
Ask HN: Why web development is becoming so complicated? - bass3l
Hello, a few days ago I was asked by a stakeholder where I work about what&#x27;s making the feature implementations and changes to our system takes longer time compared to the company&#x27;s legacy system (which was developed using Oracle Forms). I tried to tell her about the complexity of web development and the time required for good UI&#x2F;UX is much longer than the old days but I don&#x27;t think she was convinced, how would you respond to such a question from a non-technical person?
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cimmanom
Come up with an analogy to something they'll understand about how complexity
has changed. Maintenance on a jet engine vs a horse-drawn cart. Or cooking
pasta vs a seven layer cake. Or upgrading the plumbing in an off-the-lot
double-wide vs a one of a kind skyscraper. Changing the ID system for an
elementary school vs a state university. Etc. You can probably come up with
something appropriate to this specific situation.

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nathan_long
My response would depend greatly on the system I was working on.

\- Is it true that changes actually take longer in the new system, or is there
an unfair comparison being made (eg "tweak a form input" vs "rework an API")?

\- Is the new system inherently more complex than the old one in terms of
business logic?

\- Is the new system inherently better than the old system (as you hint by
your UI/UX allusion), and it's just a case of "good things take time"?

\- Have you, in fact, chosen an unnecessarily complex stack in which to build
the new system?

This last point is worth considering as a possibility. Ordinarily you'd expect
to make progress faster in a newer, smaller codebase you're building from
scratch than you can when trying to change a large legacy system that someone
else built. If you can't, and if the new system isn't inherently a larger
effort, it may be that your tools are poorly chosen or are overkill for the
task.

Eg, if the application would be just fine as a server-rendered site, but
you've taken on the task of building the server side in one framework and the
client side in another, you've added unnecessary work.

Or maybe you've chosen tools that are perfect for the task but which your team
doesn't know well.

Web development has gained the _potential_ to be more complicated; you can now
build things on the web that you couldn't build 10 years ago. But you still
_can_ build sites like it's 1999, and in some cases, that (with a little bit
of modern styling) would be good enough.

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PaulHoule
Companies like Facebook and Google are setting the agenda for the web. They
can afford highly trained staff, high development costs, high failure risks,
etc. because they have nearly unlimited budgets.

"Free" tools have crowded out the market for commercial tools that make money
based on web creators succeeding at their goals.

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Leustad
Talking to someone who is not technical about some technical details requires
some extra skill. I've learnt that in my years of being in the technical side
of things, I don't have that skill. That extra knowledge of what you should
say so that they can understand you. I left that up to the others who
possesses this skill.

It is really hard for me to explain some details in a way that everyone can
understand. But giving examples from aspects of life they know while
explaining is helpful. Like everyday stuff. Just try to come up with an
applicable example. Note: if your example doesn't make sense, they will be
more confused. Risky....

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ajeet_dhaliwal
It’s because web sites are more complicated. Put up a static HTML web site and
ask see if they’re happy with it, they won’t be.

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sturgeeee
It's impossible, they don't understand. Give up now!

