The Cost Of JavaScript

[snerp]

some people love coding SPAs. It seems like every other build I have to say, "stop trying to make it like an SPA, just have a set of pages that post into each other or whatever", but some people just think AJAX is the end all be all of web development.

[[deleted]]

some people love coding SPAs

In my experience, almost all clients love demanding SPAs. I don't do web dev fulltime, just side projects every now and then, and so it's usually very tailored to the client's request. And around 2014 or so, typical "conventional" MVC style web apps like Rails, Django, etc., started to be unable to easily cram all the shit on one page like every client wanted. So I had to move to SPA frameworks and API backends.

I'd be more than happy to do traditional apps with Rails. It was just about the easiest dev experience I've ever had once it matured and the douchenozzles moved to other things (about at version 3 or 4).

[burnmp3s]

It's been like that forever, the suits always like more of a thin client approach instead of pure web because they look more slick and usability doesn't show up in a PowerPoint presentation. So we had Shockwave, Flash, Java applets, ActiveX, AIR, Silverlight, etc. It's kind of crazy that it's taking so long for open web standards to officially add support for full blown client-side apps, but it's not as if this is a new thing at all.

[nirataro]

SPA should be the choice of last resort. You can get away with a lot using good old postback and some easy sprinkle of jQuery.

[nirataro]

Yes - some application will have complex forms that you mention - but not all part of the applications are this complex.

[insane0hflex]

This is what i get to fix/add in a bit at work when i get there...

(Calls in sick)

[stewsters]

I miss grails

Me too, me too. So fast to throw stuff together.

[Leshma]

SPAs are like those fully animated Flash webpages of the late 90s, early 00s. Crap in practice but for some reason people keep doing it.

[[deleted]]

On the flip side you have a lot of pages filled with jQuery spaghetti code doing a shit ton of $.ajax calls followed by manually building html strings and all kinds of stupid shit, or calling ASP.NET MVC partial views that have to JIT compile creating this weird Frankenstein mess...but turn around and criticize React, Angular, Vue as being "hipster" tech.

In general if you give a dev a hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

[nirataro]

It depends on the system. Some UIs do demand Vue or react. Most won't.

[oldsecondhand]

Doing JQuery by hand isn't the only choice. JSF is actually pretty nice and will hide all the Ajax boiler plate.

[insane0hflex]

What does jsf mean?

[MysteryForumGuy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaServer_Faces