5 ms·

I have been in web dev since 1999, and recently switched to a backend role. I am never going back. The endless thrashing on front end borders on psychosis. So

by fny 2y ago

I have been in web dev since 1999, and recently switched to a backend role. I am never going back. The endless thrashing on front end borders on psychosis. Something is clearly broken, and that thing is my feeble mind.

movedx 2y ago
Like the article's writer, I remember the Netscape days and when JS came into existence. I was only a kid back then, like 9 years old, and was _just_ getting into coding in C and playing around with HTML/CSS. The results I produced, as you might have imagined, were akin to the results a toddler would produce given a wet loaf of bread to play with: mess everywhere. Anyway, back then the HTML was simple (but it was tables and spacer GIFs ha ha!) and the CSS even simpler. Now it's just such a chaotic mess that people actually think Web Assembley is a good idea; as if somehow they've invented something new: the sandbox and the machine code. Like running a process at the OS level and making _that_ better, more secure, etc. wasn't the right path. HTMLx is as close to the UI as I'll come. Everything else is an absolute headache to get into.
Hammershaft 2y ago
I think the churn and misery of front end development is the inevitable result of 30 years of path dependence on technologies that were either substandard to begin with (javascript, css) or were never designed for what they're used for (html, css).
giancarlostoro 2y ago
For me I'll never go back to normal front-end work after doing Blazor with C#. It's the nice bits of React (reusable code) but the flexibility of never having to decide between front-end only focused code, or some back-end powered AJAX style code, that is transparently rendered for you. You never have to touch JavaScript, but there's ways to do so. WASM is the best thing that ever happened to the web. When other major web frameworks adopt template engines that compile to WASM, we will see a shift in focus on JS heavy frameworks, and just people building things instead of fighting and trying to remember all the weird quirks of JavaScript.
- alabhyajindal 2y ago
  Can you share your experience with other frameworks beside Blazor that you had a good experience with? I have seen Blazor and it looks good but I have an aversion to anything Microsoft.
  - shortrounddev2 2y ago
    You should try it out; microsoft makes good contributions to open source software, and C# is, in my view, the best (or maybe the only good) backend language put there
  - endemic 2y ago
    LiveView in Phoenix is a similar experience, and I enjoyed (briefly) using it. https://pragmaticstudio.com/ https://pragmaticstudio.com/ has a good introduction.
    - alabhyajindal 2y ago
      Thanks! I took their Ruby and Rails courses and loved it. Great teachers!
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    I've done web dev with various other frameworks: Django, React (front-end only - no SSR), Vue, CherryPy, and a few others. Blazor is the only technology that allows me to use 1 programming language outside of HTML / CSS. You have component UI libraries like React does, so you have to think less about hand crafting HTML and can focus on per component logic / UI much like when developing with React or any "SPA Framework" out there.
- m_fayer 2y ago
  Go one step further. The programming model behind Blazor server is criminally under appreciated. Spa-style interactivity without a need for an API is great. Optional shared state between clients and effortless push-to-client is… basically magic as far as I’m concerned.
- 2y ago
cosmez 2y ago
> I am never going back. For some reason, it sounds like someone being held against their will, which is exactly how I feel about it too
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dudus 2y ago
I must be a masochist because I love FE frameworks. I love learning them and comparing them. I love how they are changing all the time and things are always improving somehow. What was great 10 years ago now are ridiculous to think about, What is great now will be completely forgotten in a couple years time. It's beautiful and maddening at the same time. My favorite stack right now is Astro + SolidJS. Maybe it'll change next week. Who knows?
- stavros 2y ago
  I don't know if you're a masochist, but I bet you aren't writing large apps. At work, the last thing I want is the technology I'm using to be obsolete in two months.
JodieBenitez 2y ago
One of the frontend problems is that too much frontend engineers think a web app should be a single page app. A lot of apps don't need to be that. Server-side endpoints and templating + lightweight vanilla JS and framework-agnostic web components works and is now even easier than ever.
- emseetech 2y ago
  I've seen so many marketing websites written in React. It's so confusing.
- nsonha 2y ago
  clear boundary is good, I don't understand why people like to trash their back-end with templates, MVC and all the "view" nonsense. They are just shifting complexity from a place they feel uncomfortable, to where they do, but at the cost of destroying their own nirvana. Certainly one way, but hardly the only one.
  - JodieBenitez 2y ago
    > I don't understand why people like to trash their back-end with templates, MVC and all the "view" nonsense. Because the tooling has been here for decades and it works damn fine. No need to trash the frontend with ever changing piles of dependency and build nonsense.
    - nsonha 2y ago
      > works damn fine when? View code in the back-end always looks like crap and never able to achieve the interactivity the front-end can. People wrestling with it was the reason SPA was born. There was no dictator forcing people to move on from such "awesome" working "damn fine" pipelines to modern front-end for no reason.
      - ejflick 2y ago
        > View code in the back-end always looks like crap That's probably the fault of the people writing it. People can also write crap looking code using frameworks too. > and never able to achieve the interactivity the front-end can. That's what small sprinkles of javascript is for. You don't need incredibly beautiful interactivity in every pixel.
librasteve 2y ago
this ... multiplied by the high exposure of front end devs to client side requests for bells and whistles and the web studio demands on throughput
cjs_ac 2y ago
At my day job, we use something called ClickUp for task tracking. Watching the UI elements load one at a time reminds me of those greybeard stories about using vi over 300 baud modems. ClickUp is supposed to be productivity software. HTMX pretty much enforces a 'one user action, one HTTP request, one HTTP response' pattern, which is necessary for a usable UX for users who can't see the data centre from their office window.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by fny 2y ago

