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by cgs 2398 days ago
I like this trend of moving back toward component based architecture. This has many similarities to Flutter, which for me has been a major breath of fresh air.

What still gets me: HTML/CSS/JS honestly just sucks for building complex apps. We have shoehorned tools that were meant for simple document display into doing our bidding, but at what cost? Hours and hours of developer agony. It doesn't need to be this hard. I like looking at one file written in one language to see both the look and behavior of an app. There has just been too much mental overhead. I like the way things are going and this framework is step forward.

4 comments

> HTML/CSS/JS honestly just sucks for building complex apps.

I think it's precisely the JS/web space that's doing most of the work for exploring the exact ideas that make complex clients tractable and pleasant to develop.

For example, React and Elm are a lot closer to an ideal than any desktop/mobile client stack I've used.

I really wish Flutter wasn't tied to Dart. Dart feels like a yet-another language with nothing over e.g. Go. Go can compile to JS and WASM now.
Doesn't Dart have generics and a lot of other language features that Go chose to omit?
Trouble is its yet another language to learn.

Flutter should have just done the cross platform UI part and offered APIs in a number of languages.

Would Flutter be where it is today without hotreload? Hotreload was a suggestion form the Dart team, Flutter team tried it and where amazed.
Hmm... that is interesting. Guess I will have to see if it uses native controls and is handicapped accessible. Last one is a deal breaker for a "real" UI library.
You find “hours and hours of developer agony” everywhere. Between TypeScript, React, and styled components, I’ve come to find it extremely enjoyable to build interesting and complex things for the browser. A few years ago, I’d have agreed with you we’ve been using the wrong tools. More and more, I feel like we’re finally seeing tools that help the job be creative and enjoyable instead of a frustrating, uphill battle.
>I like looking at one file written in one language to see both the look and behavior of an app

Isn't this the basis for the prediction that every app that can be written in JavaScript will eventually be rewritten in JavaScript.