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I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does

I think JavaScript on the server and React and these things has really made the web a mess of software development compared to how little stuff it actually does. I know for a fact a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Not to mention the absolute idiot of a CEO of Vercel who thinks React is the Linux kernel of development.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it. I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people making the decisions.
- gardenhedge 2y ago
  What malware has Facebook hidden in React?
  - piperswe 2y ago
    I think they were referring to spyware hidden in Facebook's JavaScript, which uses React
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Yes. Particularly it's those little badges that let you share some content or other on the social media site of your choice. I'm under the impression that whether you click them or not, they are phoning home to Facebook about your behavior. So it's not hidden in react itself but rather in the constructed-on-page-load-and-hard-to-disable-just-parts-of space which react creates. I'll confess to not having merely read about this skulduggery and not analyzed it myself. But it certainly explains why Facebook open sourced react and also why those things are everywhere. Is there a better explanation?
  - booleandilemma 2y ago
    No one knows, it's been hidden til this day
Swizec 2y ago
> They think that React is itself what browsers render My kingdom for native JSX in the browser. That would be awesome. Something similar to how we have WebGL and Canvas, but for pure JavaScript UI without the extra step of DOM reconciliation. There’s a small (and growing) cohort of people working on rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl (I think). Supposedly gives you super smooth UX, but I haven’t knowingly tried it yet.
- ninkendo 2y ago
  > rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl I just threw up in my mouth a little. I can’t wait to: - not be able to double click to highlight text a word at a time, because the developers of the “super smooth UX” didn’t know that’s what typical text does. - or triple click to highlight a paragraph at a time - or have the standard menu available when I highlight text (which I often use to look up words, etc) - or have text editing support any of my OS’s key bindings, like ctrl-left to move the caret one word, ctrl-shift left to highlight in the process, etc etc - or any one of the hundreds upon hundreds of common control behaviors, accessibility behaviors, system-wide settings on text behaviors, etc etc etc be respected Of course if they’re anything like the Flutter folks, they’ll look at every one of these things and say “well, I guess we gotta implement all that” rather than understanding the basic fact that common UI elements offered by the OS should actually be reused, not reimplemented poorly. I really worry about what software will look like 20 years from now. At this rate we’re just going to forget every thing we learned about how it should behave.
  - caspper69 2y ago
    Don't worry, they'll figure out a way to compile Skia to webassembly and re-link it to the DOM through JS. Maybe then the circle(jerk) will be complete. Ugh.
- mhitza 2y ago
  > There’s a small (and growing) cohort of people working on rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl (I think) Sounds terrible for accessibility.
- 2y ago
gherkinnn 2y ago
What an odd claim to make, but he did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42824720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42824720 I have been around for long enough to remember the vanilla js, jQuery, Knockout, and Angular 1 days and it always came with a baseline mess. React (sometimes just JSX) can be used sensibly. Instead, I blame VC-backed tooling like Vercel, Next, Apollo, Prisma, and all the other rubbish Webdevfluencers are paid to fill the web with. Come to think of it, every part of building software is bloated. From Notion boards to questionable DB choices.
the__alchemist 2y ago
What do you mean by "HTML is what gets rendered by the browser"? In the context of using Javascript to modify the DOM. My understanding is that HTML is an input to the browser, which is translated to the DOM. (Which is then translated to painting the screen, handling inputs etc.) This is an important distinction in context of your point. React (Or any VDOM or similar JS lib) isn't creating HTML; it's creating a set of DOM manipulation instructions in JS.
voidr 2y ago
I agree with you that it's awful that a lot of young developers wouldn't be able to program without React. I would like to add as someone would has no problems working without any library that the DOM is one of worst APIs ever invented by humankind and that "reactive programming" is a superior model to what we used to do before. That being said: - NextJS rolled back years of tooling improvements, it's much slower than Vite - I just statically built a NextJS and a page that has no interactivity downloads 100KB of JS to do nothing with it - Facebook decided to make a "compiler" for React instead of just not pointlessly re-rednering components by default - Compared to Preact which is almost a drop in replacement, React is huge! This shows how little Facebook cares.
erikpukinskis 2y ago
> a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Ironically, they are right and you are wrong. HTML is a serialization format, which browsers use to construct a DOM in memory. React renders directly to the DOM without ever serializing anything to HTML. The fact that you got this wrong and are so highly upvoted really drives home the “old man shakes fist at clouds” nature of this thread.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

