I think what I’m learning from #GAGSProject is that the answer to “how do I do HTML/CSS/JS in a way that is safe and sane without adding a bunch of magical black boxes?” is that “you can’t lol you need the black boxes to do that”

like I fucking hate React but I think I kinda understand why people use React now, because the alternative is to write code in 4 different languages and somehow make sure that they’re all meshing together exactly correctly

@kasdeya Very true, unless you keep it really simple with small static sites and such.

The amazing thing is that there are magical black boxes (frameworks) of all shapes and sizes depending on how much magic you want in your project

@kasdeya tbh it doesn't make it that much safer, the footguns are still there, they've just all been pushed to the side of the desk in the hope you'll ignore them (/s)

joking aside, the real value in those kinds of tools is that it's like a scaffold for managing complexity, which does help a lot with the staying sane

@tempest ahh that makes sense but really sucks. it seems like there isn’t any way to make a UI that I can feel comfortable with. even GUI libraries like Qt require me to make some major sacrifices

I guess this project has been about me trying to write code that others can use, even if they aren’t technical. but I hate having to give up {the ability to verify that all of my code is working as intended} in order to get there, as well as {the ability to write abstractions that work under all circumstances without any hidden gotchas}