The toolkits, the apparently billions of dependencies, the vastly complicated build processes.
I tried again recently. HTML file and a separate JS file. Some SVG elements with a click handler.
I had mouse in and mouse out logic, and that worked great. But for some reason the click handler did not.
I tried it in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. It worked in Firefox. It did not work in Safari, it did not work in Chrome.
Turns out in Safari, my Ad Blocker was hijacking my click handler. Chrome, still not sure what’s happening there.
But I projected what happened in Safari out to the wild. “Can’t get your app to work.” Except instead of a 50 line experiment, it’s a gazillion lines of God knows what 87 levels removed from whatever code I actually wrote.
Cross browser Hell. It’s supposed to be a sandbox only to find out the cat got there first.
And I give up. Again. It’s not my livelihood. It’s a hobby. I encountered these quickly enough to thwart me before I’ve actually invested any real time. Like starting out on a vacation and you have a flat tire and the drain plug pops out before you get out of town. Maybe there’s a cosmic message here.
And I feel stupid. Obviously folks manage, but I keep getting knocked down and kicked.
The idea of pain free distribution via a PWA is really alluring. I’d like it to work. But it seems every time I get back up, the lights go out again and the corners of the cabinets seek my head.
But then I think back to my rock climbing days, a friend used to climb in shorts. And I asked didn’t it hurt when he used his knees? He answered “it’s not supposed to hurt?”
Is it supposed to hurt?