That was the whole point of react, right? To create something that wouldn't work at all without JavaScript enabled and would be enough of a mess that Facebook could effectively hide their malware in it. I think many of Blow's points are good, but that he overlooks that much of the degradation isn't a facet of some kind of generational drift or information entropy but is straight up malevolence on the part of people making the decisions.

gardenhedge 2y ago
What malware has Facebook hidden in React?
- piperswe 2y ago
  I think they were referring to spyware hidden in Facebook's JavaScript, which uses React
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Yes. Particularly it's those little badges that let you share some content or other on the social media site of your choice. I'm under the impression that whether you click them or not, they are phoning home to Facebook about your behavior. So it's not hidden in react itself but rather in the constructed-on-page-load-and-hard-to-disable-just-parts-of space which react creates. I'll confess to not having merely read about this skulduggery and not analyzed it myself. But it certainly explains why Facebook open sourced react and also why those things are everywhere. Is there a better explanation?
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  No one knows, it's been hidden til this day

Swizec 2y ago

> They think that React is itself what browsers render My kingdom for native JSX in the browser. That would be awesome. Something similar to how we have WebGL and Canvas, but for pure JavaScript UI without the extra step of DOM reconciliation. There’s a small (and growing) cohort of people working on rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl (I think). Supposedly gives you super smooth UX, but I haven’t knowingly tried it yet.

ninkendo 2y ago
> rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl I just threw up in my mouth a little. I can’t wait to: - not be able to double click to highlight text a word at a time, because the developers of the “super smooth UX” didn’t know that’s what typical text does. - or triple click to highlight a paragraph at a time - or have the standard menu available when I highlight text (which I often use to look up words, etc) - or have text editing support any of my OS’s key bindings, like ctrl-left to move the caret one word, ctrl-shift left to highlight in the process, etc etc - or any one of the hundreds upon hundreds of common control behaviors, accessibility behaviors, system-wide settings on text behaviors, etc etc etc be respected Of course if they’re anything like the Flutter folks, they’ll look at every one of these things and say “well, I guess we gotta implement all that” rather than understanding the basic fact that common UI elements offered by the OS should actually be reused, not reimplemented poorly. I really worry about what software will look like 20 years from now. At this rate we’re just going to forget every thing we learned about how it should behave.
- caspper69 2y ago
  Don't worry, they'll figure out a way to compile Skia to webassembly and re-link it to the DOM through JS. Maybe then the circle(jerk) will be complete. Ugh.
mhitza 2y ago
> There’s a small (and growing) cohort of people working on rendering React Native directly on canvas or webgl (I think) Sounds terrible for accessibility.
2y ago

gherkinnn 2y ago

What an odd claim to make, but he did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42824720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42824720 I have been around for long enough to remember the vanilla js, jQuery, Knockout, and Angular 1 days and it always came with a baseline mess. React (sometimes just JSX) can be used sensibly. Instead, I blame VC-backed tooling like Vercel, Next, Apollo, Prisma, and all the other rubbish Webdevfluencers are paid to fill the web with. Come to think of it, every part of building software is bloated. From Notion boards to questionable DB choices.

the__alchemist 2y ago

What do you mean by "HTML is what gets rendered by the browser"? In the context of using Javascript to modify the DOM. My understanding is that HTML is an input to the browser, which is translated to the DOM. (Which is then translated to painting the screen, handling inputs etc.) This is an important distinction in context of your point. React (Or any VDOM or similar JS lib) isn't creating HTML; it's creating a set of DOM manipulation instructions in JS.

voidr 2y ago

I agree with you that it's awful that a lot of young developers wouldn't be able to program without React. I would like to add as someone would has no problems working without any library that the DOM is one of worst APIs ever invented by humankind and that "reactive programming" is a superior model to what we used to do before. That being said: - NextJS rolled back years of tooling improvements, it's much slower than Vite - I just statically built a NextJS and a page that has no interactivity downloads 100KB of JS to do nothing with it - Facebook decided to make a "compiler" for React instead of just not pointlessly re-rednering components by default - Compared to Preact which is almost a drop in replacement, React is huge! This shows how little Facebook cares.

erikpukinskis 2y ago

> a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render. Ironically, they are right and you are wrong. HTML is a serialization format, which browsers use to construct a DOM in memory. React renders directly to the DOM without ever serializing anything to HTML. The fact that you got this wrong and are so highly upvoted really drives home the “old man shakes fist at clouds” nature of this thread.