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Agree. I've created my first website in 1999 with plain HTML, CSS, vanilla JS, hosted on Geocities. Since then I've been using PHP/WordPress/Yii/Laravel, Ruby

Agree. I've created my first website in 1999 with plain HTML, CSS, vanilla JS, hosted on Geocities. Since then I've been using PHP/WordPress/Yii/Laravel, Ruby/Rails/Sinatra/Jekyll, React/Typescript, ClojureScript to create both sites and apps. With React / TSX components / CSS-in-TS / Effects / Context I'm home. Finally a fully fledged programming language for the web / front-end. A language made explicitly for the front-end, built om modern principles like functional, reactive programming. Now I can do software development. Before that, with HTML, CSS, plain JS, PHP it was ... just hacking, nothing else. (Rails was good for full-stack, was not shining on the front-end) I'll skip frameworks when the web stack will be ready for the apps, too. Now it's (perhaps) good enough for sites, I should admit.

squidbeak 3y ago
Perhaps web publishing shouldn't be presupposed to be 'software development'?
- zztop44 3y ago
  But very often it is software development. And there isn’t always some bright line between them. Like it or not, the web is an excellent platform for delivering software applications to users, especially one-off or infrequently used applications. Let’s use software development tools, rather than web publishing tools, to develop that software.
  - zilti 3y ago
    Hopefully WASM will fill that area, and browsers can go back to being browsers.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Not as long as the only way that wasm interfaces to the DOM is through the JavaScript layer.
  - docmars 3y ago
    It's worth mentioning that the friction to deploy a web app is nearly zero these days, depending on how complex it is. As an example, shipping a macOS or iOS app, via official means, requires a lengthy review & approval process, upfront costs, buy-in into native languages with little to no use outside of these platforms, a limited selection of tools, and hard decisions about which version of the OS to support based on the features you need vs. the market share of older versions. People (and teams) choose web development for the lower barrier to entry, and as a platform, browsers get products most of the way to their goals, and fast.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      My preference is local first desktop applications. Sometimes it’s because I prefer files, sometimes it’s because native apps are more fluid and more egonomic.
      - zztop44 3y ago
        What about for getting quotes on insurance? Or booking a restaurant? Or a flight or hotel? Submitting your taxes? Getting printable directions to a trailhead? Proving feedback on someone’s Figma document? Previewing a 3D model before getting it printed… Is it your preference to install a new local first desktop application any time you wish to do any of these things?
        skydhash 3y ago
        That depends where the data and the logic all. If they only store the data, but I’m doing all the computation, it may as well be a local app (figma, the 3d viewer..) or at least have an API so I can build my own interface. I’m not against Web Apps, but many take my browser as free real estate.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      Shipping a macOS app doesn't require view of any kind, beyond notarization, which is just an automated malware scan and takes only a few seconds.
- docmars 3y ago
  The line is very blurry, and the moment you'd like dynamic, interactive content embedded within that static content is when it's time to reach for a view library like React. At that point, I'm just going to start the project with React / Vue / Svelte every time because almost 100% of the time, I realize I need to support the features they offer that raw HTML/CSS cannot, or if they do, are very poorly implemented by browsers, hitting limitations with them that become frustrating and prevent you from achieving the scope you're aiming for. Using any of those three libraries/frameworks is painless, and I can get a project going rapidly and with high confidence that I can support any functionality, interaction, animation, content, routing, and other common web problems, with great ease.
- raincole 3y ago
  Then use Wordpress. Or Substack. Or even Wix. "But we need this and that custom dynamic logic..." well now we're in the realm of software development.
thinkingemote 3y ago
All of the technologies you used previously were considered "finally fully fledged" until they weren't! We will be doing something different in a couple of years and saying that the stuff we do now is out of date and the new stuff is home. It's always been this way. We are tech nomads finding ourselves new homes as and when we move on.
- docmars 3y ago
  Using PHP and other tools/frameworks that tightly coupled the frontend to the backend codebase made life miserable. While I was excited to get into web development back when these technologies were popular, they were anything but pleasant to use. With the introduction of Angular 1.x and eventually React, Vue, and Svelte -- creating web apps finally felt productive, easy to debug, and easy to ship. Wiring up interactions finally felt intuitive. No more jQuery code colliding with itself as you struggle to organize your project and cobble together a bunch of poorly maintained "component" libraries and pray they work together without obvious user-facing bugs on your site or app. Or worse: on a team of engineers. I won't lie, learning how early build systems worked was a pain, but the curve was completely worth it, and I wouldn't change a thing. Today, using tools like Vite with their default project templates is almost too easy, and you can hit the ground running in no time. Publishing to Vercel, Netlify, and other modern hosting stacks is a breeze, and they all support direct tie-ins with every popular package & build system.

