path: root/content/posts/2022-10-06-state-of-web-technologies-in-year-2022.md

---
title: State of Web Technologies and Web development in year 2022
url: state-of-web-technologies-and-web-development-in-year-2022.html
date: 2022-10-06T12:00:00+02:00
draft: false
---

## Initial thoughts

*This post is a critique on the current state of web development. It is an 
opinionated post! I will learn more about this in the future, and probably 
slightly change my mind about some of the things I criticize.*

I have started working on a hobby project about two weeks ago, and I wanted to
use that situation as a learning one. Trying new things, new technologies, new 
tools. I always considered myself to be an adventurous person when it comes to 
technology. I never shy away from trying new languages, new operating systems 
etc. Likewise, I find the whole experience satisfying, and it tickles that part 
of my brain that finds discovery the highest of the mountains to climb.

What I always wanted to make was a coding game, that you would play in a
browser (just to eliminate building binaries for each operating system) where
you would level up your character and go into these scriptable battles. You 
know, RPG elements.

So, the natural way to go would be some sort of SPA (single page application) 
with basic routing and some state management. Nothing crazy.

> **Before we move on**, I have to be transparent. Take my views on this with 
> a grain of salt. I have only scratched the surface with these technologies, 
> and my knowledge is full of gaps. This is my experience using some of these 
> products for the first time or in a limited capacity.

Having this out of the way, I got myself a fresh pot of coffee and down the 
rabbit hole I went.

## Giving React JS a spin

I first tried [React JS](https://reactjs.org/). I kind of like it. Furthermore,
I have worked with libraries like this in the past and also wrote a couple of 
them (nothing compared to that level), but I had the basic understanding of 
what was going on. I rolled up a project quickly and had basic things done in
a matter of two hours, which was impressive.

I prefer using [Tailwind CSS](https://tailwindcss.com/) for my styling 
pleasures, and integrating that was also a painless experience. It was actually
nice to see that some things got better with time. In about 2 minutes I got 
Tailwind working, and I was able to use classes at my disposal. All that 
`postcss` stuff was taken care of by adding a couple of things in config files
(all described really well in their documentation).

It is not that different from Vue which I have had more encounters with in the 
past People will probably call me a lunatic for saying this. But you know, it 
is the truth. Same same, but different. I still believe that using libraries 
like this is beneficial. I am not a JavaScript purist. They all have their 
quirks, but at the end of the day, I truly believe it’s worth it.

## Bundlers and Transpilers

I still reject calling [Typescript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) to 
[JavaScript](https://www.javascript.com/) conversion a "compilation process". 
I call them [transpilers](https://devopedia.org/transpiler), and I don’t care! 😈

And if you want to fight this, take a look at this little chart and be mad at it!

![Compiling vs Transpiling](/assets/state-of-web/compiling-vs-transpiling.png)

The first one that I ever used was [webpack](https://webpack.js.org/), and it 
was an absolute horrific experience. Saying this, it is an absolutely 
fantastic tool. I felt more like a config editor than actually a programmer. 
To be fair, I am a huge fan of [make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/), 
and you can do as you wish with this information. I like my build systems 
simple.

Also, isn’t it interesting that we need something like [Babel](https://babeljs.io/)
to make JavaScript code work in a browser that has only one client side 
scripting available, which is by no accident also JavaScript. Why? I know 
why it’s needed, but seriously, why.

I haven’t used Babel for years now. Or if I did, it was packaged together by
some other bundler thingy. Which does not make things better, but at least 
I didn’t need to worry about it.

I really don’t like complicated build systems. I really don’t like abstracting
code and making things appear magical. The older I get, the more I appreciate
clear and clean, expressive code. No one-liners, if possible.

But I have to give props to [Vite](https://vitejs.dev/)! This was one of the 
best developer experiences I have ever had. Granted, it still has magical
properties. And yes, it still is a bundler and abstracts things to the nth 
degree. But at least it didn’t force me to configure 700 lines of JSON. And 
I know that this makes me a hypocrite. You can’t have it all. Nonetheless,
my reasoning here is, if using bundlers is inevitable, then at least they 
should provide an excellent developer experience.

I also noticed that now the catch-all phrase is “blazingly fast” and
“lightning fast” and “next generation” and stuff like that. I mean, yeah, 
tools should get faster with time. But saying that starting a project now takes
2 seconds instead of 20 seconds is something that is a break it or make it kind 
of a deal is ridiculous. I don’t mind waiting a couple of seconds every couple
of days. I also don’t create 700 projects every day, and also who does? This 
argument has no bite. All I want is a decent reload time (~100ms is more than
good enough for me) and that is it.

