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Re:Tackling Webdev as a Bioinformatician: why is it so hard? by Animats on Thursday May 07, 2020 @02:53AM (#23100413)
Trying to make the opposite transition, my quibble with web development is that much of the work seems so pointless.

That's the problem with web development today. Something that not only should be straightforward, but used to be straightforward, is now very complex. Partly because it involves connecting a large number of complex and constantly changing packages.

The last time I wanted to do something with an API, I coded up the API in Go and ran it from FCGI to get multiple copies. Easier than all those "frameworks". Probably faster, too, since Go is hard-compiled.

Re:Tackling Webdev as a Bioinformatician: why is it so hard? by realharo on Thursday May 07, 2020 @03:35AM (#23100647)
>used to be straightforward

As someone who remembers having to do weird CSS tricks for really basic layouts (negative margins? hidden extra elements that don't make any sense, but cause other elements to move?), manually modifying the UI made up of jQuery plugins that require a very specific prescribed HTML structure to even work, or doing significant adjustments for 3 or 4 different browsers, I definitely dispute that claim.

Web development right now (at least the frontend for sure) feels like a breeze compared to about 10-15 years ago.

Steps 1 and 2 of the whole process may have gotten more difficult, but steps 5 through 100 are a lot easier these days.