trot
Working on this project is great but ten minutes into it and I already miss the resilience of the web. I miss how you have to really fuck things up to make a browser yell at you or implode.
How To Build Resilient JavaScript UIs — Smashing Magazine
The opening paragraphs of this article should be a mantra recited by every web developer before they begin their working day:
Things on the web can break — the odds are stacked against us. Lots can go wrong: a network request fails, a third-party library breaks, a JavaScript feature is unsupported (assuming JavaScript is even available), a CDN goes down, a user behaves unexpectedly (they double-click a submit button), the list goes on.
Fortunately, we as engineers can avoid, or at least mitigate the impact of breakages in the web apps we build. This however requires a conscious effort and mindset shift towards thinking about unhappy scenarios just as much as happy ones.
I love, love, love the emphasis on reducing assumptions:
Taking a more defensive approach when writing code helps reduce programmer errors arising from making assumptions. Pessimism over optimism favours resilience.
Hell, yeah!
Accepting the fragility of the web is a necessary step towards building resilient systems. A more reliable user experience is synonymous with happy customers. Being equipped for the worst (proactive) is better than putting out fires (reactive) from a business, customer, and developer standpoint (less bugs!).
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Related links
Web Components Will Outlive Your JavaScript Framework | jakelazaroff.com
There’s a cost to using dependencies. New versions are released, APIs change, and it takes time and effort to make sure your own code remains compatible with them. And the cost accumulates over time.
This post is about more than web components:
If we want our work to be accessible in five or ten or even 20 years, we need to use the web with no layers in between. For all its warts, the web has become the most resilient, portable, future-proof computing platform we’ve ever created — at least, if we build with that in mind.
Using Stencil to make a live poll Web Component
Before getting into the details of the code, Matt hits the nail on the head talking about the the one thing that web components have that no framework can offer: longevity.
Quoting Stuart Brand:
Old systems break in familiar ways. New systems break in unexpected ways.
Well! The web is an old system.
Jack Franklin – Abstractions, complexities and off-ramps – All Day Hey! 2023 - YouTube
This is a terrific talk by Jack on how to deal with the tooling involved in modern front-end development:
- Maintaining control,
- Dependency awareness,
- Lean on browser primitives,
- Have an exit strategy.
Remote Synthesis | The Price Developers Pay for Loving Their Tools Too Much
- Don’t wrap too much of your identity in a tool.
- Every tool will eventually fade.
- Flexibility is a valuable skill
- Changing tools does not mean starting over.
I agree with pretty much every word of this article.
Related posts
When should there be a declarative version of a JavaScript API?
If the JavaScript API requires a user gesture, maybe it’s time for a new button type.
The reason for a share button type
It’s not because it’s declarative—it’s because it’s robust.
Aleth Gueguen is speaking at Web Day Out
Progressive web apps from the trenches.
Simplify
Reminding myself just how much you can do with CSS these days.
Making the new Salter Cane website
A redesign with modern CSS.
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# Liked by Marty McGuire on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021 at 5:33pm