[adamredwoods]

>> Why Is the Front End Stack So Complicated?

Because it's always morphing. Once upon a time, it was only desktop. Then it became mobile. Then the browser added "features" and websites want that "feature". Video. Animation. Accessibility. Wasm. Then where do we hosts websites? I used to be a desktop in a closet, then it became dedicated, containerized, serverless, server-side, client-side, monolith, micro-arch. Information morphs, too. Tracking, telemetry, A/B testing, search, session state, data storage, AI.

Where do we go next?

[namaria]

The beauty of programming general computers is the endless flexibility. It's also the biggest danger. Holding it together against entropy and adversarial compute actually runs against how people like to code: experimentally and moving on as soon as the new desired feature is online. So project management and security are both bolted on and increase complexity greatly. Specialists are also incentivized to do a lot of arcane stuff, because if it looks good and sounds complicated it bolsters the value of their skills.

Computers and computer networks were designed in high trust environment to facilitate free communication. It was pioneered by academics and military organizations, where only highly credentialed people ever touched anything. When the web went commercial in 1993 I think we started a cambrian explosion of diversity in computation. I guess it wouldn't have gone as far without two decades of zero interest money and VC backed 'growth hacking'.