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Genuine question: Judging from the comments, seems like people like this approach. So why is the general trend more towards approaches that use javascript (some

by ksynwa 2y ago

Genuine question: Judging from the comments, seems like people like this approach. So why is the general trend more towards approaches that use javascript (sometimes unnecessarily) and frameworks like React?

slashdave 2y ago
Because browsers are being used as application frameworks (i.e. for making applications) rather than what they were designed for.
- dariusj18 2y ago
  The dream has long been to have code distributed to thin clients while allowing intensive tasks to be run on servers.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    That's one dream. There are advantages to thick clients as well... less network traffic if the device can do processing on site, A much easier to maintain and update distribution model over the traditional desktop experience for what is essentially application software, etc.
entuno 2y ago
As an end user, I really like the style of applications that GOV.UK write and endorses - lightweight, clean layouts, accessible, and generally work with minimal (or no) JavaScript. And I dislike most SPAs, because they usually end up breaking lots of expected browser functionally, are useless without JavaScript, and often load all kinds of heavy dependencies from various third party sites. But what users like and what developers like (and can quickly develop) are often very different things.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  Ambivalence is a weird thing. People often speak in two minds. We hate AI, but we love AI. I love ice-cream and crisps. but I tell my kid not to eat that. As George Carlin said, when you're driving everybody going 5 mph slower than you is an idiot, and everybody going 5 mph faster is a maniac. Here on HN we often see the schism between speaking "as a developer" and "as a user". As a user I hate a lot of the shit we gleefully enthuse about here. As a coder it's super cool.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
margarina72 2y ago
Nobody got fired for building an app in React? When something is an accepted as an industry standard, it's safe to make a decision that goes with the flow. Also, nobody is doing devrel for html/css/vanilla js - if you search how to do things you will find nearly only exclusively framework related content.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
Because the trend is also towards doing more over the web. The web is replacing traditional thick clients, which also assumed a fairly stable network connection and platform specification. Government systems need to work with the lowest denominator - even if it's not that common. Tech startups only need 1 client to exist at the start (and can mostly trust that their requirements will become commonplace as they scale).
nfw2 2y ago
Because the ux and dx are better once you reach a certain amount of complexity. Companies know what is best for their business. There were will always be a group of devs that don’t like it because it isn’t the same web as in their heyday, and they all will eagerly pile on anything remotely JS-critical is posted on HN. There is a selection bias to the comments that does not accurately reflect the industry opinion.
- endemic 2y ago
  JS-heavy sites are frustrating to me due to generally worse UX — links can’t be opened in a new tab, because they’re not actually anchor tags. Forms can’t be submitted by the “return” key. Navigation using back/forward buttons is broken. There might be a few companies who get it right, but most don’t.
- mrthrowaway999 2y ago
  How is increased FCP, LCP, ttvc better ux and DX? We've had hard data that decreasing page load time make for better user experience[0]. Please don't make this an Us vs. Them thing. [0]: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html?m=1 http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20....
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Because we also have hard data that users absolutely hate a blank or frozen screen and "CONFIRM FORM RESUBMISSION." Users are allowed to hate multiple things at the same time and it's up to the web developers to stack rank those.
  - nfw2 2y ago
    The OP was asking for an explanation why the preferences of the industry diverge from the preferences of this comment section. The question itself identifies two groups. The top comment on this page said the frontend community seems like a jobs program. It's interesting that you are only criticizing the view you disagree with as being too divisive.
- arp242 2y ago
dtech 2y ago
Firstly it's what looks good in demos, both internally to management and when trying to sell things to consumers. Government services have users without a choice and usually that they have to provide it has been decided top down. Secondly it's less "boring" for developers and arguably less work. Thirdly you have a large amount of only-frontend (often only-React) devs know who won't think of alternatives.
- _dain_ 2y ago
  >Secondly it's less "boring" for developers and arguably less work. Humphrey: But what happens to us? Bernard: Well, much less work. Humphrey: Yes! Much. Less. Work. So little that fullstack engineers might almost be able to do it on their own!
stavros 2y ago
Because the people who like this approach aren't frontend developers. In fact, I think that people dislike this approach because they are frontend developers, as otherwise there would be very little frontend to develop.
bogtog 2y ago
My gut is that the government wants services that work for 100% of people. In terms of purely costs, people who can't use a site may need to be serviced anyway by more expensive means (e.g., voter registration by mail). A business probably thinks that it doesn't need 100% accessibility. A nicer site may be thought to get more users/customers, even if the site doesn't work for many (or maybe devs just want to fit in with the other cool devs making cool dev sites)
scarmig 2y ago
UIs in general are pretty hard unless you have a set of primitives that do everything you want. HTML + CSS used to be lacking (and still are in some respects). A thin layer of vanilla js on top of them has a tendency to turn into a mess of spaghetti as more and more features are added. So, you organize it into a framework. But a framework needs to be able to assert control over anything that would affect how it renders, which is pretty much everything a browser might do, leading to an SPA.
mrthrowaway999 2y ago
There's no cost to building slow, fragile, and inefficient websites. When you build programs that run on _your_ computers, you have to pay for that. Or at least have to deal with the finance folks asking why your cloud spend increased 5%. But if you run your software on other people's devices, like frontend devs do, there's barely any cost to that. Any negative signals need to trickle in through user reports, support tickets, and maybe Twitter posts. There's a ton of selection going on there so you're likely not getting the full picture. Ie. It's all about incentives
andyjohnson0 2y ago
1. Complexity. Devs like complexity like cats like catnip. 2. Tools. React+JavaScript is the industry monoculture. If they're all you know (and for a significant number of frontend devs this is unfortunately true) then you're invariably going to build something complex because its in the nature of your chosen tools. 3. Career anxiety. Building something simple using simple tools isn't sufficiently hardcore and braggable to get that juicy comp increase at the next performance review, never mind a promotion or hopping to that next job.
- andyjohnson0 2y ago
  A couple of anecdotes relating to point 3 above: a. I once worked on a project where the webapp frontend went through a time-consuming, mid-project framework swapout because the "senior full-stack developer/architect" decided it needed server-side rendering for SEO purposes. Never mind that it was a niche industrial app that required a login to use and simply wasn't visible to search engines. b. I remember being advised to stay quiet when I asked why a different web developer, upon being asked to build a simple static website, had nevertheless built it in React.
EasyMark 2y ago
I think it’s a nice idea, but given the bean-counting-efficiency-experts that run the company, this will never fly “build for the 90-95%” is what I constantly heard from bosses before I left frontend and went to backend, and eventually leaving the cloud industry all together. I can see it working for government sites though because profit isn’t the sole purpose of the website, it’s more there to serve the public as a whole.
derangedHorse 2y ago
Because most websites today are more than just informational. Some web apps facilitate complex user interactions which typically require a lot of state which are the raison d'etre of web frameworks.