squidbeak 3y ago

Perhaps web publishing shouldn't be presupposed to be 'software development'?

zztop44 3y ago
But very often it is software development. And there isn’t always some bright line between them. Like it or not, the web is an excellent platform for delivering software applications to users, especially one-off or infrequently used applications. Let’s use software development tools, rather than web publishing tools, to develop that software.
- zilti 3y ago
  Hopefully WASM will fill that area, and browsers can go back to being browsers.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Not as long as the only way that wasm interfaces to the DOM is through the JavaScript layer.
- docmars 3y ago
  It's worth mentioning that the friction to deploy a web app is nearly zero these days, depending on how complex it is. As an example, shipping a macOS or iOS app, via official means, requires a lengthy review & approval process, upfront costs, buy-in into native languages with little to no use outside of these platforms, a limited selection of tools, and hard decisions about which version of the OS to support based on the features you need vs. the market share of older versions. People (and teams) choose web development for the lower barrier to entry, and as a platform, browsers get products most of the way to their goals, and fast.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    My preference is local first desktop applications. Sometimes it’s because I prefer files, sometimes it’s because native apps are more fluid and more egonomic.
    - zztop44 3y ago
      What about for getting quotes on insurance? Or booking a restaurant? Or a flight or hotel? Submitting your taxes? Getting printable directions to a trailhead? Proving feedback on someone’s Figma document? Previewing a 3D model before getting it printed… Is it your preference to install a new local first desktop application any time you wish to do any of these things?
      - skydhash 3y ago
        That depends where the data and the logic all. If they only store the data, but I’m doing all the computation, it may as well be a local app (figma, the 3d viewer..) or at least have an API so I can build my own interface. I’m not against Web Apps, but many take my browser as free real estate.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Shipping a macOS app doesn't require view of any kind, beyond notarization, which is just an automated malware scan and takes only a few seconds.
docmars 3y ago
The line is very blurry, and the moment you'd like dynamic, interactive content embedded within that static content is when it's time to reach for a view library like React. At that point, I'm just going to start the project with React / Vue / Svelte every time because almost 100% of the time, I realize I need to support the features they offer that raw HTML/CSS cannot, or if they do, are very poorly implemented by browsers, hitting limitations with them that become frustrating and prevent you from achieving the scope you're aiming for. Using any of those three libraries/frameworks is painless, and I can get a project going rapidly and with high confidence that I can support any functionality, interaction, animation, content, routing, and other common web problems, with great ease.
raincole 3y ago
Then use Wordpress. Or Substack. Or even Wix. "But we need this and that custom dynamic logic..." well now we're in the realm of software development.

thinkingemote 3y ago

All of the technologies you used previously were considered "finally fully fledged" until they weren't! We will be doing something different in a couple of years and saying that the stuff we do now is out of date and the new stuff is home. It's always been this way. We are tech nomads finding ourselves new homes as and when we move on.

docmars 3y ago
Using PHP and other tools/frameworks that tightly coupled the frontend to the backend codebase made life miserable. While I was excited to get into web development back when these technologies were popular, they were anything but pleasant to use. With the introduction of Angular 1.x and eventually React, Vue, and Svelte -- creating web apps finally felt productive, easy to debug, and easy to ship. Wiring up interactions finally felt intuitive. No more jQuery code colliding with itself as you struggle to organize your project and cobble together a bunch of poorly maintained "component" libraries and pray they work together without obvious user-facing bugs on your site or app. Or worse: on a team of engineers. I won't lie, learning how early build systems worked was a pain, but the curve was completely worth it, and I wouldn't change a thing. Today, using tools like Vite with their default project templates is almost too easy, and you can hit the ground running in no time. Publishing to Vercel, Netlify, and other modern hosting stacks is a breeze, and they all support direct tie-ins with every popular package & build system.