In web design, everything easy is hard again
This is my experience of web development, every time I return to it.<p>I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered.<p>JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language (yes, even in its modern form), which I think has caused a lot of problems. Many JS developers don’t know much about programming language design, so they can’t see how bad it is, and they make matters worse by not trying to abstract or use JS in a way that reinforces good PL design methods.<p>If you recognise JS as a terribly designed language, then the last thing you would imagine doing is widening its use. But that is exactly what node.js does. You should instead isolate JS and minimise its use. So red flag - something has gone wrong here.<p>It also feels that many web ecosystems have an over-inflated sense of self-importance. This has led to many competing frameworks for the same tasks, that try to do everything. Things are not pythonic. There appear to be an excessive number of package managers involved. There were already plenty of package managers out there - inventing new versions of existing tech makes it harder for everyone and is usually a red flag that someone somewhere is making bad decisions.<p>I need to build a website soon and I’m dreading the front end. At the back end I can use  range of solid and well designed languages and technologies, but at the front end I feel like I’ve got to choose the least poor of a bunch of crazy options. If anyone has advice on how someone who prefers rigour, simplicity, elegance, and decent PL design over the latest trend should approach web dev that would be massively helpful. “Sane web dev to minimise the impact of the Web Dev CSS&#x2F;JS disaster on your life” would be my favourite O’Reilly of all time.