movedx 2y ago

Like the article's writer, I remember the Netscape days and when JS came into existence. I was only a kid back then, like 9 years old, and was _just_ getting into coding in C and playing around with HTML/CSS. The results I produced, as you might have imagined, were akin to the results a toddler would produce given a wet loaf of bread to play with: mess everywhere. Anyway, back then the HTML was simple (but it was tables and spacer GIFs ha ha!) and the CSS even simpler. Now it's just such a chaotic mess that people actually think Web Assembley is a good idea; as if somehow they've invented something new: the sandbox and the machine code. Like running a process at the OS level and making _that_ better, more secure, etc. wasn't the right path. HTMLx is as close to the UI as I'll come. Everything else is an absolute headache to get into.

Hammershaft 2y ago

I think the churn and misery of front end development is the inevitable result of 30 years of path dependence on technologies that were either substandard to begin with (javascript, css) or were never designed for what they're used for (html, css).

giancarlostoro 2y ago

For me I'll never go back to normal front-end work after doing Blazor with C#. It's the nice bits of React (reusable code) but the flexibility of never having to decide between front-end only focused code, or some back-end powered AJAX style code, that is transparently rendered for you. You never have to touch JavaScript, but there's ways to do so. WASM is the best thing that ever happened to the web. When other major web frameworks adopt template engines that compile to WASM, we will see a shift in focus on JS heavy frameworks, and just people building things instead of fighting and trying to remember all the weird quirks of JavaScript.

alabhyajindal 2y ago
Can you share your experience with other frameworks beside Blazor that you had a good experience with? I have seen Blazor and it looks good but I have an aversion to anything Microsoft.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  You should try it out; microsoft makes good contributions to open source software, and C# is, in my view, the best (or maybe the only good) backend language put there
- endemic 2y ago
  LiveView in Phoenix is a similar experience, and I enjoyed (briefly) using it. https://pragmaticstudio.com/ https://pragmaticstudio.com/ has a good introduction.
  - alabhyajindal 2y ago
    Thanks! I took their Ruby and Rails courses and loved it. Great teachers!
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I've done web dev with various other frameworks: Django, React (front-end only - no SSR), Vue, CherryPy, and a few others. Blazor is the only technology that allows me to use 1 programming language outside of HTML / CSS. You have component UI libraries like React does, so you have to think less about hand crafting HTML and can focus on per component logic / UI much like when developing with React or any "SPA Framework" out there.
m_fayer 2y ago
Go one step further. The programming model behind Blazor server is criminally under appreciated. Spa-style interactivity without a need for an API is great. Optional shared state between clients and effortless push-to-client is… basically magic as far as I’m concerned.
2y ago

cosmez 2y ago

> I am never going back. For some reason, it sounds like someone being held against their will, which is exactly how I feel about it too

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dudus 2y ago

I must be a masochist because I love FE frameworks. I love learning them and comparing them. I love how they are changing all the time and things are always improving somehow. What was great 10 years ago now are ridiculous to think about, What is great now will be completely forgotten in a couple years time. It's beautiful and maddening at the same time. My favorite stack right now is Astro + SolidJS. Maybe it'll change next week. Who knows?

stavros 2y ago
I don't know if you're a masochist, but I bet you aren't writing large apps. At work, the last thing I want is the technology I'm using to be obsolete in two months.

JodieBenitez 2y ago

One of the frontend problems is that too much frontend engineers think a web app should be a single page app. A lot of apps don't need to be that. Server-side endpoints and templating + lightweight vanilla JS and framework-agnostic web components works and is now even easier than ever.

emseetech 2y ago
I've seen so many marketing websites written in React. It's so confusing.
nsonha 2y ago
clear boundary is good, I don't understand why people like to trash their back-end with templates, MVC and all the "view" nonsense. They are just shifting complexity from a place they feel uncomfortable, to where they do, but at the cost of destroying their own nirvana. Certainly one way, but hardly the only one.
- JodieBenitez 2y ago
  > I don't understand why people like to trash their back-end with templates, MVC and all the "view" nonsense. Because the tooling has been here for decades and it works damn fine. No need to trash the frontend with ever changing piles of dependency and build nonsense.
  - nsonha 2y ago
    > works damn fine when? View code in the back-end always looks like crap and never able to achieve the interactivity the front-end can. People wrestling with it was the reason SPA was born. There was no dictator forcing people to move on from such "awesome" working "damn fine" pipelines to modern front-end for no reason.
    - ejflick 2y ago
      > View code in the back-end always looks like crap That's probably the fault of the people writing it. People can also write crap looking code using frameworks too. > and never able to achieve the interactivity the front-end can. That's what small sprinkles of javascript is for. You don't need incredibly beautiful interactivity in every pixel.

librasteve 2y ago

this ... multiplied by the high exposure of front end devs to client side requests for bells and whistles and the web studio demands on throughput

cjs_ac 2y ago

At my day job, we use something called ClickUp for task tracking. Watching the UI elements load one at a time reminds me of those greybeard stories about using vi over 300 baud modems. ClickUp is supposed to be productivity software. HTMX pretty much enforces a 'one user action, one HTTP request, one HTTP response' pattern, which is necessary for a usable UX for users who can't see the data centre from their office window.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]