Bastian Allgeier on Simplicity in Web Development

I really resonate with this blog post by Bastian Allgeier, in which he decries the increasingly convoluted nature of web development:

Once in a while, I have to fix small issues in very old projects. Some of my client sites from more than a decade ago are still around. One could argue that they probably should have been re-launched three times since. But it’s also quite nice to enter the time machine.

There are two eras of those projects: pre-built-process and and post-build-process. Whenever there’s no package.json I know it’s going to be a good day. Whenever there’s one, Pandora is coming along the way with her fucking box.

When you ever had to fix just a few lines of CSS and it took two hours to get an ancient version of Gulp up and running, you know what I’m talking about.

Yes, I know, there’s Docker and if you are a real professional you would put everything in containers. But don’t ever tell me that this is making your life as easy as editing a plain HTML or CSS file.

Most days, I experience at least one moment where I wish I could just go back to making website updates via good ol’ FTP. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with his Bluetooth/headphone jack analogy.