This got to me:
> For a certain type of developer, building things yourself is just more fun
The platform APIs were terrible. React wasn't "more fun"... it just made it possible to do things with the platform that were extremely difficult and cumbersome to get working reliably with platform APIs alone.
To me, web components were an incredible idea poorly implemented. Most of the minimal adoption happened on top of frameworks like Lit that wrapped WCs to try to make the dev experience tolerable.
In urban planning they have a concept called "desire paths" where if you don't put sidewalks and pathways in the right places, people invent their own. I feel like the web community has spent a lot of time and effort patching the platform.
Now credit where credit is due: it has very much improved. And modern standards means it really is time to re-evaluate where and when you need these patches. But don't write off all that annoying and painful effort people put in to trying to making the platform deliver it's promised potential just to "building it yourself is more fun".
After doing this for more than 20 years I have asked that question hundreds of times and the answer is almost always about aesthetics, about 95%+. Of those aesthetics based conclusions most people cannot find their own way to handle it without waiting for somebody else to write a tool that provides the answer they were looking for. Even then the answer tends to be predicated on social acceptance more than technical evaluation. That is a training or human performance problem more than a technical problem. It says a lot about an industry where the people who are able to ask these kinds of questions realize its a training problem and are willing to raise salaries and assume tech debt as opposed to fixing a human capital problem for far less money.
At any rate there is something to be said for the developer who builds things on their own just for themselves. In many cases the result is faster, lighter, and more capable software than what they are paid to do for their employer. Their personal software isn't locked into conventions or abstractions beyond their control.
The web platform is still garbage. I want something with the simplicity of Classic MacOS, or GTK2, where for e.g. a text editing page like a wiki, I have a toplevel "App" component, and inside a combination of VerticalBox, and HorizontalBox for layout, with a MenuBar on top and a TextBox on the bottom, and some buttons. In total, a tree with a depth of max 4-5, and sane defaults so I never have to think about the "CSS rendering algorithm", divs, CSS selectors, Z-index or other useless details like that, which should be left to those designing a skin for the UI components library.
Web design hasn't caught up with desktop UI frameworks of 30 years ago.
toddmorey · · focus · HN ↗
The platform APIs were terrible. React wasn't "more fun"... it just made it possible to do things with the platform that were extremely difficult and cumbersome to get working reliably with platform APIs alone.
To me, web components were an incredible idea poorly implemented. Most of the minimal adoption happened on top of frameworks like Lit that wrapped WCs to try to make the dev experience tolerable.
In urban planning they have a concept called "desire paths" where if you don't put sidewalks and pathways in the right places, people invent their own. I feel like the web community has spent a lot of time and effort patching the platform.
Now credit where credit is due: it has very much improved. And modern standards means it really is time to re-evaluate where and when you need these patches. But don't write off all that annoying and painful effort people put in to trying to making the platform deliver it's promised potential just to "building it yourself is more fun".
austin-cheney · · focus · HN ↗
In what way?
After doing this for more than 20 years I have asked that question hundreds of times and the answer is almost always about aesthetics, about 95%+. Of those aesthetics based conclusions most people cannot find their own way to handle it without waiting for somebody else to write a tool that provides the answer they were looking for. Even then the answer tends to be predicated on social acceptance more than technical evaluation. That is a training or human performance problem more than a technical problem. It says a lot about an industry where the people who are able to ask these kinds of questions realize its a training problem and are willing to raise salaries and assume tech debt as opposed to fixing a human capital problem for far less money.
At any rate there is something to be said for the developer who builds things on their own just for themselves. In many cases the result is faster, lighter, and more capable software than what they are paid to do for their employer. Their personal software isn't locked into conventions or abstractions beyond their control.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