The Incredible Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button
Well, this is horrifying.
Today’s Javascript, from an outsider’s perspective | Lea Verou
This is a damning and all-too typical example of what it’s like for someone to trying to get to grips with the current state of the JavaScript ecosystem:
Note that John is a computer scientist that knows a fair bit about the Web: He had Node & npm installed, he knew what MIME types are, he could start a localhost when needed. What hope do actual novices have?
I think it’s even worse than that. Not only are potential new devs being put off ever getting started, I know plenty of devs with experience who have pushed out by the overwhelming and needless complexity of the modern web’s toolchain. It’s like a constant gaslighting where any expression of unease is summarily dismissed as being the whinings of “the old guard” who just won’t get with the programme.
John gives up. Concludes never to touch Node, npm, or ES6 modules with a barge pole.
The End.
(Just watch as Lea’s post gets written off as an edge case.)
Related links
CSS-in-JS: The Great Betrayal of Frontend Sanity - The New Stack
This is a spot-on analysis of how CSS-in-JS failed to deliver on any of its promises:
CSS-in-JS was born out of good intentions — modularity, predictability and componentization. But what we got was complexity disguised as progress.
It’s time for modern CSS to kill the SPA - Jono Alderson
SPAs were a clever solution to a temporary limitation. But that limitation no longer exists.
Use modern server rendering. Use actual pages. Animate with CSS. Preload with intent. Ship less JavaScript.
JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) - Jono Alderson
Semantic HTML? Optional. Server-side rendering? Rebuilt from scratch. Accessibility? Maybe, if there’s time. Performance? Who cares, when you can save costs by putting loading burdens onto the user’s device, instead of your server?
So gradually, the web became something you had to compile before you could publish. Not because users needed it. But because developers wanted it to feel modern.
Everything’s optimised for developers – and hostile to everyone else.
This isn’t accidental. It’s cultural. We’ve created an industry where complexity is celebrated. Where cleverness is rewarded. Where engineering sophistication is valued more than clarity, usability, or commercial effectiveness.
Why Silicon Valley CTOs Are Secretly Moving Away from React | by Coders Stop | in JavaScript in Plain English - Freedium
“We’ve stripped React out of our highest-traffic user flows and replaced it with vanilla JavaScript using small, focused libraries for specific needs,” said the CTO of a streaming service. “Our page load times dropped by 60% and our conversion rates improved by 14%.”
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