8 ms·

I like to go back to the basics. It irks me that folks don’t think HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is—but nowadays the default browser capabilities are i

I like to go back to the basics. It irks me that folks don’t think HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is—but nowadays the default browser capabilities are incredible compared to a decade ago. We basically have a full programming environment and add WASM to the mix! Back in the day the frameworks were first-and-foremost a platform compatibility solution. People often have it ingrained in their psyche that reinventing the wheel is evil, but it’s not—we do it all the time when we write paragraphs. It’s of course tempting to grab a library but there’s a learning curve and an often hidden long-term cost with using libraries.

alerighi 4y ago
In a modern web framework you still have HTML and you still have CSS files. The problem is JavaScript and in particular the way that you interact with the DOM: browsers use an imperative API, that this day is obsolete, and makes writing web applications a mess rapidly, and produce spaghetti code difficult to modify and isolate. While practically all modern frameworks use a functional approach: you have the component, that has an internal state, a function to render DOM elements from that state, and if you need to update the view you don't directly manipulate the DOM elements, but update the component state, that causes the framework to call again the render function that updates the DOM elements as required. That is so much simpler, because you don't have to ensure that the state of the application is aligned with the state of what the user sees on the screen!
- resonious 4y ago
  I definitely see the elegance of the modern reactive approach, but in practice I'm not sure how much better it really is. I still see spaghetti code, and I still see stupid bugs in production. Doesn't seem to matter whether it's JQuery or Vue. Right now I'd bet that careful architecture and thorough testing are still #1 for making good software.
  - danielvaughn 4y ago
    It does often turn into a weird kind of spaghetti when it comes to things that are inherently imperative. Sometimes hooks make me feel like I’m trying to follow a Tarantino script.
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
There is a reason why modern UI frameworks like SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose look more like React rather than pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript. And it is not because iOS and Android can’t run WASM.
- blep_ 4y ago
  Because this entire industry runs on trends?
arminiusreturns 4y ago
What irks me is the javascript part. You dont need to run random scripts on my system, just send me some fucking text! Make it a touch prettier with css! The javascripts are so bloated, spy on you, are often a malware vector, and offer little real user benefit.
0xblinq 4y ago
Well, the thing is… for any non trivial web app, you do need a framework (spa or Unpoly like). The question here is if you use an existing one or end up writing your own. I don’t buy the “just use html, js and css”… giving the same developer skills, without a framework that becomes a mess much sooner than with one. As your code grows you end up creating your own libraries, and your own conventions, and as soon as you (the one with a vision and that knew how to do it) leaves the company and other team members come and go, it ends up being a disaster because there is no documentation, no maintenance, and as you reinvented the wheel nobody used your framework before, so everyone has to start from scratch with it. Popular libraries and frameworks are popular for a reason. Business wise, it makes sense to not reinvent the wheel and rely on existing battle proven, secure and documented tools. Just don’t reinvent the wheel. Web applications are not “paragraphs”.
cies 4y ago
> It irks me that folks don’t think HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is I'm one of those folks. Allow me to explain. I compare using HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript (or something that transpiles to JS/WASM) to making GUIs in Qt (C++) or with help of QML. I find the HTML/CSS/JS hopelessly complex compared to the Qt with-and-without QML. Sting based binding of CSS to HTML classes/ids is super error prone. CSS is not really "connected" to the HTML as would be the case in style my QUI with Qt. Also the widgets (dropdown, etc.) I get in HTML are often underpowered underfeatured, so I have to use widget libraries on top, or roll my own.
akira2501 4y ago
> HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is—but nowadays the default browser capabilities are incredible compared to a decade ago. I'm not sure they remember a time when the choice wasn't "X Corporate Framework" vs "Y Corporate Framework" but "Native Desktop Application" vs. "Website Only Application." I feel like I'm already accepting a huge set of "dependencies" by choosing to develop a web application, and I have a vast stack of technologies to draw upon in building my application already.
throwaway999528 4y ago
Throwaway for anonymity. I work at a place that is mostly like this, I can tell you that using html/css/javascript raw, with a bit of bootstrap is a nightmare with a SPA. Menus are constantly broken, back button is a game of roulette, caching is constantly a problem showing stale data, xss and other vulnerabilities are ubiquitous. There are modern affordances in many of these frameworks others take for granted.
- spookie 4y ago
  As someone trying to create a frontend with plain HTML/CSS for quite a complex backend, I can attest to the fact that's impossible to maintain consistency between browsers. It's not even about how each block's styling behaves, but how different combinations of tags, blocks and widgets are able to exhibit very specific issues in each one of the 3 main rendering engines around. In very different ways, that require incompatible solutions. It's quite egregious.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    I'm primarily a backend but I've dabbled in frontend at times where needed, and I've always kinda felt there's value in polyfills if nothing else. Maybe you don't go full Angular/React but JQuery adds a lot of value for not much effort. I realize JQuery is terribly unfashionable these days and maybe people would rather use some smaller niche polyfill library, but with how quickly the javascript world churns and deprecates, that is kind of a virtue tbh. JQuery is 16 years old and that's ancient in the javascript world, the Lindy effect says it will likely continue to be a pillar going forward as well. You're probably just better off using the standard even if you're not using all its capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- lagt_t 4y ago
  The problem was choosing an SPA
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Precisely. There was someone here bemoaning how difficult it was to follow generic advice of using profilers to optimise hotspots in the application code. He started off with something like: "Why don't you try your 'simple' techniques in a tangled web of hundreds of microservices written in different languages and running on different platforms?" It's like some people can't see the forest for the trees. In the last few years, I've come across about half a dozen existing web sites with hideous performance problems, all of which should have been vanilla HTML but were written as Angular monstrosities. The same teams -- against repeated advice -- have started new Angular projects for sites showing static data, anonymously, to the general public. They start off conversations with "We'll need a web app, an API app, a mid-tier, a service bus, and then this, and then that..." It's madness.

