> You miss the whole point and the author is correct about this:

your comment is funny, because you are so wrong you aren't even aware how and why you are wrong. It's in "not even wrong" territory. I'll explain you why.

> Modern CSS is powerful, and HTML is the way to deliver web content.

Irrelevant. That's not why the world uses JavaScript frameworks. It seems you aren't even aware of the most basic reasons why the world migrated to SPAs. The most basic reasons are performance (and perceived performance), not only because the require less data to be moved around the internet but also every flow doesn't require full page reloads.

Also, classic old timey server-side rendered WebApps end up being far more complex to develop and maintain as you mix everything together and you are unable to have separation of concerns regarding how your platform is deployed and ran and how your frontend works. SPAs even allow your frontend team to go to the extent of handing your backend as if it was a third-party service, and some SPAs are even just that. There are plenty of CMSs out there which eliminate the need for a backend by providing all content needs through their commercial APIs. This makes webapppp projects greatly cheaper and simpler to finance and support as you can simply bother about developing and maintaining your SPA.

Lastly, those JavaScript frameworks you're trying to criticize also use CSS and HTML, by the way. So as you may understand your point is moot.

> Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t.

You are clearly talking about things you have no understanding over. It matters nothing if you specify a DOM with a static file or procedurally. Updating only specific elements or branches of a DOM is a very basic usecases. In fact if you had any frontend experience at all you'd be aware that all mainstream GUI frameworks, including desktop, represent their UIs with a DOM.

So here you are trying to argue that frontend development is not frontend development just because you have an irrational axe to grind regarding a specific class of web development technologies?

> For thise JavaScript people, I recommend trying Laravel or Ruby/Rails.

If you hadn't already proven you are completely ignorant and detached from reality, this argument alone would leave no room for doubt.

> all mainstream GUI frameworks, including desktop, represent their UIs with a DOM.

If you call every hierarchy of visual items with some kind of layout manager(s) a DOM, then yes. Notably, the D doesn't really apply because GUIs aren't documents, and that's exactly why HTML is kind of awkward for GUI programming: it was initially designed for documents.

Edit: Sibling comment makes the good point that the main difference is that GUIs have mutable state while documents don't. I would add that GUIs also have controls to change that mutable state, which is a more superficial difference, but well, web-based GUIs are still extremely varied in their interaction styles, which not necessarily good.

Not the person you're replying to. I agree with a lot of what you are saying but:

> The most basic reasons are performance (and perceived performance), not only because the require less data to be moved around the internet but also every flow doesn't require full page reloads.

I can't keep a straight face at this one. If there's one thing the web isn't anymore, it's "fast." Presumably what you are getting at is server performance, because it's pushing all the work to the client.

Anyway there's a good talk on this - https://veryinteractive.net/pdfs/ceglowski-thewebsiteobesity...

> > Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t.

> You are clearly talking about things you have no understanding over. It matters nothing if you specify a DOM with a static file or procedural

Don't be so dismissive. This is like the old anecdote about one fish saying to the other, "how's the water." The "something it isn't" is stateful. The web was not designed to be stateful, and every web framework is indeed a hack to work around that.

Thanks for dissecting all this nonsense. Although in all honesty, we may as well be dealing with comedy here: green account, recommending PHP and Rails in 2025 as if that's supposed to solve anything... we're being trolled.