You don’t need to sell me benefits if I only get them when I start a fresh 
project, and then try to convince me that this is somehow changing the fate 
of the universe. First of all, it is not. And second, if this is your only 
argument for your tool, I would advise you to maybe re-focus your efforts to
something else. Vite says that startup times are really fast. And if that 
would be the only thing differentiating it from other tools, I would ignore
it. But it has some really compelling features like 
[Hot Module Replacement](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/reactjs-hot-module-replacement/) 
that really works well. It was a joy to use.

So, I will be definitely using Vite in the future.

## Jam Stack, Mach Stack no snack

Let's get a couple of the acronyms out of the way, so we all know what we are 
talking about:

- Jam Stack - JavaScript, API and Markup
- Mach Stack - Microservices, API-first, Cloud-Native SaaS, Headless

It is so hard to follow all these new trendy things happening around you, that
it makes you have a massive **FOMO** all the time. But on the other hand, you
also don’t want to be that old fart that doesn’t move with the times and still 
writes his trusty jQuery code while listening to Blink 182 All the small things
on full blast. It’s a good song, don’t get me wrong, but there are other songs
out there.

I have to admit. [Vercel](https://vercel.com/) is really cool! Love the 
simplicity of the service. You could compare it to [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/).
I haven’t tried Netlify extensively, but from a couple of experimental 
deployments I still prefer Vercel. It is much more streamlined, but maybe this
is bias in me. I really like Vercel’s Analytics, which give you a 
[Core Web Vitals report](https://web.dev/vitals/) in their admin console. Kind
of cool, I’m not going to lie.

This whole idea about frontend and backend merging into [SSR (server-side rendering)](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/server-side-rendering)
looks so good on paper. It almost doesn’t come with any major flaws.

But when it comes to the actual implementation, there is much to be desired.
I’m going to lump [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) and [Nuxt.js](https://nuxtjs.org/) 
together because they are essentially the same thing, just a different library.

Now comes the reality. Mixing backend and frontend in this manner creates this
weird mental model where you kind of rely on magical properties of these
libraries. You relinquish control over to them for better developer experience.
But is that really true? Initially, I was so stoked about it. However, the 
more I used them, the more I felt uncomfortable. I felt dirty, actually. Maybe 
this is because I come from old ways of doing things where you control every 
step of request, and allowing something to hijack it feels like blasphemy.

More than that, some pretty significant technical issues arose from this. How 
do you do JWT token authentication? You put it in `api` folder and then do some
fetching and storing into local state management. But doing this also requires
some tinkering with await/async stuff on the React/Vue side of things. And then
you need to write middleware for it. And the more I look at it, the more I see 
that this whole thing was not meant to be used like this, and it all feels and
looks like a huge hack.

The issue I have with this is that they over-promise and under-deliver. They 
want to be an all-in-one replacement for everything, and they don’t deliver 
on this promise. And how could they?! We have to be fair. It is an impossible
task.

They sell you [NoOps](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/overview-of-noops/), but 
when you need to accomplish something a little bit more out of the scope of 
Hello World, you have to make hacky decisions to make it work. And having a 
deployment strategy that relies on many moving parts is never a good idea. 
Abstracting too much is usually a sign of bad architecture.

Lately, this has become a huge trend that will for sure bite us in the future.
And let’s not get it twisted. By doing this, PaaS providers like 
[AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/), [GCS](https://cloud.google.com/), etc. obscure 
their billing, and you end up paying more than you really should. And even if 
that is not an issue, it comes down to the principle of things. AWS is known 
for having multiple “currencies“ inside their projects like write operations, 
read operations, etc. which add up, and it creates this impossible to track 
billing scheme. It all behaves suspiciously like a pay-to-win game you could 
find on mobile phones that scams you out of your money.

And as far as I am concerned, the most important thing was me not coding the 
functionalities for the game I want to make. I was battling libraries and 
cloud providers. How to deploy, what settings are relevant. Bad documentation 
or multiple versions of achieving the same thing. You are getting bombarded 
by all this information, and you don’t really have any control over it. 
Production-ready code becomes a joke, essentially. Especially if you tend to
work on that project for a prolonged period of time.

All of these options end up creating a fatigue. What to choose, what not to
choose. Unnecessary worrying about if the stack will still be deemed worthy 
in six months. There is elegance in simplicity.

