friedman23

The alternative is a custom DSL for templating which I find much worse. Even CSS has a DSL for conditional and programmatic logic which I only use because of the immense performance benefits it brings.

There is no purely fun way to build a production app. If there were everyone would do it. The hard part of building an app is the slog through the tedious parts. If you just want to build a toy app for fun, I recommend you just mess around with processing or pygame.

> The vast majority of the managers I've worked with wouldn't be particularly good ICs, not so sure of the wisdom of this move.

The point is that the company doesn't need the managers.

Fair point! I've tried to learn and failed c++ 4 times (I knew C, python, typescript, java), I learned rust in a month after reading a 700 page book.

> Right and wrong isn’t defined by how copyright law is written right now

It's a good thing I never mentioned right or wrong.

It's their engineering blog... This is what engineering blogs talk about and you are on hacker news where things like this are of interest.

It's completely different. The customizable fonts did not violate copyright.

What do Solid, Svelte and Vue bring to the table exactly? None of those frameworks solve the dataflow problem and the performance benefits they bring do not make a dent. Also why would I want to use some DSL for html templating when I could use an actual programming language?

> but I don't think it's about Javascript

I get that and that's part of the point of my comment. That these screeds always make sure to mention javascript because by bundling javascript in the screed you get default acceptance from the JS haters.

But the fundamental essence of the article is about complaining about SPAs. Which betrays a striking ignorance of what most frontend web software engineers are working on. They are not working on websites for businesses that only need a single form and an email to get the form responses. That usecase is solved and does not require a software engineer. It can be built on wordpress or squarespace.

SPAs are the answer to the question of how do we build an app that is delivered in real time over an internet connection.

The reason these apps are built with JS is because until relatively recently it was the only option. Why is it still used while there are other options? Because WASM is not mature and JS is still faster and there is no killer reason to switch off it.

People that complain about SPAs are the modern knights tilting at windmills. What are the primary ways people today consume content? Youtube, tiktok, whatsapp, facebook messenger, instagram, discord, etc, etc.

Before someone qualifies my post with "ackshually I do this thing", yes I read blogs too.

That being said, NOBODY READS BLOGS. People don't want static html and css. They want real time updates, they want notifications, they want gamification. They want to play the slot machine.

So while you want to shit on javascript (it's fun to bundle in the shit language javascript when going on these tirades because everyone fucking hates javascript). The problem is not javascript. The problem is, we want real fucking apps, with interactivity, and we want them instantly, over an internet connection.

I want to play chess in my browser over an internet connection. And when chess 2.0. comes out I better have that shit in my browser in under 100ms.

Oh, and sure JS is shit. But if we were using Rust for our UIs we'd have the same problem. The most prominent Rust web UI frameworks are literal React and SolidJs clones.

And JS will be replaced, but we don't have a good enough garbage collected language for it yet.

edit: Can you even think of a modern business that could be just served by just html and css. Like what? A restaurant? Is that what we really think the average software engineer is working on? Restaurant websites?

My parents came with literally nothing because the government they escaped took everything from them. Both of my grandfathers had their education but they could not practice their craft because their accreditation did not matter in the US, my father could not speak english, neither could my mother. My mother knew so little english that she couldn't even ask to go to the bathroom in her first week of school so she peed her pants.

> We literally have bots now that can play poker better than any human.

This is not true but will be at some point.

> And unlike life, in poker there's no risk in making bad decisions during the game while you're still learning

You haven't met most poker players, they almost all start playing with real money before they even have a clue. What make s poker a truly terrifying game is that you can win a lot while making all the wrong decisions and get hooked for life while being a terrible player.

> Worst case scenario you just start a new game until you get the hang of it. Life is not like that. There's no practice run, and when you make what turns out to be the wrong decision it can follow you around for the rest of your life.

Yes, there are many unfortunate people that have made life altering decisions while young and the decisions follow them forever. Thankfully not all failures in life hold such dire consequences, in fact some failures seem like the end of the world but in reality the consequences are not as big as you expect (eg getting fired from your first job or failing an exam).

> Not accounting for luck as a factor of success is one of my pet peeves.

Why do you model life as a single bet where you have a 1 or 2% chance of winning? In reality you are making bets every day, each with a range of odds of succeeding and each success can produce a range of outcomes.

Look at poker, a game that has a massive "luck" component, people still consistently win.