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Comment by wackget | Hacker News Reader

Software bloat really is an epidemic. As a web developer of 20+ years it's a source of constant frustration and sadness for me.

Seriously, your app does not need to be an app; it should be a website.

And seriously, your six-page website with slideshow and photo gallery does not need a React-Angular-Vue hybrid frontend, Firebase logging, analytics, local storage, or any of the other 75 JavaScript files served from eight different external domains.

I have an iPad Air 2 lying around. It's ridiculous how slow websites are on that, what is [/was] a decent piece of hardware from 2015. Even attempting to load the YouTube home page - never mind playing a video - is basically impossible. There's just no reason for it. It's fucking ridiculous.

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> And seriously, your six-page website with slideshow and photo gallery does not need a React-Angular-Vue hybrid frontend, Firebase logging, analytics, local storage, or any of the other 75 JavaScript files served from eight different external domains.

Damn, where I can find developers like you? :) It seems like a dying breed :)

Every developer I come across tries to sell me technology he/she is familiar with instead of looking at problem and making simple solution work.

Like you have said, we don't need Angular/Vue where WordPress works.

We don't need Python/Anaconda where simple php script will do.

We don't need some ridiculous node based thread management where Linux cronjobs would perfectly do.

We are, mostly educated on the old ways of development, approaching 50y over here.

I am "old school" as well. And yes we are a dying breed which depresses me.

>And seriously, your six-page website with slideshow and photo gallery does not need a React-Angular-Vue hybrid frontend, Firebase logging, analytics, local storage, or any of the other 75 JavaScript files served from eight different external domains.

As a web developer, can you tell us why this happens, and how do we stop it? I see no market reason for it, it certainly doesn't make your business make more money, it feels much more like groupthink in the industry and chasing hype.

If you build it, devs will come. People want to use new tech and any interesting feature finds users.

New things tend to never be less complex than old things, and unless the devs experience the pain of things being slow, they’ll keep building in bloat (i.e. as long as things run well on their new several thousand dollar macbooks)

>People want to use new tech and any interesting feature finds users.

No user cares about the front end framework you use unless such a choice affects performance though. That's my point, it's something developers enjoy, but users really do not care about.

not the OP, but I guess much of the software or the sites are shipped when "good enough", not "when optimal", nobody pays you for optimizing the page or the app for speed, when it's fast enough on their iPhone 14

Because it looks better. No one except the HN crowd likes pulling up a site and seeing static HTML.

That's a bit of an extreme and that isn't what I or anyone else in OP was saying was the only alternative for a six page web app. There is definitely a space between plain HTML and the "hybrid Angular-React-Vue frontend[0]" that doesn't require a huge number of js frameworks to render six pages.

[0] yes even I Mr. scientist know that's a joke, but don't think it's too far off.

A slideshow and some toggle functionality is fine. But you don't need a react/vue etc framework for that, and 99% of websites fall within this requirement.

This is a styling issue for the majority of web apps.

I know that personally, I would prefer a Jira (or Twitter) that doesn't show a half-rendered page with a million little spinners in every content area. This is using what I imagine is some kind of React-like abomination. It is the furthest thing from fast, or attractive.

Semi-direct response from someone else: https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

This is a fantastic post. You should share here on HN

It’s an interesting analysis but I think the cause is less conscious and more of a side-effect of overstaffed tech companies giving too much importance and reward to tooling projects (i.e. tech marketing/reputation)

The market reason is companies internally rewarding engineers for developing and marketing these tech projects, then cargo cult in the industry for less sophisticated management and investors, coupled with resume building of developers. All of that fueled by easy money. That makes powerful incentives aligned.

Why does it happen? CV stuffing. Hiring managers are always looking for developers having 10 years experience with the latest technology that was released last year </sarcasm>.

Hiring managers don't care about how simple your previous solutions were to build and maintain and whether it allowed your customers to continue using "outdated" systems. If you don't have the latest alphabet soup of technology on your CV and you just got laid-off by your cush job then good like finding another job!

As a result, everybody stays on the technology treadmill and looking for opportunities to use the latest and greatest technologies so they can include that on their CV and appear to be relevant. This is also great for the conference circuit and "developer advocates" leading sessions on how to use the latest-and-greatest technologies to build the same damn things we've been building for the past 20 years. Except now you need training and new tooling and you don't know where all the gotchas are in the development. Consultants will swoop in (who also have zero experience with these technologies other than some side project they did) and "help" you spend that abundant cash you don't have.

It's sad. It's really, really sad - but it's been this way for the past 40 years (probably longer - that's just how long I've been developing software) and I don't see it ending anytime soon.

Meanwhile, God created the world in six days using Emacs to write Lisp code running on a Unix kernel created with C...

Generally agree with your points, but prefer apps over web sites. My IDE, text editor, paint programs, etc. better not require the internet to function.

I'm preferring offline more and more.

Most people generally don't use their phone or mobile device for these tasks, so an installable application makes sense. I think what OP is talking about is this phenomenon of needing an installed app taking up storage space just for fairly simple tasks the web can handle just fine. Most of the time the installed apps require internet to properly function anyway.

Yes, you're correct about tasks that need the internet.

And yet, while I hate Instagram asking me to use their app when their web site is more than adequate, I am beginning to wonder if there was an offline utility to Instagram. Like, perhaps I could prepare and enqueue a post or two offline and when there is connectivity — up it goes. That would be the only reason I would prefer their app over their site.

But I think a lot of apps just sort of sayonara if there is no internet. Obviously browsers do....

You can build offline first web sites/apps, the tech is all there.

But it takes more thought and planning up front or tons of work to bolt it on.

The payoff for doing it is unclear even if it provides a much better experience for users 3% of the time when network access is nil or fuzzy.

But if it is a webcentric app, which most are. I mean things that basically need the web, online shopping, up-to-date statistics (like sports) forums, social media. I personally prefer thicker clients for somethings. But a lot of those things are better off as a website.

I agree. (No, Amazon I don't want to use your app!) I guess social media and the like are getting a lot less important to me so I am focusing on them less and less.

I’m so in line with you. I explicitly made my website load as little crap as possible for that reason.

I gave up on browsing the web in my iPad for that reason. Nowadays, I basically use it as an overpowered kindle. I download content.. and read or play it in my iPad. It’s seriously depressing.

Every time someone tries to sell me some “you need X tech in your website”.. I send them to http://berkshirehathaway.com

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