[porker]

Many users - who weren't programmers by training - loved CF for the ease of understanding. They had a DX paradigm that worked and I understand why people try to emulate it. It's a question of audience, and not for the HN crowd.

[otabdeveloper4]

Except that SPA frameworks are designed to complicate things, not to make them easier to understand. And SPA framework developers are crazy expensive, mor expensive than seasoned C++ systems programmers. (The two facts are probably linked.)

[Exuma]

Have you ever developed a complicated front-end system? Not using a vue/react style framework would be ludicrous (ie, building something like Facebook Ads UI or Google Analytics UI). I find it super bizarre you say "complicate things" when they do 100% the opposite. I would love to understand what you would use if you were tasked with building FB Ads manager interface: https://disruptiveadvertising.com/static/61a4440576bffd6e6a2...

[otabdeveloper4]

> I find it super bizarre you say "complicate things" when they do 100% the opposite.

They're way, way overengineered for the very limited use cases they're designed for.

If you're going to ditch the browser API's and re-write the world in Javascript, why not take into consideration all of the history of GUI development and do it right? I.e., make a real layout engine, proper widget hierarchies, real encapsulation, etc.

Instead there's some sort of frankenstein in-between state where you've ditched all the benefits of native browser API's but haven't arrived anywhere that's a true paradigm shift.

TL;DR - yeah, they make some things easier to reason about, but for any sort of non-standard webapp you'll still need to write an equivalent mountain of hacks and framework adaptors.

[Exuma]

"very limited uses" mmmmm what? Reactive frameworks are one of the widest used front-end design patterns.

You answered my questions with a bunch of theoretical non-answers that comes off like a tech purist who hasn't actually used the technologies but has a lot of opinions about them. Do you have a lot of experience designing non-trivial/complicated web apps with very heavy front-end features? "layout engine", "widget hierarchies" what _exactly_ does that mean in the context of designing something as complicated as Google Analytics/FB Biz Manager using javascript. If you are proposing not using primarily JS logic but rather server logic, or not as a SPA (or isometric hybrid like nuxt/next), then that makes me want to hear your answer even more.

Answer the question of: how would you do it?