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Comment by kanonieer | Hacker News Reader

Seconded.

There was a series of similar Twitter discussions when a popular JavaScript "influencer" published an article[0] on how they built their website. The amount of complexity that is self-inflicted in the said article was obviously enormous for proponents of MPAs.

However the JS community mostly echoed that the complexity was absolutely within norm. The cultural chasm between JS developers and people who push for simplicity was huge. And the refusal to admit the unnecessary complexity was nothing short of Stockholm Syndrome, imho.

[0] https://kentcdodds.com/blog/how-i-built-a-modern-website-in-...

This was the HN reaction to the article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28818829

View on HN

Thirded (if that's a thing).

I've been working recently on two code bases: one using angular and the other htmx (with python/jinja2/FastAPI). Both aiming to deliver broadly comparable interaction - so approximately comparable in essential complexity.

In a month, or a year, I'm confident I'll be able to check out the htmx app and work with it pretty much right away. The dependencies won't have changed much; the build will still work; and I'll be able to understand the code. I will lay bets now that the same will not be true of the angular app. On any one of those three counts.

If simple, understandable, stable and effective are what GPP meant by "primitive", then I want more "primitive" tools like htmx.

Light sabres, not death stars.

> The cultural chasm between JS developers and people who push for simplicity was huge

Yet another cheap shot. Might as well say 'fu js devs'. How come every time we have a thread on this thing its devs and supporters always come across as arrogant, bitter folks with an axe to grind.

I don't like your technology. I didn't like it several years ago when I was introduced to it, and I don't like it now. It's not a bad idea but calling me an idiot for not doing UI on the backend is not going to win over anyone that doesn't already hate js and the people who write js.

Absolutely this- Saying that the complexity of modern web dev is needless without even addressing things like state management, URL routing, component encapsulation, stylesheet encapsulation, performance, compatibility, semantic markup, offline-first, server-side rendering (for SEO and first paint) are somehow not real problems that need to be addressed. If you don't do it in the frontend, guess what? All of that is happening in the backend, too.

People seem to act like those problems just "go away" when you don't do SPA but it doesnt.

Half of those things you list are already handled by the browser, that's why htmx is so simple. Htmx does not preclude building an SPA, because all resources can be directed through service workers, but that's outside of the scope of htmx specifically. It just directs you to use hypermedia and exploit native browser technologies instead of inventing ad-hoc JS libraries and/or protocols.

No, they are handled by your server app. The point is these things can be on one side or the other.

I, for one, would like backend/desktop/non-web developers to simplify things. Why do they need HTTP servers, logging libraries, UI frameworks, compilers, IDEs, APM, status pages, databases, caches, queues and algorithms. All us frontend devs want is for you to give us some data, you shouldn't need all of this bloat.

It seems the backend community mostly echoes that the complexity is absolutely within norm. The cultural chasm between backend developers and people who push for simplicity is huge. And the refusal to admit the unnecessary complexity is nothing short of Stockholm Syndrome... imho

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