by ksynwa 2y ago

slashdave 2y ago

Because browsers are being used as application frameworks (i.e. for making applications) rather than what they were designed for.

dariusj18 2y ago
The dream has long been to have code distributed to thin clients while allowing intensive tasks to be run on servers.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  That's one dream. There are advantages to thick clients as well... less network traffic if the device can do processing on site, A much easier to maintain and update distribution model over the traditional desktop experience for what is essentially application software, etc.

entuno 2y ago

As an end user, I really like the style of applications that GOV.UK write and endorses - lightweight, clean layouts, accessible, and generally work with minimal (or no) JavaScript. And I dislike most SPAs, because they usually end up breaking lots of expected browser functionally, are useless without JavaScript, and often load all kinds of heavy dependencies from various third party sites. But what users like and what developers like (and can quickly develop) are often very different things.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
Ambivalence is a weird thing. People often speak in two minds. We hate AI, but we love AI. I love ice-cream and crisps. but I tell my kid not to eat that. As George Carlin said, when you're driving everybody going 5 mph slower than you is an idiot, and everybody going 5 mph faster is a maniac. Here on HN we often see the schism between speaking "as a developer" and "as a user". As a user I hate a lot of the shit we gleefully enthuse about here. As a coder it's super cool.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

margarina72 2y ago

Nobody got fired for building an app in React? When something is an accepted as an industry standard, it's safe to make a decision that goes with the flow. Also, nobody is doing devrel for html/css/vanilla js - if you search how to do things you will find nearly only exclusively framework related content.

philipwhiuk 2y ago

Because the trend is also towards doing more over the web. The web is replacing traditional thick clients, which also assumed a fairly stable network connection and platform specification. Government systems need to work with the lowest denominator - even if it's not that common. Tech startups only need 1 client to exist at the start (and can mostly trust that their requirements will become commonplace as they scale).

nfw2 2y ago

Because the ux and dx are better once you reach a certain amount of complexity. Companies know what is best for their business. There were will always be a group of devs that don’t like it because it isn’t the same web as in their heyday, and they all will eagerly pile on anything remotely JS-critical is posted on HN. There is a selection bias to the comments that does not accurately reflect the industry opinion.

