You may not need anything more than HTML [video]

4 points by phantom_wizard 1 year ago | 5 comments
  • bob1029 1 year ago
    For me the framework thing made a lot more sense prior to ~2020.

    With browser standards mostly converged, you don't need things that normalize and shim the DOM for you anymore. Firefox on desktop, Safari on iOS, doesn't really matter. It will mostly just work these days. You still need to be aware of device-specific capabilities, quirks with cookies & local storage, et. al., but this stuff is worth handling directly. Waiting on a 3rd party to get an iOS update bug resolved each year is not always great for business. Calling getUserMedia() is genuinely not a big deal if you can be bothered to read documentation for 10 minutes.

    The other argument I see for using web frameworks is that it helps to organize the nature of work into some kind of popular pattern which then creates a common target for talent management. If you handed me a stack of resumes this morning and made me hire a developer, I would strongly prefer ones that imply vanilla/legacy web competency over those that enumerate 10+ popular JS frameworks. I am not looking for a modularized cog in a machine that I can arbitrarily replace. I want someone who can own the entire vertical and who understands why I would want that.

    The interests of the front-end/back-end separation police are why server-side rendering seems to constantly get slandered. I've been excoriated by this new wave of developers on more than one occasion for suggesting that it is possible for one human to simultaneously understand HTML/CSS/JS, SQL and a single backend programming language. The most insane thing to me is that you could also just use javascript on the server to produce SSR content, but I've never once seen that not turn into a client-side rendering circus.

    • speakbits 1 year ago
      The video title is more apt: you don't need a framework. If you're building any kind of interactivity or want to style the site past the basic styles, you absolutely need more than HTML.
      • sylware 1 year ago
        Nearly 100% of critical online services can be rendered in a good enough fashion as noscript/basic (x)html, as most were a few years back.
        • speakbits 1 year ago
          Yes, you can get away with a lot with just the basic elements and leave javascript out. You're still going to need CSS if you want to go beyond what the browser provides you.
          • sylware 1 year ago
            Even CSS is optional, a "semantic 2D HTML document" is enough. You will get a nice layout until the browser does handle a table level of even one depth (and you usually can manage with browsers flattening the table).

            Navigation among those "semantic 2D HTML documents" was thought thru already: https://webaim.org/techniques/tables/

            That should be enforced by regulation on "critical" (USA: utility?) online services.

            It means many could develop reasonably an alternative _REAL-LIFE_ browser to interact with those online services (this is strategic control, and allows money to go where it is actually needed instead of those toxic web javascript abominations, and this word is fair, not nice, but _FAIR_).

            If something has to replace noscript/basic (x)html, it should be as simple, or more simple, and as stable in time. It must be worth it: namely "cleaner".

            We could compromise with something "javascript": I guess that would be a dynamic 2D RGB canvas with very basic and few drawing primitives (mostly vector based with a glyph renderer) and OS services (probably event based), but I don't believe anybody could come up with that thing and hold it stable and simple enough for much time before the toxic people get their way with it: embrace and extend until control is taken over or until it is unusable and destroyed if control take over failed.

      • 1 year ago