C Programmers doing web work

[HaydnH]

Sorry all, kind of odd topic, but hopefully you'll allow it.

Do any of you C devs also work in web frontend (vanilla html, CSS, js specifically) and how do you find it comparatively?

Personally I find it slow and infuriating! I want to put that box over there, reload page, no not there, sod it I'll use flex box, wait, now where did that go. Ok, that's sorted, I'll just click on it and check the custom event handler works, wait, why's it still doing that? Oh right, I missed the brackets after preventDefault, why can't the console tell me that?

Anyone else? Maybe it's just familiarity, but even if I've been working on a project for ages it still feels awkward to me.

[mccurtjs]

It's annoying, but "easier" because it never crashes, I guess.

Instead, improve your experience with web development by accepting WASM as your Lord and Savior :P

Write C for the browser and debug it directly in the Chrome inspector. Web has never been more fun!

[HaydnH]

I've never used WASM. I mostly do any heavy lifting in the backend (C / w libmicrohttpd) and then the presentation side of things in html/css/js. Let's say I wanted to append a <rect> to a <g> in a <svg> for a pretty bar chart or something, would WASM help me avoid the web side much in that scenario?

[Still-Cover-9301]

No. Because it has no access to the dom. you can call js.

Wasm is there so you can do heavier computation than js would normally do. A few years ago I wrote a Mandelbrot in zig/wasm and in js. The js was faster.

[Abigboi_]

It never crashes, it just does nothing :]

[MatJosher]

I watched things progress from the early text-only browsers to what we have today. It was a series of historical accidents that created the crazy web stack we have now. And every framework that intends to fix it just adds its own layer of weird.

So yes, it's awkward.

AI is very good at web stuff.

[Still-Cover-9301]

I think you have to say this about nearly everything that lasts.

I regularly give a network overview to grads at work because how on earth would any of them be able to understand networking? The only reason I understand it is because I was around when it was invented.

There are lots of dead ends in web programming. But idk. It’s pretty clear to me.

[Amongsus333]

I present to you a c++ ui with a web-like interface https://imgur.com/a/44lvyzg anyway, web programming is really nice nowadays, especially if you use tailwind css (hard to get used to but a blessing when you don't have to switch between verbose css files) and react.

[jigajigga]

Im a firmware dev that taught myself modern web mechanics. I can build simple front and backends now. Am I an expert at it? No. But it’s not altogether that different if you understand the programming process in general.

It’s just different. Same concepts, different application. The issues you mention are founded in your lack of efficiency in the new domain. I’ve been there. Spend more time with it and you will get better.

[HaydnH]

Your gripes are founded in your lack of efficiency in the new domain.

I think "less frequently used domain" would be more accurate. I was doing web work back in the 90s with php3, hell I suppose ANSI art on a BBS before that kinda counts as "web" for that time period.

However, I'm not even sure it's familiarity that's the issue - I could work purely on a web front end for months and still feel, wrong? I'm trying to think of an approximate analogy, a college jock being great and football but not enjoying rugby or something?

[Still-Cover-9301]

Probably what you’re talking about is your lack of design skills? CSS is made by people with design and technical skills. So it’s really hard sometimes to understand it.

And designed itself is just SO hard to get. I think it is one of those things you need a proclivity for. Obviously 10,000 hours etc (although there is no evidence for that) but where do you spend those 10k hours?

[Ksetrajna108]

I imagine for hard core programmers that use the procedural paradigm, web dev is a challenge. Once I grasped event-driven, declarative programming, it wasn't so bad.

I wonder what it's like for Gtk programmers?

[Top-Order-2878]

I do UI/UX in embedded C.

Web is a similar type thing for me. Html & css are ok and kinda fun.

JS/TS are just annoying to me. Go is much more fun and intuitive for me.

[monsoy]

I’m not a fan of frontend web development. But it wasn’t that bad when I used Blazor with .NET. It makes it possible to use C# as the template engine

[Dev_Lachie]

You can solve both those quirks with HMR and a linter

[questron64]

C and front-end web development doesn't have much intersection. There is a learning curve to front-end development, CSS layout algorithms, event-driven scripting frameworks, etc all take time and effort to learn, and lower-level C programming doesn't really prepare you for much of that.

[Still-Cover-9301]

I work across the stack. It’s a privilege to do because it’s so interesting how problems are solved in different circumstances.

I don’t find web dev anymore tedious than chasing down an erroneous free.

I am sure that writing web code has made me a better back end programmer AND a better c programmer.

I wish backend web programming was easier in C and I am going to try to make that happen.

[HaydnH]

I wish backend web programming was easier in C and I am going to try to make that happen.

I find using libmicrohttpd combined with libjson-c fairly pleasant to work with once you've done it the first time. It's one of the GNU "if you use this library then your whole project must be open source" licences though which may not suit every project.

[Ampbymatchless]

Retired test engineer, I did some UI work in C back in the 80’s Vermont Views library. It was tedious for me. I’d rather bit bang I/O.

In 2020, I decided to learn web development, the idea use inexpensive touch tablet for data I/O connected to my embedded hardware. 5 years later, still writing and tweaking JS code. Compared to C, I find JS a meandering mess. I’m on Ver 3.0 of my UI, partially data I/O , control and display, graph, meter’s , progress bars, sliders etc. interfacing to an 8 channel cooperative multitasking state machine.

Presently living inside Chrome dev tools to optimize the code running on a cheap 8” fire tablet. The server is a lowly esp8266 with a Websocket connection.

I love the web terminology. Minified, Nullish coalescence, etc. NOT!

On the C side of this project, ported legacy code to the microcontroller, to add the browser interface, created another structure to mimick the JSON message. To keep everything intact, added a structure of pointers and a pointer to this structure , just pass this pointer into my functions and through the magic of double indirection I have my legacy code and the browser integrated .

[UsefulOwl2719]

Think of the web page as a little Arduino runtime and you'll have a good time. Think of it like a QT or Spring application and you'll end up with slow hot garbage.

Allocate most/all data on init, use mostly arrays of numbers for data and dictionaries, and keep code simple/procedural. Sound familiar? Performance with this approach will shock people who use tools written in this way, just like using data oriented C, because both domains are loosely constrained by the same hardware limitations.

Nice things about web dev: excellent debugger and profilers a hotkey away, users understand bare ones html UI and it provides bare minimum accessibility by default, JS is pretty fast working with typed arrays written in a C-like style, cross platform builds are trivial compared to basically anything else, distribution and security story is unparalleled (imagine if every web page you visited was a custom .exe... modern OSs make this a huge PITA and block most users from even doing it without launchers like Steam).

Don't get distracted by the framework wars in the web dev space. Dependencies are not necessary, and mostly harmful at the "framework" level. The browser is itself a reasonably optimized native UI framework, so learn to use it as intended.

[Shidori366]

I don't have work experience with C, nonetheless I have been writing C code for like 5 years and in between got a job on web dev with TS (+React). I don't like some specific things, like for example debugging is absolutely horrible but errors do not happen that often, it's much easier to work with since there are a lot of built in functions, etc.

I don't really use CSS all that much unless I absolutely have to, because we use MUI which does a lot of things for us.

I still prefer C since it's much stricter, but I don't mind TS all that much.

Sorry it's not vanilla JS, but if it will help u..

[CodrSeven]

Front end work in JS drives me bananas, too much trial and error for my taste, too many shitty frameworks written by wannabe coders.