| > People often scoff at complexity in frontend projects The complexity is there because everyone is trying to reinvent everything. > accessibility, internationalisation, routing and state including storage of those Do multi-pages apps and most of these are really trivial due to the amount of solutions that exists. > There's various authentication and authorization standards That's also more of a server concerns than the browser. > these engines are all subtly different It isn't the old IE days (which Chrome is trying to replicate). More often than not, I hear this often when people expect to implement native-like features inside a web app. It's a web browser. The apps I trust, I download them. > People want things to work online and offline so they don't lose work while on a train Build a desktop app. > Most these people complaining probably barely understand what they're complaining about Because it's like watching Sisyphus pushing the stone up again and again. The same problem is being solved again and again and if you want to use the latest, you have to redo everything. |
> The complexity is there because everyone is trying to reinvent everything.
That's not just JS. That's literally everywhere. People reinvent ideas in every codebase I've seen. Sometimes it's a boon, sometimes it's a detriment. But again, not something that's unique to JS.
> Do multi-pages apps and most of these are really trivial due to the amount of solutions that exists.
None of these are trivial, even with existing solutions. They're only trivial for trivial cases. Like, I'm sure we both understand people aren't building to-do demos.
> It isn't the old IE days
Probably happened accidently, but it kinda misconstructs what I'm saying. There are issues between renderin engines and variety in how much/quickly they adopt some features. Hell, you still need code branches just for Safari in some cases becaus of how it handles things like private browsing.
> Build a desktop app.
You're trading one world of complexity for another world of complexity (or I guess we could say it's trading one set of platform quirks for a larger set of platform quirks)
> Because it's like watching Sisyphus pushing the stone up again and again. The same problem is being solved again and again and if you want to use the latest, you have to redo everything.
I understand where you're coming from, but just because Svelte was released it doesn't make React (and spin-offs) or Vue less relevant. You're not force to use them.
Regarding the bundling topic, again you're not forced to awirch to a different bundler if you're happy with your existing one, or the project isn't at a scale where it matters.
I think the pressure is internal, not external.