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>Every alternative to the big frameworks (looking at you htmlx) feel like minor syntaxic sugar for jQuery and friends True >which feels like a massive step ba

by Xeamek 3y ago

>Every alternative to the big frameworks (looking at you htmlx) feel like minor syntaxic sugar for jQuery and friends True >which feels like a massive step backwards and completely the wrong choice for building a web app. Why? I mean, I'd agree if by 'web-app' you mean something like google-sheets. But I believe this whole "anti-react" movement isn't talking about such usecases, but rather against defaulting frameworks and building using them 'from the ground up', where trully all the website actually need is the "sparkling of interactivity on top"

joshstrange 3y ago
> But I believe this whole "anti-react" movement isn't talking about such usecases, but rather against defaulting frameworks and building using them 'from the ground up', where trully all the website actually need is the "sparkling of interactivity on top" We absolutely don't have shared language for these things and we aren't always talking about the same things. The thing is there are just vanishingly few places where you only need a "sparkling of interactivity on top". Yes your blog probably doesn't need a full framework, nor does your news site (which is just a blog++) or your marketing web page. But so many other things really do or things break down quickly. Also what your web site needs today might not cover what it needs tomorrow. I've seen a number of "web admin"/backend control panels (customer-facing for config) start simple then grow until they start to collapse under their own weight with just added jQuery as needed. Sure, at the start, htmlx/jQuery might cover all you need but soon you are building custom UI to represent business logic/ideas and managing with that gets very unwieldy. The people that say "all you need is the built-in HTML elements" are living in a fantasy land, try using the default date/time picker and get back to me. I'm sure there are things I'd agree with the anti-react crowd on (places you don't need a framework) but all their examples are incredibly contrived and feel like the "TODO app examples" you often see for frameworks or learning a language. They don't even scratch the surface of what's needed for complicated apps, they are great to show off the simple things but it seems like the anti-react/anti-framework crowd thinks those simple examples are all you need and that's just silly. At the end of the day I'll admit I reach for a framework earlier than I absolutely need it and that's because I've built 10's and 10's of sites (web apps) from the ground up and eventually you either use a framework or you end up creating a shitty version of one. So yeah, day 1 I might not need Vue but day 100 I'm sure glad I have all of Vue to build on.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  I think the future of webdev is a framework-like system that can be added gradually to basic HTML, rather than one which requires that you totally replace it with JSX, etc. from the start. Webcomponents are a huge step towards a time when we can add state managers and things like that without bringing in a monolith all at once. Some projects require 1% of a framework, others require 98%, but the majority are in a range between 25% and 75% which currently need you to re-architect for a total perfusion of React or a competitor.
  - joshstrange 3y ago
    And I'll happily use such a system once it exists but Vue/React/Angular exist today and have allowed a level of productivity, DX, and UX unheard of with what browsers provide by default. If browsers want to compete then be by guest but FF seems to busy doing next to nothing, Chrome is eating everyone's lunch and giving the middle finger to standards, and Safari is derided for not being Chrome and slow to implement some things (while being fast on others). I think it's more likely to see some kind of WASM-based replacement take off rather than browsers get their act together. That's not to say browsers aren't improving, they absolutely are, but when it comes to competing with the existing frameworks the only answer so far has been Web Components and it was very lackluster IMHO.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    Svelte is pretty close to this (at the expense of a build step). It gives you (in my opinion) better ergonomics that React, has no runtime and outputs sites that don’t require JS unless they do. Sveltekit (its official fullstack framework) even encourages building apps that fall back gracefully for users with JS disabled. Of course, none of that is to say that you can’t build bloated, badly performing apps in Svelte. Just that you *can* have the best of both worlds, even for simple/static sites.
  - troupo 3y ago
    All the things that "monoliths"[1] bring web components ate not bringing, and won't bring in any conceivable future. [1] There are very few monoliths among the frameworks these days, and apart from React and Angular [2] most aim for rather small bundle sizes [2] Out if the blue Angular just released version 17 with all the goodies you'd expect from a framework in 2023

by Xeamek 3y ago

joshstrange 3y ago

> But I believe this whole "anti-react" movement isn't talking about such usecases, but rather against defaulting frameworks and building using them 'from the ground up', where trully all the website actually need is the "sparkling of interactivity on top" We absolutely don't have shared language for these things and we aren't always talking about the same things. The thing is there are just vanishingly few places where you only need a "sparkling of interactivity on top". Yes your blog probably doesn't need a full framework, nor does your news site (which is just a blog++) or your marketing web page. But so many other things really do or things break down quickly. Also what your web site needs today might not cover what it needs tomorrow. I've seen a number of "web admin"/backend control panels (customer-facing for config) start simple then grow until they start to collapse under their own weight with just added jQuery as needed. Sure, at the start, htmlx/jQuery might cover all you need but soon you are building custom UI to represent business logic/ideas and managing with that gets very unwieldy. The people that say "all you need is the built-in HTML elements" are living in a fantasy land, try using the default date/time picker and get back to me. I'm sure there are things I'd agree with the anti-react crowd on (places you don't need a framework) but all their examples are incredibly contrived and feel like the "TODO app examples" you often see for frameworks or learning a language. They don't even scratch the surface of what's needed for complicated apps, they are great to show off the simple things but it seems like the anti-react/anti-framework crowd thinks those simple examples are all you need and that's just silly. At the end of the day I'll admit I reach for a framework earlier than I absolutely need it and that's because I've built 10's and 10's of sites (web apps) from the ground up and eventually you either use a framework or you end up creating a shitty version of one. So yeah, day 1 I might not need Vue but day 100 I'm sure glad I have all of Vue to build on.

whatshisface 3y ago
I think the future of webdev is a framework-like system that can be added gradually to basic HTML, rather than one which requires that you totally replace it with JSX, etc. from the start. Webcomponents are a huge step towards a time when we can add state managers and things like that without bringing in a monolith all at once. Some projects require 1% of a framework, others require 98%, but the majority are in a range between 25% and 75% which currently need you to re-architect for a total perfusion of React or a competitor.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  And I'll happily use such a system once it exists but Vue/React/Angular exist today and have allowed a level of productivity, DX, and UX unheard of with what browsers provide by default. If browsers want to compete then be by guest but FF seems to busy doing next to nothing, Chrome is eating everyone's lunch and giving the middle finger to standards, and Safari is derided for not being Chrome and slow to implement some things (while being fast on others). I think it's more likely to see some kind of WASM-based replacement take off rather than browsers get their act together. That's not to say browsers aren't improving, they absolutely are, but when it comes to competing with the existing frameworks the only answer so far has been Web Components and it was very lackluster IMHO.
- zztop44 3y ago
  Svelte is pretty close to this (at the expense of a build step). It gives you (in my opinion) better ergonomics that React, has no runtime and outputs sites that don’t require JS unless they do. Sveltekit (its official fullstack framework) even encourages building apps that fall back gracefully for users with JS disabled. Of course, none of that is to say that you can’t build bloated, badly performing apps in Svelte. Just that you *can* have the best of both worlds, even for simple/static sites.
- troupo 3y ago
  All the things that "monoliths"[1] bring web components ate not bringing, and won't bring in any conceivable future. [1] There are very few monoliths among the frameworks these days, and apart from React and Angular [2] most aim for rather small bundle sizes [2] Out if the blue Angular just released version 17 with all the goodies you'd expect from a framework in 2023