this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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Web development feels like it's stuck in the early 2000's. I've ranted a lot about it over the years but I just don't know how everyone is okay with it. I'm sure tons of people will disagree.
HTML is bad. The language itself feels unintuitive and is clunky compared to modern markdown languages, and let's be honest, your webpage just consists of nested
<div>tags.CSS is bad. Who knew styling can be so unintuitive and unmanageable? Maybe it made sense 25 years ago, but now it's just terrible. It's very clunkily integrated with HTML too in my opinion. Styling and markdown should be one easier to use language where 50% of it isn't deprecated.
Javascript has been memed to death so I won't even go there. Typescript is OK I suppose.
And now for my hottest take: ~10+ years ago I saw web building tools like Wix and I completely expected web development to head in the direction using a GUI to create, style, and script from one interface, even allowing you to create and see dynamic content instantly. I've seen competitors and waited for "the big one" that's actually free and open source and good enough to be used professionally. It never happened. Web dev has just gone backwards and stuck in its old ways, now it's a bloated mess that takes way more time than it deserves.
The Godot engine is actually a pretty good option for creating GUI apps and it's exactly what I envisioned web dev should've been this past decade. One language, intuitive interface, simple theming and easy rapid development... Shame it never happened.
I think that Godot GUIs are very limited compared to HTML+CSS. It's not a huge problem for videogames since screens sizes aren't going to vary as much as for a web app and you are probably going to make a lot of changes anyway when porting to something like mobile. But it would never work well for proper responsiveness on different screens.
It's definitely not perfect (and definitely not a replacement for web apps) but I think it's a big step in the right direction for GUI development. People have made impressive programs with it.