| Are the options the best they could be? Heck no, not even close. Html is semantic enough to be tedious but not enough yo be useful. Css makes the easy things hard and people have entire philosophies around minimizing the "cascading" part. Js is at best stuck with warts to try and maintain backwards compatibility. Meanwhile the tooling to deal with missing pieces or complications that are not missing is complex enough that both new and experienced devs complain. The less said about the security complexity the better. And I'm saying all of that as someone that uses these daily and enjoys it. BUT...is it the best that is practical for the time? Probably. There have been efforts to replace these options...theyve failed. Perhaps wasm will change things, but perhaps not. Until then though, I think it is interesting to ask "Why?" Why, if these other options are superior, do they not catch on? Linux, git, nginx, these are just a few examples of dramatic tech switches that had to overcome an existing base. It isnt just backwards compatibility either - Babel exists for es6+, but I've not seen a non js-like language that can compile to js achieve much success. I suspect there are one or two areas that the current offerings handle well that aren't being credited or understood. Computer UI is a young field, computer interactions with business and marketing over time are all poorly understood. We spend much of our time reinventing our spinning wheels and relearning lessons. Html in js is bad. No, it is good. Inline css is bad. No, it is good. This isn't all wasted time, there is a lot of learning time. So I doubt we even understand yet what would make a better toolset. |