endemic 2y ago
JS-heavy sites are frustrating to me due to generally worse UX — links can’t be opened in a new tab, because they’re not actually anchor tags. Forms can’t be submitted by the “return” key. Navigation using back/forward buttons is broken. There might be a few companies who get it right, but most don’t.
mrthrowaway999 2y ago
How is increased FCP, LCP, ttvc better ux and DX? We've had hard data that decreasing page load time make for better user experience[0]. Please don't make this an Us vs. Them thing. [0]: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html?m=1 http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20....
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Because we also have hard data that users absolutely hate a blank or frozen screen and "CONFIRM FORM RESUBMISSION." Users are allowed to hate multiple things at the same time and it's up to the web developers to stack rank those.
- nfw2 2y ago
  The OP was asking for an explanation why the preferences of the industry diverge from the preferences of this comment section. The question itself identifies two groups. The top comment on this page said the frontend community seems like a jobs program. It's interesting that you are only criticizing the view you disagree with as being too divisive.
arp242 2y ago

dtech 2y ago

Firstly it's what looks good in demos, both internally to management and when trying to sell things to consumers. Government services have users without a choice and usually that they have to provide it has been decided top down. Secondly it's less "boring" for developers and arguably less work. Thirdly you have a large amount of only-frontend (often only-React) devs know who won't think of alternatives.

_dain_ 2y ago
>Secondly it's less "boring" for developers and arguably less work. Humphrey: But what happens to us? Bernard: Well, much less work. Humphrey: Yes! Much. Less. Work. So little that fullstack engineers might almost be able to do it on their own!

stavros 2y ago

Because the people who like this approach aren't frontend developers. In fact, I think that people dislike this approach because they are frontend developers, as otherwise there would be very little frontend to develop.

bogtog 2y ago

My gut is that the government wants services that work for 100% of people. In terms of purely costs, people who can't use a site may need to be serviced anyway by more expensive means (e.g., voter registration by mail). A business probably thinks that it doesn't need 100% accessibility. A nicer site may be thought to get more users/customers, even if the site doesn't work for many (or maybe devs just want to fit in with the other cool devs making cool dev sites)

scarmig 2y ago

UIs in general are pretty hard unless you have a set of primitives that do everything you want. HTML + CSS used to be lacking (and still are in some respects). A thin layer of vanilla js on top of them has a tendency to turn into a mess of spaghetti as more and more features are added. So, you organize it into a framework. But a framework needs to be able to assert control over anything that would affect how it renders, which is pretty much everything a browser might do, leading to an SPA.

mrthrowaway999 2y ago

There's no cost to building slow, fragile, and inefficient websites. When you build programs that run on _your_ computers, you have to pay for that. Or at least have to deal with the finance folks asking why your cloud spend increased 5%. But if you run your software on other people's devices, like frontend devs do, there's barely any cost to that. Any negative signals need to trickle in through user reports, support tickets, and maybe Twitter posts. There's a ton of selection going on there so you're likely not getting the full picture. Ie. It's all about incentives

andyjohnson0 2y ago

1. Complexity. Devs like complexity like cats like catnip. 2. Tools. React+JavaScript is the industry monoculture. If they're all you know (and for a significant number of frontend devs this is unfortunately true) then you're invariably going to build something complex because its in the nature of your chosen tools. 3. Career anxiety. Building something simple using simple tools isn't sufficiently hardcore and braggable to get that juicy comp increase at the next performance review, never mind a promotion or hopping to that next job.

andyjohnson0 2y ago
A couple of anecdotes relating to point 3 above: a. I once worked on a project where the webapp frontend went through a time-consuming, mid-project framework swapout because the "senior full-stack developer/architect" decided it needed server-side rendering for SEO purposes. Never mind that it was a niche industrial app that required a login to use and simply wasn't visible to search engines. b. I remember being advised to stay quiet when I asked why a different web developer, upon being asked to build a simple static website, had nevertheless built it in React.

EasyMark 2y ago

I think it’s a nice idea, but given the bean-counting-efficiency-experts that run the company, this will never fly “build for the 90-95%” is what I constantly heard from bosses before I left frontend and went to backend, and eventually leaving the cloud industry all together. I can see it working for government sites though because profit isn’t the sole purpose of the website, it’s more there to serve the public as a whole.

derangedHorse 2y ago

Because most websites today are more than just informational. Some web apps facilitate complex user interactions which typically require a lot of state which are the raison d'etre of web frameworks.