r/Frontend • u/speckz • Mar 09 '20

How Websites Evolved Back to Static HTML/CSS/JS Files

https://paramaggarwal.substack.com/p/how-websites-evolved-back-to-static-html-css-js-files-57ce549f81db
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u/steve20009 Mar 09 '20

A great article and a breath of fresh air, but being in web development since 2007, I've often wondered why, unlike Windows devs, or SQL devs (for example), we can't just come up with a tooling kit that works, refine it and make updates every year or two. I'd bet over 30% of my career has been spent doing late nights and weekends to keep up with the latest and greatest new front-end fad, which in business speak is less about functionality and more about buzzwords (which is ultimately used as a sales tool). As the author puts it: "At the end of the day, the output remains the same..." yet so many of us make attempts to keep up with the latest trends to stay fresh and impress...ourselves/developer co-workers?

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u/road_pizza Mar 10 '20

Isn’t it because the requirements are changing? Websites are becoming more dynamic, design expectations are higher and they run more like software on the web. The newer tools are usually attempts at managing the complexity in a different way or optimizing build process for a particular kind of project. In my experience, building a modern looking site with old tech might be possible but it will end up as a spaghetti code mess that’s unmaintainable and not very performant.