3 ms·

When it comes to how many "other things" web developers must constantly be learning The reason for learning many of these "other things" is precisely because o

When it comes to how many "other things" web developers must constantly be learning The reason for learning many of these "other things" is precisely because of your limitations to the confines of the browser's VM, where all superior OS APIs must be poorly reimplemented (Web Workers, local/session storage, WebSockets, WebAudio, the file API, etc.) to get around the fact that the web was designed as a file server for static documents. In the process, the same-origin policy was gutted through cross-origin resource sharing and cross-domain messaging. These same limitations partly inspire the massive framework churn, most of which are formulaic.

kelseydh 11y ago
You're completely right that the problem comes from being trapped inside the browser's VM. Anyone building a highly interactive single page Javascript app definitely has their work cut out for them. It's funny, but in some ways web development has actually regressed in terms of difficultly. 10 years ago before its death, browser plugins like Flash actually made a lot of inroads towards making it easier to build highly interactive web experiences. The current shift towards Javascript has arguably left developers with a weaker set of tools for producing dynamic experiences than they had with Flash even if Flash really did need to die.