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Comment by WalterSear | Hacker News Reader

I, too, miss the days when web development was as simple as opening a file in notepad.exe and refreshing a browser.

I made some boilerplate to solve this problem. If you are familiar with react, it shouldn take a few minutes of `git clone && npm i` to get started.

https://github.com/Jon-Biz/simple-static-react

There are a few version up there: one has a router, one has a firebase backend, one has Virtual Reality bindings. They all have the same purpose: to get out of your way as fast as possible.

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Web development is still that simple if you want it to be. Nothing is stopping you from writing for the web like it's 1991 if that's all you feel is necessary for your site.

While I agree that a genuinely static site should be written as such, I'm not writing websites that were possible in 1991, and I don't see why I should have to, to get simplicity and productivity: we've come a long way since then.

So, I did a little bit of work to simplify my set up(s) and then to make it useful to others.

I'm not making a normative claim, my only point was that the same technology that worked 20 years ago still works today and it's the developer's fault if they don't like the tools they've chosen to use.

Well sure, but while I agree that the length and breadth of the toolchain has become stupidly long, the demands of today aren't the demands of yesterday. Take my VR boilerplate, for an extreme example: what are you supposed to use instead, VRML? :)

Unfortunately the web development profession has decided to shoot itself in the face and make framework-oriented development mandatory. I mean sure, one can still build sane web projects, just don't expect to be able to get a job doing that and do expect to be mocked as some sort of luddite.

I am sort of curious if this pile of complexity will at some point implode, but mostly I am happy that I got out of webdev when I did. Today's web development is making a mockery of the ideas of usability, accessibility and standards.

I mean sure, one can still build sane web projects, just don't expect to be able to get a job doing that and do expect to be mocked as some sort of luddite.

When we build web apps for clients, they generally don't care what tools we use as long as the results are good. There's still plenty of work out there like this and there are still plenty of success stories.

You just have to avoid the parts of the industry, particularly around the startup scene, where most developers have just a few years of experience and are heavily influenced by high profile online commentary. That type of business tends to hire buzzword-compliant people because even their own "senior" developers don't have enough experience to know any better.

This is a great piece of advice.

>Unfortunately the web development profession has decided to shoot itself in the face and make framework-oriented development mandatory

Frameworks are commonly used across many programming industries. It's also not any framework's fault that the PM (or you) chose the wrong framework.

>just don't expect to be able to get a job doing that and do expect to be mocked as some sort of luddite.

I've never heard anyone mocked as a luddite for using the simplest solution necessary to meet requirements, that sounds like something programmer's are complimented for (if they can show results). If you want a job where the employer uses a trendy framework... just learn the framework; it's either that or learn the company's hand-rolled framework, at least with a trendy framework you're also investing in potential future prospects.

>Web development is still that simple if you want it to be.

Starts off nice...

>Nothing is stopping you from writing for the web like it's 1991 if that's all you feel is necessary for your site.

Then you get that little jab in there.

It's not a jab or a judgement, it's a statement of fact to illustrate the point that technology from 1991 still works perfectly fine today and that nothing about today's technology prevents you from using technology from 1991 or any time if that is the best solution for your project.

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