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> [web dev] is a bit like assembling IKEA furniture. There's no "full-stack" product with batteries included, you have to piece together and configure many indi

> [web dev] is a bit like assembling IKEA furniture. There's no "full-stack" product with batteries included, you have to piece together and configure many individual services > I'm relatively new to modern web dev and find the above a bit overwhelming tbh, it kind of shows. This whole tweet just has a vibe for me of a junior moaning about how complex things are -- and suggesting we should build a fancy new framework to solve it all instead of having to learn about the individual components. the modularity is a feature, not a bug. it means we can make customised systems out of re-usable components. one-size-fits solutions rarely work when you need to do that one special thing -- you can't do it because your AIO platform doesn't allow you to. there goes your chance at solving problem X for your customer (and getting paid more money). The truth is, things are usually somewhere between these two edge cases, or on the extremes themselves 1. limited modularity -- low complexity, heavily opinionated and limited functionality outside of 'one-size-fits-all' (e.g. wordpress) 2. high modularity -- high complexity, less opinionated and high functionality (e.g. AWS/self-hosted)

flakiness 2y ago
Building a webapp being difficult for a junior is the exact problem he's pointing out, although pointing it out as a problem is probably not very fair. It's just the maturity of the technology. The expectation has changed, and people expect webapps to be relatively sophisticated, but building a sophisticated webapp isn't easy. There are a lot of them just because there are a lot of reasonably competent webdevs. Joining that club is not impossible at all, but it's not like building a Rails app 10+ years ago (which did solve a lot of problems at the standard of that time, because of the different expectation level).
- kaoD 2y ago
  It's not even related to tech or field maturity. Web apps are complex beasts. A junior architect cannot design a safe and maintainable skyscraper (hell, they probably can't even design a proper two-story home without making mistakes) and architecture as a discipline has been with us for centuries. A modern, new product is even harder because it's often uncharted territory (it's almost a miracle we can build them) not because of the maturity of the field but rather because if you're building an app instead of deploying an off-the-shelf solution it's because you need to explore the trail... If you want tried and tested just deploy WooCommerce or whatevs in a plain-old web hosting! Designing something completely new is, by definition, off-limits for a junior in any field. This guy's been building bunkers and dams for years and somehow expects to transfer his knowledge to design a skyscraper? Would he expect a webdev to be able to design and build a brand-new LLM and deploy it in a scalable fashion from scratch? I understand the desire, but it's unrealistic, especially considering the ever-growing affordances that an app is expected to have in 2025.

flakiness 2y ago

Building a webapp being difficult for a junior is the exact problem he's pointing out, although pointing it out as a problem is probably not very fair. It's just the maturity of the technology. The expectation has changed, and people expect webapps to be relatively sophisticated, but building a sophisticated webapp isn't easy. There are a lot of them just because there are a lot of reasonably competent webdevs. Joining that club is not impossible at all, but it's not like building a Rails app 10+ years ago (which did solve a lot of problems at the standard of that time, because of the different expectation level).

kaoD 2y ago
It's not even related to tech or field maturity. Web apps are complex beasts. A junior architect cannot design a safe and maintainable skyscraper (hell, they probably can't even design a proper two-story home without making mistakes) and architecture as a discipline has been with us for centuries. A modern, new product is even harder because it's often uncharted territory (it's almost a miracle we can build them) not because of the maturity of the field but rather because if you're building an app instead of deploying an off-the-shelf solution it's because you need to explore the trail... If you want tried and tested just deploy WooCommerce or whatevs in a plain-old web hosting! Designing something completely new is, by definition, off-limits for a junior in any field. This guy's been building bunkers and dams for years and somehow expects to transfer his knowledge to design a skyscraper? Would he expect a webdev to be able to design and build a brand-new LLM and deploy it in a scalable fashion from scratch? I understand the desire, but it's unrealistic, especially considering the ever-growing affordances that an app is expected to have in 2025.