4 ms·

Webdev is the pinnacle of over engineering. And now with AI, it will get even worse. I think the web truly needs a reset.

satvikpendem 27d ago
Improving speed is now overengineering apparently, but the same people would complain about how horrible web dev is if it weren't improved. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- throw_m239339 27d ago
  But bad performances stems from non compiler optimized React to begin with, its execution model when handwritten. Other frameworks don't necessarily take more effort to use and have better performances from the get go.
  - satvikpendem 27d ago
    A lot of them do have compilers too, like a couple of the most commonly cited React alternatives, Svelte and Solid, so I'm not sure why React specifically is singled out.
- rjzzleep 25d ago
  It's layers upon layers of indirection and then massive layers of optimization on top of it. What should happen is that we take the lessons that we learned from this current iteration of the web and desktop and turn it into a new generation while cutting out the crap we don't need.
  - satvikpendem 25d ago
    People are doing this already. Flutter is one example where it's compiled to Wasm. Other languages have Wasm web GUIs as well.
onion2k 27d ago
Webdev is the pinnacle of over engineering. Imagine you wanted to make a native desktop app that runs on Windows (going back to Windows 95), and OSX, and Linux, and have it use the end users choice of native components, QT, or GTK. It also has to load fast, be accessible, and work on desktop, laptop, and phones. Also, you're only allowed to ship a single binary but you can load in assets based on the device when it runs. The app could be anything from a single page that renders one image up to a complete 3D game. Users want 60FPS regardless of what it is. I reckon you'd end up with a relatively complicated build pipeline. That's what webdev is today.
- shikck200 27d ago
  Thats not a true comparison, MAYBE that was sort of a thing back in the IE6 era. Today the web is capable of "a good enough" UX for most things. But how we do interactive apps on the web today is just madness. Most sites dont need anything close to React, and those who do could have just used something more simple without the madness what is the react ecosystem / bundlers / packages etc.
  - onion2k 27d ago
    The best non-web analogy I can think of is when someone builds a 2D platformer in Unreal Engine. The complexity of the tooling is necessary because someone else is making Witcher 4 in it. The fact the 2D platformer is using a vastly more complicated tool than necessary is on the dev, not the tool. It's not React's fault that some devs don't know how to make a form in HTML. There is an argument that React doesn't spend much time telling people they might not need it, but that's not really their responsibility, plus there are some things (reactivity to other things on the page) that are common enough that seeing the boundary where you do or don't need it is actually quite hard.
    - slopinthebag 27d ago
      in defence of using ue5 for a 2d platformer, you still get a ton of features to help you build out the platformer, cross platform support, and you can reuse your knowledge across projects. it's kind of the same for react. yes you could build one thing in vanilla js, another thing with htmx, and then a third in react. or just build all three in react and be done with it. modern web dev is actually pretty simple now, there is still a stigma around webdev from the olden days but spinning up vite + react is trivial, doesn't pull a ton of dependencies, and makes it easy to build anything you want. yes you can still overcomplicate it massively but that's on the dev at that point.
yugoslavia4ever 27d ago
There's lots of overengineered bollocks in webdev, but this is not one of those pieces.
slopinthebag 27d ago
it's not really. you have javascript, you have a library like react which has a code transformer written in rust, you have vite which orchestrates the build process, and...? if anything the migration of all these tools to rust makes things way less complicated. you have a binary for compiling your react code (totally optional btw, it's a performance optimisation), a cli for building your app (vite, built on a rust binary basically), and react itself which is virtually dependency free. where is the over engineering here?
throw_m239339 27d ago
*React. Nobody is forced to use React to write web UI though. Actually, in theory, AI helps getting rid of all these web frameworks, they are tools for made developers, LLM don't need React to code a web UI, they can use Vanilla DOM or faster frameworks, like SolidJS.

satvikpendem 27d ago

Improving speed is now overengineering apparently, but the same people would complain about how horrible web dev is if it weren't improved. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

throw_m239339 27d ago
But bad performances stems from non compiler optimized React to begin with, its execution model when handwritten. Other frameworks don't necessarily take more effort to use and have better performances from the get go.
- satvikpendem 27d ago
  A lot of them do have compilers too, like a couple of the most commonly cited React alternatives, Svelte and Solid, so I'm not sure why React specifically is singled out.
rjzzleep 25d ago
It's layers upon layers of indirection and then massive layers of optimization on top of it. What should happen is that we take the lessons that we learned from this current iteration of the web and desktop and turn it into a new generation while cutting out the crap we don't need.
- satvikpendem 25d ago
  People are doing this already. Flutter is one example where it's compiled to Wasm. Other languages have Wasm web GUIs as well.

onion2k 27d ago

Webdev is the pinnacle of over engineering. Imagine you wanted to make a native desktop app that runs on Windows (going back to Windows 95), and OSX, and Linux, and have it use the end users choice of native components, QT, or GTK. It also has to load fast, be accessible, and work on desktop, laptop, and phones. Also, you're only allowed to ship a single binary but you can load in assets based on the device when it runs. The app could be anything from a single page that renders one image up to a complete 3D game. Users want 60FPS regardless of what it is. I reckon you'd end up with a relatively complicated build pipeline. That's what webdev is today.

shikck200 27d ago
Thats not a true comparison, MAYBE that was sort of a thing back in the IE6 era. Today the web is capable of "a good enough" UX for most things. But how we do interactive apps on the web today is just madness. Most sites dont need anything close to React, and those who do could have just used something more simple without the madness what is the react ecosystem / bundlers / packages etc.
- onion2k 27d ago
  The best non-web analogy I can think of is when someone builds a 2D platformer in Unreal Engine. The complexity of the tooling is necessary because someone else is making Witcher 4 in it. The fact the 2D platformer is using a vastly more complicated tool than necessary is on the dev, not the tool. It's not React's fault that some devs don't know how to make a form in HTML. There is an argument that React doesn't spend much time telling people they might not need it, but that's not really their responsibility, plus there are some things (reactivity to other things on the page) that are common enough that seeing the boundary where you do or don't need it is actually quite hard.
  - slopinthebag 27d ago
    in defence of using ue5 for a 2d platformer, you still get a ton of features to help you build out the platformer, cross platform support, and you can reuse your knowledge across projects. it's kind of the same for react. yes you could build one thing in vanilla js, another thing with htmx, and then a third in react. or just build all three in react and be done with it. modern web dev is actually pretty simple now, there is still a stigma around webdev from the olden days but spinning up vite + react is trivial, doesn't pull a ton of dependencies, and makes it easy to build anything you want. yes you can still overcomplicate it massively but that's on the dev at that point.

yugoslavia4ever 27d ago

There's lots of overengineered bollocks in webdev, but this is not one of those pieces.

slopinthebag 27d ago

it's not really. you have javascript, you have a library like react which has a code transformer written in rust, you have vite which orchestrates the build process, and...? if anything the migration of all these tools to rust makes things way less complicated. you have a binary for compiling your react code (totally optional btw, it's a performance optimisation), a cli for building your app (vite, built on a rust binary basically), and react itself which is virtually dependency free. where is the over engineering here?

throw_m239339 27d ago

*React. Nobody is forced to use React to write web UI though. Actually, in theory, AI helps getting rid of all these web frameworks, they are tools for made developers, LLM don't need React to code a web UI, they can use Vanilla DOM or faster frameworks, like SolidJS.