> I feel all this sentiment against "frontend complexity" is essentially non-frontend developers wanting cool, highly interactive web apps for their backend and

> I feel all this sentiment against "frontend complexity" is essentially non-frontend developers wanting cool, highly interactive web apps for their backend and getting bummed when they discover it's hard, specialized work. Maybe it is hard and specialised, but from the viewpoint of someone who just wants to deliver an app, exactly what would I need a client side router for? Or a virtual DOM? Until I am in need of an interface that has the needs of Facebook, I need convincing that these things are adding value. > But if you don't need that complexity because you just need the browser's lower-interactivity presentation layer That's sufficient for 999 out of every 1000 web apps. In practice I see the opposite ratio. Just this past month I yanked out the entire reacy front end from a project and replaced it, functionally, with plain html, js and CDs and the junior tasked with working on it was able to iterate much faster than he had been doing before. At a previous larger contract I just kept the react and powered through, but I kept having the team run into problems because like it or not, the cognitive burden of react very often outweighs any benefits it brings.