> I mentioned that if 15 years ago you had suggested that in 2012 you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application - we would have laughed.
You can still laugh today, either at the large amount of complexity people invoke for simple tasks or at the notion that the minimal set of these to accomplish the task ("form application") is really complex or hard. 8 years ago you'd use, say, HTML with PHP run from Apache (and Apache is largely out of your mind if you're using shared hosting..), and either text files or a simple SQL table to persist data. (Or depending on the form, just email the data.) You can still be this minimal (or even more minimal--e.g. Flask which comes with its own "Apache", even if you shouldn't use it in production) today. And the basic CSS and JS needed to make the app "pleasant" aren't difficult at all to learn and with only a bit of discipline it's not that hard to keep them from making your page into a complex hairy ball code-wise.
8 years ago was also when AJAX hype was at its greatest. Now it's more about "framework hype"; I keep this in mind: http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=112198633625636&w=... "Before you blindly install large "AJAX" libraries, have a go at rolling your own functionality so you know exactly how it works and you only make it as complicated as you need."
You can still laugh today, either at the large amount of complexity people invoke for simple tasks or at the notion that the minimal set of these to accomplish the task ("form application") is really complex or hard. 8 years ago you'd use, say, HTML with PHP run from Apache (and Apache is largely out of your mind if you're using shared hosting..), and either text files or a simple SQL table to persist data. (Or depending on the form, just email the data.) You can still be this minimal (or even more minimal--e.g. Flask which comes with its own "Apache", even if you shouldn't use it in production) today. And the basic CSS and JS needed to make the app "pleasant" aren't difficult at all to learn and with only a bit of discipline it's not that hard to keep them from making your page into a complex hairy ball code-wise.
8 years ago was also when AJAX hype was at its greatest. Now it's more about "framework hype"; I keep this in mind: http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=112198633625636&w=... "Before you blindly install large "AJAX" libraries, have a go at rolling your own functionality so you know exactly how it works and you only make it as complicated as you need."