> We've had so many generations of Web frameworks, but presumably it's still not a solved problem, because we keep moving to new ones
I do not think that it is not a solved problem. I think, in most cases, there is a propensity to wanting to believe it is not a solved problem, because building things from nothing is a lot of fun.
The cool thing about being a software engineer is that you can go back as far as 0 and 1 with comparably reasonable effort and tools that are at your disposal, for free. You get to build anything you want, exactly as you want. Of course mostly it will not go back as far as machine code, but hey look, there is a new js front-end framework.
And sure, in parts this is all part of the learning experience. But I the amount of productivity that has been lost and will be lost due to the technology being reinvented (or shall I say: rediscovered), has to be absolutely mind boggling.
We all like to play, but engineers are pretty fucking expensive and the number of web applications that could absolutely not have been build in good old Rails or PHP by people who know their tools inside out is probably approaching the low zeros.
I do not think that it is not a solved problem. I think, in most cases, there is a propensity to wanting to believe it is not a solved problem, because building things from nothing is a lot of fun.
The cool thing about being a software engineer is that you can go back as far as 0 and 1 with comparably reasonable effort and tools that are at your disposal, for free. You get to build anything you want, exactly as you want. Of course mostly it will not go back as far as machine code, but hey look, there is a new js front-end framework.
And sure, in parts this is all part of the learning experience. But I the amount of productivity that has been lost and will be lost due to the technology being reinvented (or shall I say: rediscovered), has to be absolutely mind boggling.
We all like to play, but engineers are pretty fucking expensive and the number of web applications that could absolutely not have been build in good old Rails or PHP by people who know their tools inside out is probably approaching the low zeros.