> JavaScript UI frameworks and libraries work in cycles. Every six months or 
> so, a new one pops up, claiming that it has revolutionized UI development. 
> Thousands of developers adopt it into their new projects, blog posts are 
> written, Stack Overflow questions are asked and answered, and then a newer 
> (and even more revolutionary) framework pops up to usurp the throne.
> — Ian Allen

![To many options](/assets/state-of-web/2008-vs-2020.png)

And this jab at these libraries and cloud providers is not done out of malice. 
It is a real concern that I have about them. In my life, I have seen 
technologies come and go, but the basics always stick around. So surrendering
all the power you have to a library or a cloud provider is in my opinion a 
stupid move.

## Tailwind CSS still rocks!

You know, many people say negative things about Tailwind. And after a lot of 
deliberation, I came to the conclusion that Tailwind is good for two types of 
developers. Tailwind is good for a complete noob or a senior developer. A 
complete noob doesn’t really care about inner workings of CSS, and a senior 
developer also doesn’t care about CSS. Well, at least, not anymore. And 
developers in between usually have the biggest issues with it. Not always of 
course, but in a lot of cases.

I like the creature comforts of Tailwind. Being utility first would make me 
argue that it is actually more similar to [Sass](https://sass-lang.com/) or 
[Less](https://lesscss.org/) than something like Bootstrap. Not technically, 
but ideologically. After I started using it, I never looked back. I use it 
every time I need to do something web related.

Writing CSS for general things feels like going several steps back. Instead of
focusing on what you are actually trying to achieve, you focus on notations 
like [BEM](https://en.bem.info/methodology/css/), code structuring, optimizing
HTML size. Just doing things that make 0.1% difference. You know that saying: 
Early optimization is the root of all evil. Exactly that.

I am also not saying that Tailwind is the cure for everything. Sometimes custom
CSS is necessary. But from what I found out in using it for almost two years 
in a production environment (on a site getting quite a lot of traffic and 
constantly being changed), I can say without any reservations that Tailwind 
saved our asses countless times. We would be rewriting CSS all the time without
it. And I don’t really think writing CSS is the best way to spend my time.

I have also noticed that people who criticize Tailwind the most never actually 
used it in a real project that has a long lifetime with plenty of changes that 
will happen in the future.

But you know, whatever floats your boat!

## Code maintainability

Somehow, people also stopped talking about maintenance. If you constantly try 
to catch the latest and greatest train, you are by that logic always trying 
new things. Which is a good thing if you want to learn about technologies and
try them. But for the production environment, you have to have a stable stack 
that doesn’t change every 6 months.

You can lock dependencies for sure. Nevertheless, the hype train moves along 
anyway. And the mindset this breeds goes against locking the code. This 
bleeding-edge rolling release cycle is not helping. That is why enterprise 
solutions usually look down on these popular stacks and only do bare minimum to 
appear hip and cool.

With that said, I still think that progress is good, but should be taken with a 
grain of salt. If your project is something that should be built once and then
rarely updated, going with the latest stack is a possible way to go. But, if 
you are working on a project that lasts for years, you should probably approach 
it with some level of caution. Web development is often times too volatile.

## Web development has a marketing issue

I noticed that almost every project now has this marketing spin put on it. 
Everything is blazingly fast now. I get it, they are competing for your 
attention, but what happened to just being truthful and not inflating reality.

And in order to appeal to mass market, they leave things out of their marketing
materials. These open-source projects are now behaving more and more like 
companies do. Which is a scary thought on its self.

And we are also seeing a rise in a concept of building a company in the open, 
which is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But when it is using open-source to
lure people and then lock them in their ecosystem, there is where I have issues
with it.

This might be because I have been using GNU/Linux for 20 years now and have 
been so beholden for my success to open-source that I see issues when 
open-source is being used to trick people into a false sense of security that 
these projects are built in the spirit of open-source. Because there is a 
difference. They are NOT! They have a really specific goal in mind. And the 
open-source is being used as a delivery system. Which is in my opinion 
disgusting!

## Conclusion

I will end my post with this. Web development is running now in circles. People 
are discovering [RPC](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/remote-procedure-call-rpc) 
now and this is the now the next big thing. [GraphQL](https://graphql.org/) is 
so passé. And I am so tired of it all. Of blazingly fast libraries, of all 
these new technologies that are actually just a remake of old ones. Of just 
the general spirit of the web. I will just use what I already know. Which worked
10 years ago and will work 10 years after this. I will adopt a couple of 
little tools like Vite. But I will not waste my time on this anymore.

It was a good exercise to get in touch with what’s new now. Nothing really 
changed that much. FOMO is now cured! Now I have to get my ass back to actually 
code and make the project that I wanted to make in the first place.