alerighi 4y ago

In a modern web framework you still have HTML and you still have CSS files. The problem is JavaScript and in particular the way that you interact with the DOM: browsers use an imperative API, that this day is obsolete, and makes writing web applications a mess rapidly, and produce spaghetti code difficult to modify and isolate. While practically all modern frameworks use a functional approach: you have the component, that has an internal state, a function to render DOM elements from that state, and if you need to update the view you don't directly manipulate the DOM elements, but update the component state, that causes the framework to call again the render function that updates the DOM elements as required. That is so much simpler, because you don't have to ensure that the state of the application is aligned with the state of what the user sees on the screen!

resonious 4y ago
I definitely see the elegance of the modern reactive approach, but in practice I'm not sure how much better it really is. I still see spaghetti code, and I still see stupid bugs in production. Doesn't seem to matter whether it's JQuery or Vue. Right now I'd bet that careful architecture and thorough testing are still #1 for making good software.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  It does often turn into a weird kind of spaghetti when it comes to things that are inherently imperative. Sometimes hooks make me feel like I’m trying to follow a Tarantino script.

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

There is a reason why modern UI frameworks like SwiftUI or Jetpack Compose look more like React rather than pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript. And it is not because iOS and Android can’t run WASM.

blep_ 4y ago
Because this entire industry runs on trends?

arminiusreturns 4y ago

What irks me is the javascript part. You dont need to run random scripts on my system, just send me some fucking text! Make it a touch prettier with css! The javascripts are so bloated, spy on you, are often a malware vector, and offer little real user benefit.

0xblinq 4y ago

Well, the thing is… for any non trivial web app, you do need a framework (spa or Unpoly like). The question here is if you use an existing one or end up writing your own. I don’t buy the “just use html, js and css”… giving the same developer skills, without a framework that becomes a mess much sooner than with one. As your code grows you end up creating your own libraries, and your own conventions, and as soon as you (the one with a vision and that knew how to do it) leaves the company and other team members come and go, it ends up being a disaster because there is no documentation, no maintenance, and as you reinvented the wheel nobody used your framework before, so everyone has to start from scratch with it. Popular libraries and frameworks are popular for a reason. Business wise, it makes sense to not reinvent the wheel and rely on existing battle proven, secure and documented tools. Just don’t reinvent the wheel. Web applications are not “paragraphs”.

cies 4y ago

> It irks me that folks don’t think HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is I'm one of those folks. Allow me to explain. I compare using HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript (or something that transpiles to JS/WASM) to making GUIs in Qt (C++) or with help of QML. I find the HTML/CSS/JS hopelessly complex compared to the Qt with-and-without QML. Sting based binding of CSS to HTML classes/ids is super error prone. CSS is not really "connected" to the HTML as would be the case in style my QUI with Qt. Also the widgets (dropdown, etc.) I get in HTML are often underpowered underfeatured, so I have to use widget libraries on top, or roll my own.

akira2501 4y ago

> HTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough as-is—but nowadays the default browser capabilities are incredible compared to a decade ago. I'm not sure they remember a time when the choice wasn't "X Corporate Framework" vs "Y Corporate Framework" but "Native Desktop Application" vs. "Website Only Application." I feel like I'm already accepting a huge set of "dependencies" by choosing to develop a web application, and I have a vast stack of technologies to draw upon in building my application already.

throwaway999528 4y ago

Throwaway for anonymity. I work at a place that is mostly like this, I can tell you that using html/css/javascript raw, with a bit of bootstrap is a nightmare with a SPA. Menus are constantly broken, back button is a game of roulette, caching is constantly a problem showing stale data, xss and other vulnerabilities are ubiquitous. There are modern affordances in many of these frameworks others take for granted.

spookie 4y ago
As someone trying to create a frontend with plain HTML/CSS for quite a complex backend, I can attest to the fact that's impossible to maintain consistency between browsers. It's not even about how each block's styling behaves, but how different combinations of tags, blocks and widgets are able to exhibit very specific issues in each one of the 3 main rendering engines around. In very different ways, that require incompatible solutions. It's quite egregious.
- paulmd 4y ago
  I'm primarily a backend but I've dabbled in frontend at times where needed, and I've always kinda felt there's value in polyfills if nothing else. Maybe you don't go full Angular/React but JQuery adds a lot of value for not much effort. I realize JQuery is terribly unfashionable these days and maybe people would rather use some smaller niche polyfill library, but with how quickly the javascript world churns and deprecates, that is kind of a virtue tbh. JQuery is 16 years old and that's ancient in the javascript world, the Lindy effect says it will likely continue to be a pillar going forward as well. You're probably just better off using the standard even if you're not using all its capabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
lagt_t 4y ago
The problem was choosing an SPA
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Precisely. There was someone here bemoaning how difficult it was to follow generic advice of using profilers to optimise hotspots in the application code. He started off with something like: "Why don't you try your 'simple' techniques in a tangled web of hundreds of microservices written in different languages and running on different platforms?" It's like some people can't see the forest for the trees. In the last few years, I've come across about half a dozen existing web sites with hideous performance problems, all of which should have been vanilla HTML but were written as Angular monstrosities. The same teams -- against repeated advice -- have started new Angular projects for sites showing static data, anonymously, to the general public. They start off conversations with "We'll need a web app, an API app, a mid-tier, a service bus, and then this, and then that..." It's madness.