For years, advocates for web standards, performance, and accessibility have implored web developers to “use the platform”. I’ve frequently been one of those advocates.
The disagreement is simple: why build item yourself, in JavaScript, whenever the browser can do it for you? Whatever you build, it’s apt to have poorer achievement and worse usability than item the browser could fair provision you out-of-the-box.
I think it’s value taking the another side, though, if for no another logic than to comprehend anywhere the “platform-skeptic” developers are coming from. If “use the platform” is so obvious, afterward why do so many group appear to need convincing?
The most apparent logic is historical: for the longest time, browsers were playing catch-up alongside the ecosystem on top of them. Libraries akin jQuery filled crucial gaps during browsers implemented equal APIs – and equal then, you power have to delay for laggards akin IE6 to age out before you could really use them. Today, most browsers are evergreen (Safari is debatable, although ~7 times per year ain’t bad), but up until the 2020s or so, web developers had to agreement alongside a certainly lumpy web. In that environment, rolling your own is a sensible choice.
Another logic is familiarity: whenever you’re used to looking for React components on npm, that’s what you lean to attain for, despite of the issue at hand. If you hunt for “sticky positioning” on npm, there’s no bundle that says “just use CSS position: sticky, you dolt.”
And often, equal alongside a sturdy standard, libraries on npm would inhabit a helpful gap between example ergonomics and the phase underneath it. I continually established it intriguing that many React developers preferred to rod to JSX and React idioms – raw DOM APIs felt “icky” – but were absolutely blessed to use lower-level libraries anywhere raw DOM manipulations are common. For example, a virtual catalog archive power happily use raw DOM APIs for clean performance, during exposing higher-level primitives that a novice React developer could improved grasp. In a sense, the ecosystem of React components led to a natural division of labor anywhere those alongside additional ability packaged up unfamiliar phase APIs in a additional acquainted form factor.
Some of this consequence was additionally driven by documentation. Many npm packages have lovingly detailed READMEs or websites alongside examples, tutorials, and screenshots. Whereas until MDN became cemented as the go-to location for web records (with web.dev as Google’s additional future-facing arm), records for the web phase was scattered throughout blogs, StackOverflow, and sites akin CSS Tricks. And many of these sites would fair inform you to use a well-known archive akin jQuery or GreenSock!
If it were fair concerning third-party libraries versus phase APIs, though, afterward I don’t think it could completely explain the antipathy toward “use the platform.” Developers who are lazy (or do I reiterate myself?), and who fair desire a ready-made resolution for any issue they’re facing, are improbable to attention whether that resolution comes from npm, the browser, or copied off of someone’s random GitHub Gist. They desire to resolve their issue and move on. But there’s a distinct origin of anti-“use the platform” that I desire to explore.
For a certain category of developer, construction things yourself is fair more fun. And frequently the resulting code is easier to logic about, particularly if you don’t have an encyclopedic cognition of the web platform. And formerly you’ve built something, there can be a benevolent of IKEA effect anywhere you desire to keep and tinker alongside your own homemade code.
As an example, let’s ideate you’re trying to build a modal dialog. You power visually comprehend how these are expected to work: satisfied appears on the screen, but the backdrop is motionless apparent although partially occluded, and perchance clicking exterior the dialog dismisses it. So you power catch for position:absolute and z-index to stance the dialog correctly – aha, but the backdrop motionless scrolls, so you have to disable overflow on the body… And afterward if you comprehend item concerning accessibility, you acknowledge you need to grip Esc to dismiss, and build a focus trap, and come back concentration to the component that launched the dialog, and…
For many developers, what I fair described appears akin a nightmare (and a fine way to build item that lone half-works). But for many developers, this appears akin fun! Think of how much you study as you commencement construction this thing. And think concerning how you could commencement putting your own rotation on it by adding animations, themes, an optional “close” button… Before you cognize it, you’ve built a archive that’s prepared to go on npm. That’s way additional fun than fair grabbing <dialog> and calling it a day – what a downer!
And for many of us, before APIs akin <dialog> existed, this was how we learned the web platform! Many of the group who now protagonist for “use the platform” were formerly themselves authors of polyfills, shims, and libraries. I cognize since I’m one myself! I spent years operating on tooling for IndexedDB, WebSQL, and another browser retention APIs as part of my activity on PouchDB, which eventually led to me emotion assured adequate to sit in W3C standards meetings and equal open issues and drag requests on the IndexedDB spec itself. Without the forcing function of a gap in the phase that needed to be filled, I don’t cognize if I would have established the involvement or motivation to get to that flat of expertise.
