{"id":36689,"date":"2019-10-31T22:13:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T19:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/blog\/krasota-v-glazah-smotryashhego\/"},"modified":"2019-10-31T22:13:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T19:13:11","slug":"krasota-v-glazah-smotryashhego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prohoster.info\/en\/blog\/news\/krasota-v-glazah-smotryashhego","title":{"rendered":"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

I've been developing web applications for a long time. A very long time. I created my first web applications in the environment Lotus Domino<\/a><\/noindex> back when the word \"google\"<\/em> wasn't yet a verb, and to search for information on the internet, people used Yahoo! and Rambler. I used Infoseek<\/a><\/noindex>'They had a narrowing search and a less chaotically overloaded interface than Yahoo!'<\/p>\n

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Developing applications, any applications, not just for the web \u2014 is a creative job. Few would argue with this assertion. And beauty in creativity is like practice in scientific knowledge \u2014 the criterion of truth. But while scientific practice is objective and based on measurements, beauty is a subjective matter, depending on who's looking. So, I asked myself what personally constitutes a beautiful web application for me? <\/p>\n

\n\"Beauty<\/p>\n

(referring to KDPV, the eye isn\u2019t mine, it\u2019s a woman's eye, but, IMHO, a woman\u2019s perspective on KDPV is more fitting than a man's, since it is \u2014 KDPV<\/a><\/noindex>!)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Below are my own criteria for what a web application can currently be considered beautiful. It\u2019s a highly subjective exposition influenced by my personal experience. Perhaps some may find my criteria for beauty to be those of ugliness. Don't be surprised; you just have a different experience.<\/p>\n

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And since you've come down here, please be cautious in the comments. After all, while you can stop reading the article if what is presented seems ugly or even repulsive to you, as the author, I have to read all the comments.<\/p>\n

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Habitat<\/h1>\n

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Protocols<\/h3>\n

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I don't even know if it's worth separately highlighting this criterion. Web applications exist on the Network and must comply with the Laws of the Network (protocols). The main protocols in the Network are TCP<\/a><\/noindex> and IP<\/a><\/noindex>. Numerous other protocols are built on them, but for web applications, I consider the most important HTTP<\/a><\/noindex> (rather, its extension HTTPS<\/a><\/noindex> based on TLS<\/a><\/noindex>). That is, a beautiful web application is accessible via HTTPS\/TLS (or alternatively \u2014 via HTTP), while other protocols (LDAP, RPC, IMAP4, POP3, SMTP, FTP, NNTP, ...) make it less beautiful with each additional supported protocol. The application itself can use external resources through these additional protocols. <\/p>\n

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As for WebSocket<\/a><\/noindex>, I do not have enough experience using this protocol with web applications. It looks beautiful and promising, but I can't say how stable and practical it is. <\/p>\n

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Browsers<\/h3>\n

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A web application stands only partly on the server side and partly on the client side. The client side is the browser. A modern browser provides a lot<\/a><\/noindex>, which a modern web application can and should use for its own benefit. A beautiful web application utilizes modern browser capabilities and does not have to work in those browsers that do not provide modern features. I understand that polyfills<\/a><\/noindex> are a necessary measure, but they are not appealing. After all, it\u2019s not just developers who need to keep up with modern technologies; users and businesses are involved as well.<\/p>\n

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Programming Language<\/h3>\n

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The situation with programming languages used for creating web applications is quite complicated. For the client side of web applications, there are many technologies that allow developers to simplify the creation of the HTML\/CSS\/JS triad (the one that all modern browsers understand). But I have closely interacted with GWT<\/a><\/noindex> and I find it beautiful when a developer sees the original code in the browser, rather than the result of compilation or transpilation. Therefore, the use of webpack<\/a><\/noindex>'For generating client-side code, IMHO, is not beautiful. The more the code executed in the browser resembles the source code created by the developer, the better. Don't believe me? Try debugging in production the code generated by GWT.<\/p>\n

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On the server side, there's more freedom (Java, PHP, Perl, Python, C#, Ruby, ...), but it seems to me that it's beautiful when the same programming language \u2014 JavaScript \u2014 is used on both the server and in the browser. the language shapes thinking<\/a><\/noindex>, and teams of like-minded individuals are more productive.<\/p>\n

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Humanity<\/h1>\n

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A beautiful web application must be useful. Useful, primarily, for the person as the end consumer. Therefore, I cannot call a web service<\/a><\/noindex>a beautiful web application. An average person (not a web developer) finds them complicated. Web services are beautiful in their own way,<\/p>\n

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A beautiful web application must have an intuitive interface. One can argue about UI<\/a><\/noindex>'It's quite a subjective matter. But with UX<\/a><\/noindex> It's much simpler if a user can't use the application without the coveted RTFM<\/a><\/noindex> \u2014 poor UX, ugly web application. The most aesthetically pleasing web applications by this criterion can easily be used by children who can't yet read. <\/p>\n

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Reverse Scalability<\/h1>\n

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Long ago, programs could be transferred on floppy disks, now \u2014 on flash drives or downloaded directly from the Web. Copying a regular application and running it on another machine is a trivial task. The situation is somewhat special with web applications. The network represents a global environment where there is no need to have clones of the same web application. One Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Mail.ru, or Yandex is enough. Various web applications can exist in the same thematic niche but target different audiences (like Facebook and VKontakte, Mail.ru and Gmail, Google Maps and Azure Maps). The hardware resources needed to ensure the global availability of such web applications are required, let's say, nontrivial<\/a><\/noindex>.<\/p>\n

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I have never worked with web applications of this level as a developer and can't imagine how they're structured inside. Ensuring the functionality of such web applications requires teams of specialists and separate data centers. I am amazed by people's ability to cooperate on such a scale and create such products, but my standard of beauty is a web application that can run on a standalone laptop.<\/p>\n

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A beautiful web application scales not only upward and outward (for users) but also downward and inward (for developers).<\/p>\n

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\"Amphibiousness\"<\/h1>\n

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Access to modern web applications is done using two types of devices:<\/p>\n

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