sgdesign

A recap of the recent State of Web Dev AI survey results.

Thanks for sharing!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJNY2_y5nPoghlAO6FPxHfg

You don't need a grid system now that CSS Grid exists.

Taking the survey myself definitely showed me my own HTML skills are rusty as a consequence of building JavaScript apps for the last decade.

The truth is that building web apps is a large and complex enough field that it's quite hard for a single person to master all of it, and I think we should normalize the fact that any single developer will have their areas of strength and weakness.

I'm one of the developers of the survey app. While I would love to have the app work seamlessly without JavaScript, the reality is that when you build apps with a React/Next.js stack the path of least resistance does usually take you in a direction that requires JS to work.

Personally I don't see it as a good or bad thing, it's just one way of building web apps, and it so happens it's the one I know how to do.

It's not a theory, it's literally how free speech works in the real world. Private entities can't be compelled by the government to to publish content they don't want to publish, just like they also can't be silenced by that government.

What you seem to be asking for is a world where the government can override the autonomy of publications and force them to publish specific items. How is that "free" speech?

HN's motto right there

Lead survey maintainer here; we are aware of the problem and are working on a new data visualization that will use historical data to highlight how bad the graphs are getting year over year, so we can really narrow down the issue.

I'm the lead survey maintainer; I agree that the survey is very front-end oriented, but that's because it was hard to properly cover everything, and we're instead hoping to do a separate "State of Node" (well, or a similar name that also includes Deno, Bun, etc.) survey at some point.

These do completely different things. It’s like saying “I wouldn’t advise using CSS, use HTML instead”.

Unless you’re talking about SSG and not SSR, I think one potential issue would be that React’s SSR process is pretty slow and costly, at least from what I understand. I have to confess I haven’t heard of a pure-SSR React app before, as you wouldn’t get many of React’s benefits if it’s just being used as a templating language.

I’ve heard great things about Google Domains but this kind of story is exactly why I probably won’t be using that service. It’s just too risky if you lose everything at once.

I ran into the same situation multiple time and was never able to find a solution besides throwing more money at servers. That might be due to my own lack of knowledge about running servers and performance optimization as I was (and still am) a front-end person first and foremost.

That's very kind of you to say! Personally I would love to read something on this topic by members of the original Meteor team. Although I was a "fixture" in the community, I was also an outsider compared to actual MDG staff, so my understanding of the actual situation on the ground was always a bit one-sided…

I asked about this recently and got some interesting answers: https://twitter.com/SachaGreif/status/1534079292774445056

That is the "rehydration", taking a React app that you wrote and the server buildchain "dehydrated" (baked into HTML + CSS), but then rehydrating it to add interactivity back. Yes, you could do all that manually, but Next.js makes it magically trivial... you never have to think about it, it just works. And it's lightning fast.

Actually I think the big trend in JS front-end development is realizing that you do have to think about it! React rehydration is often a very slow step (whether it's Next.js or anything else, I don't think it makes a difference), definitely not "lightning fast" on non-trivial apps with lots of data. Islands architecture goes a long way towards solving that but it's still a bit limited today.

Is it supposed to generate palettes with nearly-unreadable text like this? https://share.getcloudapp.com/Z4u7dwdG

Is there anything that checks for contrast/accessibility?

(Also, I couldn't find any credit or name on the site?)

React by itself is quite simple, but precisely because it's so simple a lot of third-party libraries have cropped up to fill out the gaps. I'm not sure if other ecosystems are really simpler, or if the complexity is just spread out differently… At least with React you have the option of not buying into Redux/GraphQL/etc. if you don't want to.

Keep in mind that the whole point of this survey is to ask developers what they really think of the tools that are currently getting the most “hype”.

I think every framework sees this kind of drop once it gets widely adopted. Probably a combination of being confronted with real-world use cases, as well as the appeal of newer solutions that promise to do the same thing even better.

Survey maintainer here, thanks for posting this!

Anything that Hibiki HTML can do on the frontend can be done with a remote handler by returning specially formatted JSON actions.

I remember using something that worked exactly like that back in the jQuery era. I can’t remember the name though..

I think this article shows how far we still have to go. Things like SSR with Apollo (or some other data layer) should be a solved problem by now, and not require every developer to ask themselves these questions again and again. Thankfully I think the next.js team has been doing really great work in that area so I’m hopeful for the next couple years.

Me too! I actually thought maybe they did that as a way to prove the absurdity of the patent system.

I feel like the milk is the more likely culprit maybe?

This reminds me of my own million dollar hobby where I sell a portfolio of old dishrags which are, by my own estimation, worth a couple millions altogether. No, I haven’t sold any yet, why do you ask?

From what I've seen there seems to be three main paths to being a successful indie entrepreneur:

1) The "Maker" Path: you slowly improve your own skills and reputation as a developer (or designer) until they give you a big enough advantage that you can translate them into a successful product. This usually means first growing an audience through blogging, conferences, courses, etc.

2) The "Marketing" Path: you become so good at the "business" part of your business that the you're able to launch new products from scratch without a preexisting audience. It's tough to know if this really works or not but I assume with all the money spent on Google Ads some of it has to work… right?

3) The "Idea" Path: you have an idea that you believe in so much that you'll basically stop at nothing to make it work, even if it takes years (which it probably will). You usually pick up the other skills along the way.

I feel like the poster here suffers from not quite fitting in any of the main paths: they did not seem to have a large pre-existing audience or network to launch to, hate anything related to marketing by their own admission, and their ideas –while perfectly good products, such as https://nomadmail.io/– do not seem to be the kind of project that would inspire the kind of passion necessary to sacrifice years of your life.

One thing I still don’t quite understand is how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level.

I almost feel like it was an excess of idealism and belief in “the free market of ideas” -as well as the idea that Facebook should remain a neutral party at all cost- that led to overcompensating in the wrong direction, and the current situation.

I’m also in Japan and finding the right materials can be really tough when you’re mainly learning from US-based makers and woodworkers. The fact that space is also very limited here (no garages or lawns...) also doesn’t help with DIY stuff!