Of course, doing it yourself is not continually an unalloyed good. Sometimes it fair comes from clean ignorance. On the web phase in particular, I think among the reasons there was specified a proliferation of JavaScript solutions to problems that could be improved solved by CSS, for example, is that many developers fair didn’t obtain the period to deeply comprehend how CSS works.
And to be fair, CSS has historically been difficult to understand! There’s a logic the location is called “CSS Tricks.” Things akin the clear fix, floats, and the min-width: 0 trick are barely intuitive. Rather than trying to comprehend CSS’s inner algorithm, it’s frequently much easier to fair ideate the imperative logic you desire and afterward province it in JavaScript. Plus, for years CSS didn’t have a straightforward way to province average patterns akin line clamping, textarea resizing, scrollbar hiding, etc. So of way developers built it themselves using the tools they already understood.
I don’t equal think this event of “avoiding the platform” is constricted to the web. It can use to any developer operating on top of a phase they don’t completely understand. For example, at my work, we use ClickHouse for storing assorted kinds of analytics data. At one point, my coworker and I disagreed concerning how to shop ample JSON data in a column: he built a scheme for compressing it before storage, whereas I put the data in a distinct key-value shop and lone inserted the key into ClickHouse. It turned out we were the two wrong! ClickHouse automatically compresses data, and as a columnar data store you really get improved compression throughout rows if you fair let ClickHouse grip it. And the distinct key-value shop was fair a mediocre man’s type of what a columnar SELECT already does.
I lone realized these things following really taking the period to thoroughly peruse the ClickHouse docs and afterward compose a benchmark to demonstrate my hypothesis. In the end I was shocked that we had built item that was slower and clunkier than what the phase itself could provision us out-of-the-box. The parallels alongside JavaScript and the web phase were difficult to ignore.
I’m certain that if you’re a developer on iOS or Android, or person construction on top of a equivalent engine, or really any benevolent of developer construction on top of any phase layer, you likely have akin stories. There’s a logic that the stereotype of the grizzled elder engineer is person who can obtain a junior’s baroque tangled disorder of code and substitute it alongside a sole line. The additional you learn, the additional you’re capable to wield your cognition of how the complete scheme plant end-to-end to create the smallest imaginable contribution to it (and thus decrease your care burden in the lengthy run).
I’ve been trying really difficult not to conversation concerning AI this complete article (because I’ve done it to death complete the former year), but of way I can’t assistance but amazement how AI coding volition effect this phenomenon. I really have the two an optimistic and a pessimistic take:
- Optimistic: since LLMs have an encyclopedic cognition of any phase you’re operating with, they can choose exactly the correct phase API to provision the cognition the prompter asks for in vague English. And since this resolution is apt faster and additional accurate than userland code, the delegate volition favor it following rigorous evaluation and benchmarking. Furthermore, the “IKEA effect” goes distant whenever developers are not really penning the code themselves.
- Pessimistic: since LLMs appear to affection duplicating code – for example, ignoring helper functions that already be in favor of penning their own for the umpteenth period – the amount of custom, non-platform-idiomatic code volition skyrocket. Developers won’t instruct their agents to test adequate or to try adequate alternatives, and volition fair commit the agent’s archetypal draft. And since it’s continually imaginable to add additional epicycles, the agents volition continue to iterate on over-engineered solutions that never should have existed in the archetypal place.
In my own use of AI coding, I’ve seen the two phenomena happen. I’d akin to think that as models and coding harnesses get improved we’ll commencement to veer additional towards the optimistic outcome, but I can’t say for sure.
In any case, these are my longwinded and slightly conflicting thoughts on “use the platform.” As a mantra I affection it, since it succinctly captures a emotion I have whenever I’m looking at several overwrought heap of spaghetti code and thinking how much improved and additional elegant it would be if the author fair understood the layers below them a bit better. At the identical time, I’ve been that author, and I’ve felt the joy of construction specified beautiful, messy code (beautiful to me, anyway), so I think it’s value understanding anywhere specified developers are coming from. For that reason, I’m certain we’ll be hearing “use the platform” for as lengthy as there are platforms.
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