Heather BuchelI try to not be too grumpy about new tech or framework decisions (or old tech that's being rebranded as new!) because sometimes IT IS just because I don't have the bandwidth to keep up on everything but I'm just so tired of React. I don't want to use server actions. I don't want to use RSC. I want to do anything else. Please, very few are going to use these well. I don't feel like we advanced at all from the days of spaghetti code that people tried to convince us we were saved from with React.
"Don't you remember how awful it is having jQuery slung every where and trying to keep everything in sync and the mess of code it created?" YEAH HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT PEOPLE ARE DOING NOW? LMAO please.
If I think back to like, 10 years ago, the progression in the world of CSS has DRASTICALLY changed the way I build a UI for a website as a huge net positive good. Less code. Less images. Less clunky weird code. I really do not feel the same way about the advancements in JS UI libraries. I really don't think there has been a net positive good. Drastically different? Yeah, sure. But drastically BETTER? No, I don't think so.
Martijn Frazer@hbuchel I was never convinced importing tons of JS into my web apps was a good idea and I'm honestly happy I never went down that rabbit hole.
I want less code in my projects, not more.
Steve Karsch đ€đ»
@hbuchel If itâs any consolation (itâs not), things havenât gotten much better server-side either. The very concept of âjust throwing up a webpage on a serverâ barely exists. Iâm just glad I honed my skills in 1994 and havenât advanced a smidge since then! :D
Sascha Presnac đđ€Šââïž@hbuchel Imho, people stopped thinking about the Things they do. Using Tons of JS Just to produce some HTML is definitive NOT the most intellectual thing one can do.
Please correct me, but in my world, that Just do not make sense
Please correct me, but in my world, that Just do not make sense
sara the ninth đ@hbuchel I definitely agree with you, I find myself still wondering if we shouldnât have abandoned JS entirely and moved toward a new web-centric programming language tied to CSS and HTML in a more balanced fashion. And that even Web Components relying on JS in their spec is a terrible sin we shouldnât be forgiven for.
React has been as much an eraser of sensible solutions and implementations as it has been a powerful tool from FB to reshape the webâs collective health. 
Winnie -a11y member
Torb@sara I think itâs more about the mindset than anything else. JS can run on the server and spit out HTML after all, as thankfully is increasingly becoming standard feature on many metaframeworks now. We just need a culture of web dev that actually consistently uses it.
You can use other languages than JS of course, but I still think that mindset is the key, not which language you use to generate the HTML.
@torb thatâs completely fair, I think maybe Iâm struggling trying to communicate that some of the mindset comes from a language, and how itâs packaged, built, etc.? And while HTML & CSS have been built with this interwoven dance? JS has evolved into something thatâs not built or stewarded the same way? JS should be planning and building with how HTML & CSS proceed, but it seems to be progressing as a language on its own, that happens to run in web contexts. Does that make sense?
@sara I think a lot maybe comes from the tooling of how the language is used? I get your point though! The transpilers, compilers, babel and so on. Granted, I think tooling of programming languages is a sore point in general.
Theyâre often very complicated. JS used to be different (and still can be)âŠ
The JS of yore which was more vanilla JS file you just stuck somewhere and linked to in HTML. No preprocessing needed! No node build step! I think that yielded a different culture. This is still possible of course!
I think weâre starting to maybe see a shift though. Rich of Svelte will for the upcoming version use plan JS (switching away from TypeScript) specifically to avoid compiling JS and being closer to the spirit of the web for example.
Alex | ăąăŹăăŻăč@hbuchel I agree overall. I think some JS stuff is great and some of the newer tech with it is fun. I think it is wildly overused, and find a lot of devs now have little to no understanding of modern html/css. Iâve met some that just think itâs âsomething JS frameworks just spit outâ. Like⊠what?
I tend to do everything in CSS/HTML and then sprinkle bits of JS where it makes sense.
Josh Collinsworth@hbuchel IMO, this is because React does not actually represent advancement any longer, and hasn't for a very long time.
From my point of view, the very real fatigue you're experiencing and describing is not actually from truly modern JS; it's from the hardly-at-all modern Meta monster the industry refuses to move past, even though it's antiquated and inefficient by almost any measurable metric.
tl;dr: modern JavaScript is actually pretty great, but React isn't that.
Drew Powers@hbuchel agree. but I also think with HTML/CSS there has been an unyielding goal: layout. which has hundreds of years of prior art.
JS, by comparison, is exploring a vague space of âinteractivityâ and is near the forefront of progression. the current wave of JS frameworks will not stand the test of time because weâre at the dawn of interactivity, and thatâs OK. I think whatâs important is to recognize the latter is much more immature than the former
mikesusz@hbuchel
âi cut our website load time by two-thirds.â
âwow, thatâs amazing! how did you do it?â
âi removed the two extra copies of jquery we were loading.â
âi cut our website load time by two-thirds.â
âwow, thatâs amazing! how did you do it?â
âi removed the two extra copies of jquery we were loading.â
Chris Ferdinandi@hbuchel jQuery was at least slow to update and relatively stable between versions. The modern ecosystem is a hot mess.
Josh âYoshiâ Vickerson@cferdinandi @hbuchel THIS. Every 6 months or so it seems like someone felt the need to reinvent the wheel again and everything breaks. No stability whatsoever anymore.
Sue Smith@hbuchel From a teaching point of view with something like jquery it at least felt like it went somewhat hand in hand with learning about the basic building blocks of html and css.. With modern frameworks it feels more like we treat those basic building blocks as a problem to be subverted
ThomasAPowell@sue @hbuchel đ absolutely spot on observation esp the implication about basics.
For me that sentiment is a really big reason why I had avoided immediately teaching frameworks and adopted web components about 4-5 years ago. Before that I had a brief Vue period since it wasnât so all or nothing like React.
The other reason of course I didnât go that way hard is not everything needs to be an app. đ€Ș That seems to be the default setting of many folks in our spaceđ€