Functional Programming Shaped (and Twisted) Front End Development
7 hours ago
- #functional-programming
- #web-development
- #react
- A friend's confusion with modern React codebase highlights the shift from traditional web development practices.
- Modern frontend development has been influenced by functional programming principles, leading to complex abstractions.
- The web's inherent messiness and flexibility are features, not bugs, allowing for scalability and backward compatibility.
- Functional programming ideals like immutability and pure functions clash with the web's mutable, side-effectful nature.
- CSS-in-JS and Tailwind CSS represent attempts to control the cascade, often at the cost of performance and simplicity.
- Synthetic events in React abstract away native browser events, adding complexity and distancing developers from the platform.
- Client-side rendering and hydration introduce inefficiencies by rebuilding the DOM in JavaScript, ignoring browser capabilities.
- Native HTML elements like <dialog> are often overlooked in favor of custom JavaScript solutions, leading to accessibility and performance issues.
- Modern frameworks struggle to keep up with platform evolution, often lagging behind new HTML and CSS features.
- The industry is rediscovering the value of native web capabilities, with tools like HTMX and Astro leading the way.