require adding more javascript, more css, and more complexity to solve, but it would be ludicrous to say that 50% of users should just not use the service because we need to keep the code clean.

by czhu12 5y ago

throwaway984393 5y ago

> I would love to see someone try to build something even remotely complex or valuable Why though? Just make it simple and functional. No need to get complex. > I would expect that if Banking portals, EHR's, CRM's (name any other service even moderately complex) were stitched together with a series of html documents and forms, customers wouldn't be as excited about that. Why should customer excitement force us to create over-complicated solutions?

czhu12 5y ago
Because most software exist to provide solutions to customers and not to satisfy the developers. If you're going through a 40 page mortgage application, and an accidental page refresh loses everything you've filled in, thats not ideal. If you're trying to catch an uber, and the status isn't updated in real time, thats not ideal. If you're a customer support agent, and incoming messages require a page refresh to see, that not ideal.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  That is a great answer: because we're trying to solve users' problems. So we need to make things complex enough to solve a user's problem, and no more. I think the difficulty we run into is that last bit.

mystiick 5y ago

> I would love to see someone try to build something even remotely complex I think they are advocating we stop trying to constantly make things that are complex, or can one day handle potential complexity, and try to make things more simple from the get-go. Sure not everything can be Simone [simple*] html, but anecdotally, I can see the value in advocating more simplicity (but not at a raw html level). So much of what I need to work on and maintain are over architected "just in case"

czhu12 5y ago
I think thats fair, but thats also becomes a truism since no one sets out to over-architect things. My biggest annoyance with this series of posts that show up every few days on HN is just how disconnected they are from the actual challenges of software that people use on a daily basis. The number of support tickets that I've seen in the past from users who: Weren't able to see a button dead center on the page without adding a bit of animation Didn't realize there was a form error above without an auto-scroll. Help text that needed to be contextual so as to not overwhelm the user. Dropdowns that are too unwieldy to navigate without a typeahead. etc etc All these require adding more javascript, more css, and more complexity to solve, but it would be ludicrous to say that 50% of users should just not use the service because we need to keep the code clean.