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I'm struggling to understand why. If you have a complex app, the complexity will be stored somewhere - it might be in JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP/Ruby/Python, YA
by blowski 12y ago
I'm struggling to understand why. If you have a complex app, the complexity will be stored somewhere - it might be in JavaScript, CSS, HTML, PHP/Ruby/Python, YAML config files, the database, or some combination of those things. But it will always be somewhere.
Sometimes, depending on the team and the project, it will make sense to store at least some of that complexity in the HTML.
- icebraining 12y agoThe author specifically says the post is not about complex apps, but "typical websites".
- blowski 12y agoOh, you're right - sorry I actually didn't read that.
- unclebucknasty 12y agoBut you still hit on a useful point: that is, many "solutions" intended to improve design simply move the problem around. I first noticed this when Hibernate became all the rage, as well as some webapp frameworks. They were supposed to be awesome because they didn't require code. Looking closer, they'd just replaced code with declarative config files that spread a given piece of functionality across multiple files/formats that were sometimes harder to debug. Each layer implemented comes with additional complexity, not less. The real solution always seems to come down to simplicity and minimalism. To my mind, it's always seemed that limiting the number of technologies employed is a useful goal.
- septerr 12y agoBut he does talk about apps with authentication, rating systems, shopping carts etc. These in my opinion represent a complex app.
- grandalf 12y agoI have yet to see an app where putting all that complexity into each server side request simplifies anything... Usually, it forces all kinds of artificial constraints on the app, such as atomic ratings counts when a looser, more cache-friendly requirement would suffice, etc.,