Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by namewasmypw 2368 days ago
> For example, I work on an app which wouldn't be possible on the web 5-10 years ago. It's a single page app because it needs to be.

No, it doesn't need to be. If you need to use hacks like SPAs to have the functionality you want, that is telling you that you're using the wrong tool for the job, and shouldn't be making a Web site.

What you and a lot of other Web developers have done is, when faced with a square peg and a round hole, break the peg and the hole. Worse yet, not just for you, but for everybody who has to use those pegs and holes. Now the Web is a terrible place even for the people who used it correctly. Now the desktop is a terrible place because Web people have infected it with Electron.

Web developers, if they can be called that, have set back the state of the art by several decades.

1 comments

I think that you don't understand that web developers build what they are told to, not what they want. And if the company want a SPA you build it.
I've never had a business-person come to me and say "you are building a SPA", or "we are using React." Now, they have come to me with some brilliant and also ridiculous ideas, and I've done them all, but none of those dictated a particular engineering solution.
I won't claim that it's commonplace, but I have had business people specifically tell me that they wanted a SPA because they saw it as the trendy thing and wanted their web app to feel "modern".
Yeah I could see that happening. They heard the buzzword.
Professionals in any field have a responsibility to do good and thoughtful work, and to treat their field with respect. Anyone who just builds whatever crap they're told is a bad professional.
Believe me when I say that I have had hundreds of meetings where I tried to tell them that what they want is crap. But in the end it's their decision not mine. And in the end I have to make money so I build what they want. This has nothing to with me being unprofessional.
And the others are good professionals without a job then I guess.