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by kstrauser 1024 days ago
> He craves the simpler times we once knew, where web/front-end development wasn't such a hot mess.

I strongly disagree. Web/front-end development was always a hot mess. It's just that when we were using Perl to write CGI.pm pages, we didn't have good tooling to tell us all the terrible things we were doing.

Modern tooling just shines a light on our mistakes. It didn't make them for us. Those simpler times only existed in the sense that we were blissfully ignorant of our sins.
1 comments
dahwolf 1024 days ago
I was looking at the bigger picture, and didn't clarify that point enough.

What I mean to say is that web development was more accessible during simpler times. People from all walks of life would develop websites, flash stuff, and even dynamic sites, i.e. LAMP. They could do that because it was simple enough to learn.

Front-end development as we typically do it today has turned into a hardcore engineering discipline of staggering complexity.

It is in fact so engineering-heavy that even within the world of professional front-end development it has caused a split where there's a "front of the front-end" (CSS, UX, accessibility) and a "back of the front-end" (the engineering part).

You may be able to justify every single tool, command line, pattern or best practice and it's not my point to talk you out of it. My point is to zoom out and consider this larger pattern.

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kstrauser 1024 days ago
Those are very fair points! You use to be able to write a credible site with a text editor and an FTP client, but that's a long time gone.

(Bystanders, don't "correct" me with "technically you still can...", etc. I know. It's all just text, right? But the parent poster is absolutely right about the general state of things.)

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dahwolf 1024 days ago
Thanks for a reasonable discussion.

Whilst hobbyists can still use whatever they want, including simple options, I in particular empathize with those new to the field or looking to turn a hobby into a job.

You need to know React/Typescript/CLIs/Docker/Git/Unit testing/IDEs/CSS/5 million other things. Or there's simply not going to be a job for you at all.

So "just don't use it" doesn't apply.

On the upside, once you do master the unwarranted complexity, pay is great. Fiddling around with toys and a Frankenstein tech stack whilst continuing to produce outcomes with worse UX than 15 years ago is somehow richly rewarded. It paid for my quality of life so let's add some more "absolutely essential" tools.

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