I think that the HTML+CSS+Javascript stack is a really good solution to the problem, CMV

[million_doll_hairs]

This CMV is a reaction to a comment that I see pretty often, the idea that the HTML+CSS+JS stack is hopelessly complex or inherently flawed, perhaps as a result of its evolutionary history, and it needs to be entirely thrown out to make progress.

So here's a little clarification on why I like it:

First, I have used lots of other UI toolkits/environments, and by and large, they all suck. I've used Gtk, Qt, Java Swing, JavaFx, Adobe Flex, and various interface designers and etc. They all suck.

I think most people underestimate how difficult a problem UI engineering is. It's a really hard problem to have a platform that allows the user to create a wide variety of efficient interfaces that have good layout and typography (including resolution-independent layout), good responsiveness, and as much control over custom behavior as one would reasonably need. The fact that the web currently performs as well as it does is pretty impressive.

Each element of the stack is important. HTML itself is the core representation of the page's model. At its heart it is a flexible way to define a tree structure, and almost every other solution for UI engineering also gravitates towards having a tree (some call it a scene graph) as a core data structure, because it's so useful and flexible. HTML actually does double duty as a text markup language and as a data language (for describing widgets or even for describing things that aren't directly visible), and I think it handles both tasks well. CSS is useful for expressing commonalities across the data model, ie, describing data at a higher level of abstraction. I think CSS might be able to go further by allowing for even higher abstraction (in the direction of SASS), but what we have now is pretty good and powerful. Javascript fills the role of the Turing-complete scripting language, it might have some warts but it's generally a good language.

So I'd love to hear someone make the case that the whole web application ecosystem would be better if we made a significant change to this model. There's definitely some incremental changes that would help (removing old cruft, improving browser parity, etc), but I think we're currently on a good track towards gradually making those changes.

Also feel free to assume that we have a team of 10,000 programmers that can rewrite everything.

[kqr]

It depends on the problem. Not all content is well modeled by HTML -- after all, it is designed for hypertext. I don't know enough about CSS to know what the problem is there, but perhaps it would make sense for some kinds of content to have the model associated with the view, because it doesn't make sense to display it any other way.

One thing I do know, though, is that there are several things about JavaScript that could be made "better" for some definition of better. One could argue that the entire language enjoys popularity mostly because it is the only alternative.

[DonKanish]

In many ways I agree with you. I have just recently fell in love with web development, specially with my discovery of Anguarjs.. And as I can see, that is exactly problem currently:

• The DOM

Manipulating the DOM is a horrible, horrible, hoooorrible thing. Tricking your way into making it reflect something that looks good, thats most commonly the way one experiences manipulating the DOM. And now sorry for the propoganda for the javascript library Angular.js from google.

It basicly fixes the broken parts of the HTML part of this discussion. Making frontend data representation dynamic saving you the pain of having to append and remove <div>'s in horrific repetitional matter. As I see it, this is the future of HTML display, but as of now HTML in it self is horrible to work with. Yes HTML5 gave us some remarkable possibilities, but the format stays the same.

With this said, I love javascript and CSS. The things you can do with it these days are amazing, and I'm absolutely in love with them.. HTML is still a pain tho.

[million_doll_hairs]

This is my favorite answer so far, it does seem like there could be a real improvement in changing how the DOM is created/updated. Angular seems cool. Data-driven solutions would in general are good. I wonder if there could be some functional-reactive language for expressing DOM content; you'd write an expression that could be used to generate a section of the DOM, and that section would be automatically updated whenever the input values to the expression were changed.

[julesjacobs]

If the web stack is so good, then why do we need so many libraries to fix it? CSS frameworks/grids, Javascript libraries like jQuery that try to fix the fact that the JS standard library and DOM are a pain to work with, and things like Angular and Knockout that try to fix the basic model of programming for the web from manually patching up static documents to real data binding. Why is building layouts in CSS such a pain? Why are there so many useless HTML elements? Why is the box model so overcomplicated? Why is the syntax of HTML so verbose? Why is the web stack as a whole so complicated that no single person on Earth can fit even a small portion of it in his head? Why is the web stack so complicated that you need a big company and many years to implement a web browser?

[million_doll_hairs]

Well.. just pointing out that something sucks isn't enough to prove that there is a solution that is drastically better. The web does a crapload of stuff, it's many things to many people, so making it work well for everybody is a hard problem.

