Modern developer tooling is bad for developers, actually

One of the biggest arguments for our obsessively tool-centric, JavaScript-first way of building for the web has been that these tools lead to a better developer experience (DX).

This, the argument goes, lets developers build better experiences more quickly, which is also good for the user.

The latter is demonstrably false. So many modern websites are slow, bloated, fragile pieces of shit that fall apart and render nothing at all when they run into a mistyped variable or failed fetch() request.

But I’ve been also been saying for years that these tools aren’t even good for developers.

Maybe a subset of devs—specifically, very seasoned developers most comfortable with the JavaScript part of the stack—find them beneficial. But for many, many more developers, they actually made the developer experience worse.

As an example, take this toot from my friend Steph Eckles. She’s no stranger to JavaScript, though she’s most well known for her work with modern CSS.

Fighting with TypeScript is so exhausting. My tasks take easily 50-75% longer, and it’s so much easier to get sidetracked making TS happy to the point of forgetting what I was aiming to do 😫

Is the big secret in tech that this happens even to the aficionados and they just pretend it’s fine?

In the replies, Keith Grant shares this perspective…

I think the effort-to-benefit ratio is definitely against you for the first six to twelve months. You definitely have to be in it for the long haul for it to be worth it, IMO.

Obvious all tools have a learning curve. It’s naive to think someone will be instantly proficient at something.

But wow is that a steep learning curve. How exactly is this “the future” of web development?

If you want to learn a simpler way to build for the web—one that doesn’t require needlessly oppressive tooling—head over to LeanWebClub.com and sign up for a free trial.

You get access to hundreds of tutorials, projects, lightweight tools and code snippets and more. When the trial ends, it’s just $9/month. That’s a hell of a good value!