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The "big" projects can do what the hell they want. They can afford to throw a ton of money at a problem. The small projects are where the people I care about a

The "big" projects can do what the hell they want. They can afford to throw a ton of money at a problem. The small projects are where the people I care about are struggling.

ceuk 3y ago
Big project =/= Big company e.g. WhatsApp back before the acquisition Making it easier for people to build big, complex apps doesn't favour large organisations with lots of resources. The opposite in fact.
- andybak 3y ago
  nb I'm not agreeing with your original hypothesis. However I'm taking about even lower down the food chain than this.
MrJohz 3y ago
Are people really struggling at that level, though? It has never been easier to write a complex page with minimal Javascript - there are more and more HTML elements that do what you expect (expandos and modals as some recent examples), Javascript is cleaner and more consistent across browsers (you really don't need jQuery anymore), and CSS is more powerful but also so much simpler (flex+grid solve so many problems). Then if that's not enough, you've got things like HTMX if you're keen on doing everything in terms of html templating, you've got tools like Svelte if you want an isolated chunk of dynamic UI in a mostly static page, you've got bundlers like Vite that just work without any configuration if you get to the point where you need a build step, and you've got a multitude of lightweight frameworks for the next step. And on top of that, pretty much all the old ways still work. The browser is an incredibly stable environment! Outside of a handful of security-related removals, if it got into a mainstream browser, without a feature flag or an explicit "experimental" warning, it's pretty much there for life. So if you want to go back to the old ways, there's not much stopping you - but a whole bunch of quality-of-life development improvements along the way to make things even easier than they were back then.
- andybak 3y ago
  Sounds like we're agreeing with each other and disagreeing with the big SPA framework guy?
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    I mean, I am a big SPA framework guy. That's pretty much the main thing I use, day-in, day-out, because most of the projects I'm working on are complex enough that simply hand-coding the entire UI will not work. And, while only a minority of projects are that complex, those projects are the ones most developers are working on. Most other projects are probably better served with a wordpress install and a bit of theme customisation. Which means it's going to be a minority of developers who work with the very minimal things that are sufficient in these sorts of cases.
    - kugelblitz 3y ago
      Are you writing that complex projects need SPA, everything else is better served with Wordpress? I've used SPA frameworks, but try to avoid it if I can, because most of the logic is in the backend. I don't want to create and sync API interfaces, have 1-2 additional contexts (JS + frontend framework) and debug an extra layer. With htmx I can now have interactivity via the backend. I use Alpine.js for some interactivity.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  Find a professional front-end developer who is willing to use simple HTML, JS & CSS and I'd agree with you. It's almost impossible. The first reaction is always `npm init`
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    Most professional frontend developers are working on projects that require something more complicated than just the basics, because, well, that's where the complexity lies, and so that's where the work is. You can still find developers who are using the basics, but mostly they're designing WordPress themes or working for boutique web design agencies, because those are the sorts of problems that are solved with just simple HTML, JS, and CSS. It's like asking a Java developer when the last time they developed something without maven or gradle is, or Python developer why their first reaction is to use pip. If the majority of problems developers had to solve were simple enough that they didn't need these tools, then there'd be far fewer developers and most of them would still end up working on the 20% of projects where they're necessary. Because, well, that's where the complexity lies.
iopq 3y ago
Smallest projects just throw up a bootstrap template and call it a day something like this: https://www.hotelpalacebarcelona.com/ https://www.hotelpalacebarcelona.com/ they don't care it's not "html first"

The "big" projects can do what the hell they want. They can afford to throw a ton of money at a problem. The small projects are where the people I care about are struggling.

ceuk 3y ago

Big project =/= Big company e.g. WhatsApp back before the acquisition Making it easier for people to build big, complex apps doesn't favour large organisations with lots of resources. The opposite in fact.

andybak 3y ago
nb I'm not agreeing with your original hypothesis. However I'm taking about even lower down the food chain than this.

MrJohz 3y ago

Are people really struggling at that level, though? It has never been easier to write a complex page with minimal Javascript - there are more and more HTML elements that do what you expect (expandos and modals as some recent examples), Javascript is cleaner and more consistent across browsers (you really don't need jQuery anymore), and CSS is more powerful but also so much simpler (flex+grid solve so many problems). Then if that's not enough, you've got things like HTMX if you're keen on doing everything in terms of html templating, you've got tools like Svelte if you want an isolated chunk of dynamic UI in a mostly static page, you've got bundlers like Vite that just work without any configuration if you get to the point where you need a build step, and you've got a multitude of lightweight frameworks for the next step. And on top of that, pretty much all the old ways still work. The browser is an incredibly stable environment! Outside of a handful of security-related removals, if it got into a mainstream browser, without a feature flag or an explicit "experimental" warning, it's pretty much there for life. So if you want to go back to the old ways, there's not much stopping you - but a whole bunch of quality-of-life development improvements along the way to make things even easier than they were back then.

andybak 3y ago
Sounds like we're agreeing with each other and disagreeing with the big SPA framework guy?
- MrJohz 3y ago
  I mean, I am a big SPA framework guy. That's pretty much the main thing I use, day-in, day-out, because most of the projects I'm working on are complex enough that simply hand-coding the entire UI will not work. And, while only a minority of projects are that complex, those projects are the ones most developers are working on. Most other projects are probably better served with a wordpress install and a bit of theme customisation. Which means it's going to be a minority of developers who work with the very minimal things that are sufficient in these sorts of cases.
  - kugelblitz 3y ago
    Are you writing that complex projects need SPA, everything else is better served with Wordpress? I've used SPA frameworks, but try to avoid it if I can, because most of the logic is in the backend. I don't want to create and sync API interfaces, have 1-2 additional contexts (JS + frontend framework) and debug an extra layer. With htmx I can now have interactivity via the backend. I use Alpine.js for some interactivity.
marcus_holmes 3y ago
Find a professional front-end developer who is willing to use simple HTML, JS & CSS and I'd agree with you. It's almost impossible. The first reaction is always `npm init`
- MrJohz 3y ago
  Most professional frontend developers are working on projects that require something more complicated than just the basics, because, well, that's where the complexity lies, and so that's where the work is. You can still find developers who are using the basics, but mostly they're designing WordPress themes or working for boutique web design agencies, because those are the sorts of problems that are solved with just simple HTML, JS, and CSS. It's like asking a Java developer when the last time they developed something without maven or gradle is, or Python developer why their first reaction is to use pip. If the majority of problems developers had to solve were simple enough that they didn't need these tools, then there'd be far fewer developers and most of them would still end up working on the 20% of projects where they're necessary. Because, well, that's where the complexity lies.

iopq 3y ago

Smallest projects just throw up a bootstrap template and call it a day something like this: https://www.hotelpalacebarcelona.com/ https://www.hotelpalacebarcelona.com/ they don't care it's not "html first"