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Frontend development: Just a pretty face for JSON?
Frontend Post #2751, on Feb 15, 2021 in TG

Frontend development: Just a pretty face for JSON?

Description

This image uses the 'Change My Mind' meme format, featuring political commentator Steven Crowder sitting at a black table outdoors in what appears to be a park or campus setting. He is wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and holding a mug. On the table in front of him is a large white sign with black text that reads, 'Frontend development is just showing json data in a pretty way'. Below this, in a separate section, is the challenge 'CHANGE MY MIND'. The meme is a classic example of a provocative oversimplification used to spark debate. For experienced developers, the humor lies in how drastically this statement minimizes the complexities of modern frontend engineering, which involves state management, component architecture, build systems, performance optimization, security, and intricate UI logic, far beyond simply rendering data from an API

Categories

Frontend WebDev DevCommunities UX UI DataFormats

Comments

24
Anonymous ★ Top Pick Saying frontend is just making JSON pretty is like saying backend is just flipping bits in a database. Both are technically true and spectacularly wrong
  1. Anonymous ★ Top Pick

    Saying frontend is just making JSON pretty is like saying backend is just flipping bits in a database. Both are technically true and spectacularly wrong

  2. Anonymous

    Frontend is “just” pretty JSON - right up until marketing demands offline sync, 60 fps animations, WCAG AA, and pixel-perfect Safari 13 parity; then your div tree starts looking a lot like a distributed system with a paint budget

  3. Anonymous

    Sure, frontend is just displaying JSON... if you ignore state management, async data flows, render optimization, accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, responsive design, performance budgets, bundle splitting, service workers, and that one Safari bug that only happens on iPhone 12 mini in landscape mode after 3pm on Tuesdays

  4. Anonymous

    Sure, frontend is 'just' showing JSON prettily - the same way backend is 'just' moving data between databases, and architecture is 'just' drawing boxes with arrows. Tell that to the engineer debugging why Safari renders your perfectly valid CSS differently than Chrome, optimizing bundle sizes to hit Core Web Vitals, managing complex state across async boundaries, ensuring WCAG compliance, implementing skeleton screens for perceived performance, and making sure your 'pretty JSON' doesn't cause a layout shift that tanks your SEO. But hey, if it were really that simple, we wouldn't need three competing state management libraries, five different ways to fetch data, and an entire conference track dedicated to 'just rendering some JSON.'

  5. Anonymous

    Frontend is “just pretty JSON” - like saying Kubernetes is “just processes”; come back after you SSR a GraphQL stream, hydrate without jank, virtualize 100k rows, keep a11y/RTL, and still hit the 100KB budget

  6. Anonymous

    Sure, until schema drift turns your pretty JSON into a virtual DOM reconciliation nightmare across 50 nested components

  7. Anonymous

    If it were just pretty JSON, jq piped to printf would’ve replaced React; instead we’re bisecting a hydration mismatch because a locale‑aware date string broke the VDOM diff

  8. @caesar_84 5y

    Трудно не согласиться. То же касается и мобильных клиентов

  9. @APT3M 5y

    In a pretty n^2 way?

  10. @ilyaLep 5y

    Backend разработка - написание шаблонов для баз данных

    1. @metal_Dash 5y

      отправка жисона :D

      1. @i_wdt 5y

        перекладывание джсона из одной очереди в другую 🤔

  11. @Supuhstar 5y

    Only if you're doing it wrong

    1. @RiedleroD 5y

      I'm doing it wrong then. here and here and here as well... and in a few private projects as well. Imo there's no need for an actual database if the data is almost static & the application isn't big either.

      1. @Supuhstar 5y

        I think you don't understand what I mean, heh

        1. @RiedleroD 5y

          no?

          1. @Supuhstar 5y

            I mean that interfaces should be designed, not generated based on data. Also, if it can be done statically then it should, both to reduce energy consumption but also to improve maintainability and portability

            1. @RiedleroD 5y

              true… But I think the original post was ignoring the designing aspect completely and just focusing on what the front-end of the program does.

  12. @pokadexr 5y

    Operating system is just a pretty view of electrons moving around cbs

  13. Anon 5y

    Not a pretty way The way that user can understand.

  14. @ko_patich 5y

    UI/UX: Am I joke to you?

  15. @Araalith 5y

    Backend development is just proxing data from DB to client.

    1. @dugeru42 5y

      but what about db managment?

  16. @proctor_and_gamble 5y

    Apps without business logic on backend? 😂

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