Re: Complexity

------ Original message ------
From "Dominique Hazael-Massieux" <dom@w3.org>
To: public-webdx@w3.org
Date : 26/01/2023 14:41:16

>One of the most influential design patterns in the development of Web technologies in the past decade has been captured in the Extensible Web Manifesto:
>https://extensiblewebmanifesto.org/
>
>Key elements of that manifesto include:
>* Focus on adding new low-level capabilities to the web platform
>* allow web developers to iterate on [high-level features in Javascript] before they become standardized.
>
>My sense is that the first item has been extremely successful, but the latter not nearly as much - while there has been a good amount of iteration on JS-based high-level wrappers to these low level features, it's not obvious a lot of the outcomes of this iteration has found a path back to standardization.
>
>While this may be a sign that it's not needed, a message I've heard repeatedly over recent years (and one that might be worth backing with actual research rather than anecdotes) is that developing for the Web has become harder and harder, moving in the realm of "engineering" and complex toolchain to the detriment of being a platform usable by a wide range of makers.
>
>It feels to me that an effort looking at the complexity of the platform and its impact on the developer experience would probably be informative; we would naturally want to start by understanding whether and how much of an issue it is, before discussing what approaches would help improve the situation.
Reformulating in my own words, two dimensions that could perhaps be 
worth exploring on the topic of complexity:

- The amount of jargon, concepts and architectural considerations that 
one needs to understand before they may start using a technology. 
Examples include WebAssembly, WebGPU, Web Components, WebNN, CSS layout 
models, streams, web components, WebRTC, IndexedDB, etc. Most of the 
concepts are probably inevitable. There may still be value in exploring 
opportunities to converge on architectural principles.

- The difficulty to organize standardization work on higher level APIs 
built on top of lower-level web APIs: no easy way to properly spec 
interfaces of a JS library, lack of interest from browser vendors 
(understandably focused on lower level APIs) and the difficulty to grow 
a community around a proposal outside of the usual browser vendors 
circles.

François.

Received on Friday, 27 January 2023 16:52:41 UTC