<story><title>Second-Guessing the Modern Web</title><url>https://macwright.org/2020/05/10/spa-fatigue.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MattGaiser</author><text>&amp;gt; As a user and developer myself, that&amp;#x27;s the sort of selfish attitude that really really angers your users.&lt;p&gt;A user is only unhappy if they withhold some money over it.</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It outweighs all the end-user-facing cons by a lot, because companies need us, and our salaries are expensive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a user and developer myself, that&amp;#x27;s the sort of selfish attitude that really &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; angers your users.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I sometimes wonder if the people claiming to hate client-side technologies or disable JS in their browsers have actually ever had to build a complex website to put food on their table. My bet is the answer is often no, or they are a contrarian in general.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked on &amp;quot;complex&amp;quot;[1] websites in PHP, all static&amp;#x2F;server-side rendered; &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; need of JS, near instant load times, ultra low bandwidth and server CPU utilisation, and don&amp;#x27;t even need to think about &amp;quot;browser support&amp;quot; because it&amp;#x27;ll be usable with anything from the past two decades.&lt;p&gt;[1] complexity in terms of features and usefulness, not in terms of how much code and resources it needs. Unfortunately a lot of developers seem to think complexity as in the latter is a good thing.</text></item><item><author>luxphl</author><text>I empathize with the author but client-side technologies like React have a pretty clear advantage that explains why they&amp;#x27;re popular: for the people that are tasked to make websites (i.e. us, HN readers), they&amp;#x27;re easier to work with and they save us time. It outweighs all the end-user-facing cons by a lot, because companies need us, and our salaries are expensive.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s true that they are largely more complex than O.G. web technologies, and it worries me that they create a sort of gatekeeping effect on the industry, but I think it&amp;#x27;s disingenuous to outright claim React &amp;amp; co. are bad from a development perspective. I sometimes wonder if the people claiming to hate client-side technologies or disable JS in their browsers have actually ever had to build a complex website to put food on their table. My bet is the answer is often no, or they are a contrarian in general.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve done lots of native development on Desktop and Mobile and I can sort of see how you get there if that&amp;#x27;s your point of reference, but if you work on web apps daily it&amp;#x27;s clear why the popular technologies are popular, and it&amp;#x27;s not hype.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>As others said, user != customer. A big chunk of software (perhaps the majority) is bought by someone other than the end-user. Think workplace, or all the OEM garbage that ships with your phone.&lt;p&gt;On top of that, on the mass market, customers don&amp;#x27;t have a meanigful choice. They can&amp;#x27;t signal desires in the entirety of concept space; they &lt;i&gt;choose out of what&amp;#x27;s available on the market&lt;/i&gt;. Which means the choice really lies with the vendors.</text></comment>
<story><title>Second-Guessing the Modern Web</title><url>https://macwright.org/2020/05/10/spa-fatigue.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MattGaiser</author><text>&amp;gt; As a user and developer myself, that&amp;#x27;s the sort of selfish attitude that really really angers your users.&lt;p&gt;A user is only unhappy if they withhold some money over it.</text></item><item><author>userbinator</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It outweighs all the end-user-facing cons by a lot, because companies need us, and our salaries are expensive.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a user and developer myself, that&amp;#x27;s the sort of selfish attitude that really &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; angers your users.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;I sometimes wonder if the people claiming to hate client-side technologies or disable JS in their browsers have actually ever had to build a complex website to put food on their table. My bet is the answer is often no, or they are a contrarian in general.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked on &amp;quot;complex&amp;quot;[1] websites in PHP, all static&amp;#x2F;server-side rendered; &lt;i&gt;zero&lt;/i&gt; need of JS, near instant load times, ultra low bandwidth and server CPU utilisation, and don&amp;#x27;t even need to think about &amp;quot;browser support&amp;quot; because it&amp;#x27;ll be usable with anything from the past two decades.&lt;p&gt;[1] complexity in terms of features and usefulness, not in terms of how much code and resources it needs. Unfortunately a lot of developers seem to think complexity as in the latter is a good thing.</text></item><item><author>luxphl</author><text>I empathize with the author but client-side technologies like React have a pretty clear advantage that explains why they&amp;#x27;re popular: for the people that are tasked to make websites (i.e. us, HN readers), they&amp;#x27;re easier to work with and they save us time. It outweighs all the end-user-facing cons by a lot, because companies need us, and our salaries are expensive.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s true that they are largely more complex than O.G. web technologies, and it worries me that they create a sort of gatekeeping effect on the industry, but I think it&amp;#x27;s disingenuous to outright claim React &amp;amp; co. are bad from a development perspective. I sometimes wonder if the people claiming to hate client-side technologies or disable JS in their browsers have actually ever had to build a complex website to put food on their table. My bet is the answer is often no, or they are a contrarian in general.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve done lots of native development on Desktop and Mobile and I can sort of see how you get there if that&amp;#x27;s your point of reference, but if you work on web apps daily it&amp;#x27;s clear why the popular technologies are popular, and it&amp;#x27;s not hype.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goatinaboat</author><text>&lt;i&gt;A user is only unhappy if they withhold some money over it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. If you are selling to the CFO on the golf course, then you get paid &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; all the actual users are unhappy. This is the entire ERP industry.</text></comment>