Are we overengineering everything in modern frontend dev?

Okay, serious question (but also low-key rant):
How did we go from “just load a page with some content” to entire frontend stacks with build pipelines, 300 dependencies, and five levels of abstraction just to render a freaking button?

Do we really need a separate config for everything (webpack, eslint, prettier, tsconfig, package.json, and don't forget the .babelrc and .env.local)?
Or is it just modern dev trying to look smarter than it is?

Is this the new normal? Or have we lost the plot?

Would love to hear what others think — devs from all backgrounds welcome. Bonus points if you're building sites without frameworks and surviving

Do bears shit in the woods?

I have only two things to say here:

Frontend is not web, stop using it as a synonym.

Yes the web is fucked.

It's because things are web APPLICATIONs now. You run stuff in the browser you would have to install some software for back then. And building applications has always been... more messy. Plus don't forget that JS was never designed for all the things we use it for these days, that's why babel, tsconfig, eslint bullsit all over the place.

we have to keep the complexity high to create jobs. That's the only reason frameworks exist.

@kiki so web devs are frauds

@Lensflare scrypt has artificial complexity added to it so it can't be easily bruteforced. Think of modern framework-driven web development in the same way.

Its complexity is the only reason capitalists HAVE to hire more people. The complexity itself is genuine, that's the whole point, so webdevs that deal with it aren't frauds.

As a backend developer, I also asked myself this question.

I guess most classic websites can live with minimal javascript impact and maybe rely on jQuery and similar. And it seems to be the case for most sites out there (depending on which stats you believe) e.g. https://w3techs.com/technologies/...

So I guess there is a transition point, where a sites become apps, and working with jQuery becomes cumbersome. That's when developers really should switch to a framework.

But once used to it, a developer will use his framework of choice for next web project as well, even if not necessary.

Normal behavior I guess - I also use my electric drill for a single screw, even if I have to carry the complete case instead of a single screwdriver. :)

People getting used to every website taking ages to fully display everything on it, then being baffled when they visit a simple html + css + vanilla javascript website and it doesn't try to murder your grandmother and sacrifice your dog in order to display the simplest to display image without preload rituals that make it seem like it takes even longer than just having the image getting loaded in as it goes.

I remember when sites like Facebook looked a bit better than today and weren't completely overloaded with JavaScript for every single little task, making it impossible to use the same website with barely any new actual features on old, old machines where they would run perfectly smoothly back then.

@Alice web tech was originally designed for static content like a wiki.
When we needed dynamic content we started making ugly hacks. And the ugly hacks kept evolving into what we have now.
We don’t call them hacks anymore because it became normal.

@Lensflare ):

@donkulator Depends. Polar bears don't.

@Lensflare bitch please the whole system is fraud.

How many devs are working in bullshit marketing jobs?

I've just witnessed a demo instance for the new web fronted run out of resources right before the demo after being under development for almost a year... We are not sure if a total of one or two concurrent users took it down. Scaling this will be fun...

@antigermanist

> How many devs are working in bullshit marketing jobs?

I don’t know. I'd guess not that many.
What would a dev even do in a "marketing job"?

@kdvps what the fuck

I recently interviewed with a company that runs Django backend with jQuery, HTML5 and CSS front end. That's it. Oh and a PostgreSQL database.

That's their tech stack. So simple.

After working with Angular for the past year, I would LOVE to just go back to those simple things.

I like to keep in vanilla whenever possible.