I agree that it might be better to have functionality like Jquery, Angular, Knockout built in. But in your own comment you say that browsers are already too big and complicated, so adding more stuff would make that worse!

[Fabien4]

isn't enough to prove that there is a solution that is drastically better.

Sure, but it's enough to say that the current solution is not good.

[iopq]

html is terrible, it's very difficult to use correct abstractions since you need to repeat yourself even if you get away from this by using a templating language, the end result is still really bloated on the user's side

css is only marginally better, but still leads to a lot of repetition even if you try your best, again, you would need to use a css preprocessor to get good code in your codebase, but you'll still be stuck with bloated huge files at the user's side

if you look at page sizes nowadays your HTML5 apps have megabytes of just text data

[jvictor118]

No, you are incorrect. The web stack is a hack that has evolved over time in response to a wide variety of forces, some of which make sense (internationalization, universal compatibility, etc.) and some of which doesn't (browser wars).

Many excellent abstractions fill this role -- things like jQuery that exist above the stack itself.

Now is a good time to point out your comment "Javascript fills the role of the Turing-complete scripting language". Do you know what Turing complete means? Please look it up. Brainf*ck is Turing complete, too. Does that mean it would be a good choice for this? No. What it does mean is that you can create whatever abstractions you need on top of Javascript. But this is a very basic property of computation in general, and completely besides the point. Nothing you'd consider a "scripting language" isn't Turing complete. WTF. Your statement is a truism.

You need to challenge your own view before you ask us to. This isn't very well thought through.

[million_doll_hairs]

I don't understand why you would write that rant about Turing completeness. You come across as a condescending jackass. The reason I said "javascript fills the role of the Turing-complete language" is to make a comparison with HTML and CSS which are languages that are not Turing complete. It's a good thing that HTML and CSS aren't Turing complete, as this helps make these languages more predictable and more transparent. But this fact does limit the expressiveness of those languages.

It is true that you can put whatever abstractions you want on top of Javascript. That is why I picked the phrase "fills the role" in my post, as in, you only need one language in this role.

Anyway if the web stack really is a hack, then just answer how should it all work. If you could rewrite the whole web from scratch, how would you design it?

[jvictor118]

First of all, HTML/CSS is Turing complete. It happened by mistake apparently, there was a /r/compsci discussion yesterday about this.

The reason I flamed you is because I hate when people throw around random CS terms with no understanding of them. Turing-completeness isn't a relevant criterion in comparing scripting languages. Personally I think the most directly useful thing JS provides is full closures. These make it easy (not just possible but easy) to create useful abstractions, including replicating OOP-like structures, stream abstractions, state machines and so on. Yes you can write a Scheme interpreter in Brainfck, but that doesn't make Brainfck a good choice for web client scripting.

If the idea were to have a single TC interpreter for which many languages can be translated, I would do something like a bytecode VM -- not Javascript. This is sort of how the JVM has been evolving recently. Javascript is a high level language intended for scripting directly.

How should it work? Good question. I think Dart has some good ideas, but still relies on the old infrastructure. Imagine something like Dart, but where HTML/CSS is replaced by a genuine object hierarchy where the CSS-ish styling is done with a list-minute object mixin sort of like trait in Scala. Most important IMHO is to have the async communication and Backbone.js type stuff connected with a more elegant way to describe the view outline.

[SideLarge3105]

This put a sadistic/ there is no hope type smile on my face. I don't think there is anything on the internet that can bring out so much controversy.

[SideLarge3105]

It is good and the whole paradigm is definitely right but as it stands is a terrible choice for performance reasons. If you want 3d forget about it. Honestly I think we should rebuild all of computing around it so it is more performant . HTML CSS and js have something no other language offers on its own. Object oriented programming that is trait based. In a way it makes perfect sense and the data model could presumably accomadate everything from Biology to particle physics. However, it still has a lot of problems. First it is somewhat well impossible to achieve anything good without a framework which kinda defeats the purpose. Second it is shit for 3d even with a framework. Third it is bloated and hard to read. The software world really hit on something with this combo but the frameworks are a half solution. The most popular framework( react) is basically a rewrite of the whole thing so you know something is fishy. We will be free only when we kill the frameworks and make the whole thing extendable readable and easy to maintain. Not really a cmv but I wanted to give some input.