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by hattmall 1655 days ago
I agree with this so so much.

The problem is too much reliances on frameworks and add on libraries.

Developers will import an entire framework that for the benefit of a single feature. It's mind blowing to look at the amount of js includes for seemingly simple sites.

Stackoverflow answers that direct you to import a library or framework should be banned in most cases.

I will often have to scroll past several answers that say to import a library before finding a simple and functional answer that uses only a few lines of code down near the bottom. Which in my eyes is the real answer. I often wonder if there's a behind the scenes effort on SO to promote certain includes.

The entire ecosystem of some languages / implementations relies on this far too heavily.

We are seeing some of the consequences other than just bloated systems from this style of coding with malicious node packages.

1 comments

I am guilty of this, and I feel bad for it. I am not a front end developer, but I have built a few web sites for various projects here and there. I certainly don't NEED to use a front-end framework, but I don't want have to spend a ton of time crafting CSS rules and figuing out how many divs to nest. To get something done quickly, my choices pretty much boil down to plain, unstyled, pages, or a full blown framework like Vuetify. So far, I haven't found anything in between. I would love to find a CSS library that I can just import and be able to create simple, nicely styled pages, e.g. that look Material-esque, without jQuery, node, npm, gulp, grunt, sass, and all that jazz.
do you know the matrix movie quote "but there is no spoon" – maybe the framework you look for is vanilla CSS. Write sensible markup to hold your content (almost no divs), CSS it and be good. Sounds that feasible?
> ... vanilla CSS... Sounds that feasible?

Vanilla CSS is the other end of the spectrum, but the problem is there is apparently nothing between hand-crafted CSS and a full front-end framework. People, like me, who are not good at design will choose the convenience of the latter over going through the tedium of the former, even if we don't really want to.

You won't be a sculptor if you avoid the chisel. If in rome, do as the romans do. If you want to swim, you'll get wet.

There is no design in/for the web without html+css, is there?

Edit: by removing 3rd parties from your project you remove a lot of overhead and current and future risk. But be warned: Maybe your company sells exactly that for a good margin and you ruin the business model.

We don't want to sculptors. We have other projects that just happen to require a sculpture as part of finishing them.

> There is no design in/for the web without html+css, is there?

Only as much as there's no programming without assembly language.

> We don't want to sculptors.

It is really sad that you are forced to do things that you believe you are not capable of doing and refuse to do.

What's your opinion about bootstrap? Unfashionable I get it, but doesn't it serve the purpose?
It's been a long time since I looked at Bootstrap. I don't remember it being anywhere near as easy to create a nice-looking page with it as it is with Vuetify.
How about Tailwind?
Bootstrap is unfashionable?
In the same way that Corollas, Applebee's, and Walmart brand jeans are unfashionable, yes.
Bootstrap v2 had a LOT of unnecessary features while simultaneously lacking features because of Less limitations. By v5 it was significantly slimmed down if not for removing IE support and jQuery, but also a lot of rarely-used components.