The Failed Promise of Web Components

> Using a custom element from the directory often needs to be preceded by a ritual of npm flugelhorn, import clownshoes, build quux, all completely unapologetically because “here is my truckload of dependencies, yeah, what”. Many steps are even omitted, likely because they are “obvious”. Often, you wade through the maze only to find the component doesn’t work anymore, or is not fit for your purpose.

That is so true. The "unapologetically" thing is important. I see this all the time. There's often a fair bit of 'tude, where I am looked at with condescension, for not knowing something "obvious."

The fig tree pic is perfect.

EDIT: Removed phrase that was possibly corrosive to the narrative.

Moreso than that, Lea is near the end of a Ph.D. in David Karger's group, an expert on CSS, and overall amazing researcher and developer for the web.

It might take 8 files and 15 dependencies to make one example work. Only 3 files are partially provided. 5 dependencies are deprecated or no longer supported.

The informative websites aren't designed to help you learn, they are designed to help the helper: get views, get cred, get employed, get ad revenue, get an ego boost.

This is a huge red flag for systems design to me. Whenever and whereever I've seen this abundance of assumed implicit knowledge instead of documented or introspectable configuration, the systems have invariably been excessively difficult and/or time-consuming to troubleshoot once in operations. This is overlooked and hand-waved away when the system is the new shiny, but once it becomes productionalized "legacy", it becomes a huge headache to leadership that appears to them as constant instability sucking up everyone's time on fire fighting instead of innovating more new shiny.

Here's to hoping better dependency management like from the Nix folks makes it into the mainstream platforms.

And yes, Lea is pretty awesome.

I agree with all of what you said until you bought up this unnecessary credential wrapper. It leaves a bad taste - statements like this. I don't know why. Going to MIT is doesn't make you an automatic genius nor does it mean that they know their way around things. It bothers me.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Tell me that this was a joke.

The dream is having small self-contained web components and can just drop in to your site (the whole whole anti-JS stuff is a whole other beast and IMO unrelated to practical shortterm goals of getting web components at the browser.

What the components end up doing is still heavily dependent on a JS component building world that was built with a framework in mind and native web component integration as a future ideal implementation system. But otherwise there is no getting away from components being tied together in a wider system with heavy JS dependencies.

Basically nothing has failed. Other than maybe React and Vue et al turned out to be more practical for the above reasons and full native web components are an afterthought. They've been sufficiently simulated where it's not a big deal.

Apple's SPM is off to a good start (It's the one I use). Carthage is too primitive, and CocoaPods is...CocoaPods.

Probably because those statements are logical fallacies, this one specifically is known as argumentum ad verecundiam in Latin, or "an appeal to authority."

The fact that the arguer holds a prestigious title (or wears a fancy crown) cannot prove or disprove any given statement.

The inability of humans to think logically has bothered people for thousands of years, read up on Aristotle for more info.

I like her writing style. She writes in a pithy vernacular that belies her educational credentials.

She writes like a cranky old man (takes one to know one). I think we need more writing like that, as opposed to the usual buzzword bouillabaisse that makes up a significant chunk of the tech WordSphere.

When someone writes like that, it can be easy to dismiss (I know this). I didn't know about her, or her creds, and was pleasantly surprised, when I read them, so I figured I'd share my pleasure and surprise.

I encourage highly-skilled, -experienced, -educated, -whatever folks to write in an accessible fashion; preferably, with warmth, humor and approachability. The world needs as much of that as possible.

I could really care less whether or not she is a woman. It probably means a lot more to her, than it does to me. I enjoyed her work, and my enjoyment was improved, when I learned her background, and expressed my pleasure.

I mean, why the heck do we always have to find things wrong with everything? Can't we just say "This is cool. I'd like to hold it up as an example of what I like."?

I don’t know why I felt the way I did but you’re right - take it easy, we need to be a bit more flexible and allow for room of interpretation. Sorry I felt that way in my initial comment.

I think the offending word was “def”.

> This lady has a Masters from MIT. She probably knows her way around things

Sounds much better and less authoritative :) I know what you meant in the general sense.

Side note about the author's credibility: Some of the writing from this article is stolen without credit: https://twitter.com/brucel/status/1305820902903382016

The whole flugelhorn sentence.

You can customize it to your hearts content, but that's absolutely not necessary to use it proficiently.

Plenty of software tools work out of the box, are turnkey, etc.

Seems like a coincidence especially since bashing on all the steps required for modern web development isn't a new idea.

For those not quite ready to throw away frameworks, heresy [3] might be more up their alley, or if you're not as set on production readiness yet, check out my own barleytea.js [4] which is written in a little over 300 SLOC and has zero dependencies or necessary build steps.

I guess my point is, there is a good variety of microframeworks out there striving to meet this need.

[1] https://github.com/WebReflection/uce [2] https://github.com/WebReflection/once-defined [3] https://github.com/WebReflection/heresy [4] https://andrewfulrich.gitlab.io/barleytea/

I value the additional factual information over removing useful information to try and avoid upsetting anyone at all. I wish more people realised how much real value is lost when everything is filtered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lea_Verou