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Incoming semi-related rant. This doesn't apply to LLMs writing code, and it is quite an aside, but I think we have destroyed a lot of ways the web works by cha

Incoming semi-related rant. This doesn't apply to LLMs writing code, and it is quite an aside, but I think we have destroyed a lot of ways the web works by chasing a "good" dev experience. It is "nicer" to write JSX and Typescript in a Next.js project than it was to write jQuery in inline script tags on WordPress. No doubt. But I never had issues maintaining, scaling, updating, or improving those old sites. And I definitely wasn't nickel and dimed for every feature/service I needed to add. I didn't have to wait for builds, or compiling, or worry about the deployment Node.js being a different version than the local Node.js. Or "open source" framework features being locked to certain hosts (looking at you RSC and Next.13) and their platforms. And the worst thing, coming back to a project after a couple years and it being impossible to get working because all the tooling has changed and/or been abandoned. I recently had a client from 8 years ago want to move their hosting. They had been sitting on a PHP/Laravel-based CMS, hosted on DigitalOcean, paying $10 a month for ~7 years. I haven't deployed any websites in the last 3 years that I think could even survive that long. Let alone even run locally after that time. The site could be running fine, but the tooling to work on it, or the platforms supporting it, will break. But my dev experience writing them has been, Chefs kiss! React will be updated, and perfectly workable things will be deprecated, the tools to build/bundle code will be deprecated or abandoned for ones with a "better experience", and the hosting providers will drop support for older Node.js versions. Maybe this speaks more to the disposable nature of the web these days, but I feel like websites specifically started getting more brittle and complicated when we started chasing dev experience over user experience.

deleted 3y ago
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Kranar 3y ago
I think this is mostly your own personal experience and likely a bit rose tinted. It is perfectly possible to deploy a webapp in React that will last for 10 years more or less how a website from 10 years ago could still function today. Also jQuery's very existence was due to how much of a disaster writing webapps was in the past with the host of compatibility issues between not only browsers but just within versions of the same browser. Also there's no issue scaling WordPress? WordPress is notoriously slow and hard to scale. It's a great option for getting a basic website up and running quickly but by God is it a slow and bloated mess and while you can performance tune it, it's not at all a simple or straight forward process and it certainly wasn't easier 10 years ago. I've been a web developer since 1998 and it's definitely much easier to deploy, maintain and scale websites today than it ever was not to mention that websites today play a much larger role with the rise of mobile computing than they did back then. To the extent that it was easier to do anything in the past, it was because the concerns of the past were much smaller than they are today. Security was a much lesser concern 10-15 years ago than now. Writing webapps that work across multiple devices also was a much lower priority. Compatibility was a complete mess, many sites were developed to just work on a specific version of Internet Explorer. The idea that 10 years ago there were minimal problems deploying websites or maintaining them is likely you remembering the good parts and forgetting the bad or that your websites didn't need much scale or didn't address many of the modern concerns that exist today. Things were pretty bad back then to be frank and it's much easier today than it ever was.
- james2doyle 3y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that things are easier for developers. I followed a lot of the (let’s face it) hype and marketing around going headless and using hosted services. And the experience is pretty great for a developer. But I've had clients who aren't happy with waiting for builds, paying per seat for a CMS, the turnaround of bug fixes and features, having to buy new services that used to be included, and also keep on top of the 100s of dependencies or changes among those services. All while being constantly charged for these "pleasures".
briffle 3y ago
surely they upgraded their OS, and the packages to patch security vulnerabilities, right? Long uptimes aren't always great, when it comes at the expense of security.
wk_end 3y ago
I think you're getting some causality twisted - websites started getting more brittle (if they did?) when they started getting more complex, and they started getting more complex precisely because better dev tooling enabled it.
- james2doyle 3y ago
  Oh true. That is a good point. I didn't think of it that way

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Kranar 3y ago

I think this is mostly your own personal experience and likely a bit rose tinted. It is perfectly possible to deploy a webapp in React that will last for 10 years more or less how a website from 10 years ago could still function today. Also jQuery's very existence was due to how much of a disaster writing webapps was in the past with the host of compatibility issues between not only browsers but just within versions of the same browser. Also there's no issue scaling WordPress? WordPress is notoriously slow and hard to scale. It's a great option for getting a basic website up and running quickly but by God is it a slow and bloated mess and while you can performance tune it, it's not at all a simple or straight forward process and it certainly wasn't easier 10 years ago. I've been a web developer since 1998 and it's definitely much easier to deploy, maintain and scale websites today than it ever was not to mention that websites today play a much larger role with the rise of mobile computing than they did back then. To the extent that it was easier to do anything in the past, it was because the concerns of the past were much smaller than they are today. Security was a much lesser concern 10-15 years ago than now. Writing webapps that work across multiple devices also was a much lower priority. Compatibility was a complete mess, many sites were developed to just work on a specific version of Internet Explorer. The idea that 10 years ago there were minimal problems deploying websites or maintaining them is likely you remembering the good parts and forgetting the bad or that your websites didn't need much scale or didn't address many of the modern concerns that exist today. Things were pretty bad back then to be frank and it's much easier today than it ever was.

james2doyle 3y ago
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that things are easier for developers. I followed a lot of the (let’s face it) hype and marketing around going headless and using hosted services. And the experience is pretty great for a developer. But I've had clients who aren't happy with waiting for builds, paying per seat for a CMS, the turnaround of bug fixes and features, having to buy new services that used to be included, and also keep on top of the 100s of dependencies or changes among those services. All while being constantly charged for these "pleasures".

briffle 3y ago

surely they upgraded their OS, and the packages to patch security vulnerabilities, right? Long uptimes aren't always great, when it comes at the expense of security.

wk_end 3y ago

I think you're getting some causality twisted - websites started getting more brittle (if they did?) when they started getting more complex, and they started getting more complex precisely because better dev tooling enabled it.

james2doyle 3y ago
Oh true. That is a good point. I didn't think of it that way