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Complexity is not inherent to web development. If anything it is now possible to get more done with less. Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails and it enables you t

Complexity is not inherent to web development. If anything it is now possible to get more done with less. Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails and it enables you to create very modern experiences with content live updating through web sockets and it is basically a one liner to setup. The de facto way to deliver JS in rails has also become far simpler through import maps. There is no build step for that. Tailwind support is a flag away when generating a new rails app and is super simple. Deploying has even become simpler through kamal. So no, complexity is not inherent to web development and the article is wrong in marking Hotwire as “complexity”. If anything it makes it simpler. I agree with your point about learning, but learning shouldn’t be about learning more tech. The learning should be how to get more done with less. Anyone can use 20 different programming languages and servers, the skill lies in using 4 of them to do the same and outperform a thousand person team with just 3 devs.

mkhalil 1y ago
>> "Complexity is not inherent to web development" >> "Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails and it enables you to create very modern experiences with content live updating through web sockets and it is basically a one liner to setup." My point was that web development isn't complex, but the core is simple; but modern web development is. Your "Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails" statement is a perfect example. What you claim to be simple, is a big list of tooling, web-sockets included, integrated together. The end result is using it might be a "one-liner", but that doesn't mean it's simple. And that's OKAY. Because simplicity should be the standard; and adding things, like sockets for live updates, should be something you explicitly enable (with modern web-apis, its definitely simpler than it used to be, but that doesn't mean its simple)
- AstroBen 1y ago
  This really is different. Hotwire is simple. You can read through the library's codebase and understand what it's doing fairly easily, and then when working with it the flow is straightforward. Good luck doing that with React
  - creakingstairs 1y ago
    > Good luck doing that with React Data is sent to React by inertia/graphql/whatever and React renders it. It’s pretty straightforward. Edit: I do love LiveView/HotWire/HTMX etc but honestly everything is a trade off and there are times just rendering a react component is less complex.
    - ricardobeat 1y ago
      “Just rendering a component” takes thousands of nested function calls, covering a million lines of code; it’s not possible for a person to read or understand the whole process unless they dedicate months to it.
      - creakingstairs 1y ago
        Sure it adds complexity, but isn't that what abstractions are for? We are talking about grokking how data flows in _a web app in Rails_. I wouldn't think usual workflow requires going into actual inner workings of React :p
        AstroBen 1y ago
        Well React doesn't come by itself. You need a router, probably some way of managing shared state, bundling, compiling your TypeScript, and 7 other libraries The more stuff you add on the harder everything is to understand, and the less stable your app becomes until suddenly you need specialists for every piece just to keep things chugging forward. Everything needs greasing and maintenance over time.. ..and then in 4 years the React team decides "oh you know what the way Svelte is doing things is actually way better.. we'll need a re-write to integrate their ideas". Now what? "that wouldn't happen! so many businesses depend on React!".. uh they have no obligation to make things compatible with whatever you've built. They're not working for you. What happened with AngularJS? Vue 2? Hotwire is easy to understand (React "just renders it" is a massive oversimplification) If Hotwire rewrites? I create a private fork and continue on. Who cares If I want to tweak how Hotwire works cause it'll benefit my app specifically? I do it myself I'm not against adding complexity.. but if you care at all about longevity and long-term productivity then adding React really needs a tonne more consideration than it gets

mkhalil 1y ago

>> "Complexity is not inherent to web development" >> "Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails and it enables you to create very modern experiences with content live updating through web sockets and it is basically a one liner to setup." My point was that web development isn't complex, but the core is simple; but modern web development is. Your "Hotwire is sort of vanilla rails" statement is a perfect example. What you claim to be simple, is a big list of tooling, web-sockets included, integrated together. The end result is using it might be a "one-liner", but that doesn't mean it's simple. And that's OKAY. Because simplicity should be the standard; and adding things, like sockets for live updates, should be something you explicitly enable (with modern web-apis, its definitely simpler than it used to be, but that doesn't mean its simple)

AstroBen 1y ago
This really is different. Hotwire is simple. You can read through the library's codebase and understand what it's doing fairly easily, and then when working with it the flow is straightforward. Good luck doing that with React
- creakingstairs 1y ago
  > Good luck doing that with React Data is sent to React by inertia/graphql/whatever and React renders it. It’s pretty straightforward. Edit: I do love LiveView/HotWire/HTMX etc but honestly everything is a trade off and there are times just rendering a react component is less complex.
  - ricardobeat 1y ago
    “Just rendering a component” takes thousands of nested function calls, covering a million lines of code; it’s not possible for a person to read or understand the whole process unless they dedicate months to it.
    - creakingstairs 1y ago
      Sure it adds complexity, but isn't that what abstractions are for? We are talking about grokking how data flows in _a web app in Rails_. I wouldn't think usual workflow requires going into actual inner workings of React :p
      - AstroBen 1y ago
        Well React doesn't come by itself. You need a router, probably some way of managing shared state, bundling, compiling your TypeScript, and 7 other libraries The more stuff you add on the harder everything is to understand, and the less stable your app becomes until suddenly you need specialists for every piece just to keep things chugging forward. Everything needs greasing and maintenance over time.. ..and then in 4 years the React team decides "oh you know what the way Svelte is doing things is actually way better.. we'll need a re-write to integrate their ideas". Now what? "that wouldn't happen! so many businesses depend on React!".. uh they have no obligation to make things compatible with whatever you've built. They're not working for you. What happened with AngularJS? Vue 2? Hotwire is easy to understand (React "just renders it" is a massive oversimplification) If Hotwire rewrites? I create a private fork and continue on. Who cares If I want to tweak how Hotwire works cause it'll benefit my app specifically? I do it myself I'm not against adding complexity.. but if you care at all about longevity and long-term productivity then adding React really needs a tonne more consideration than it gets