alternatives

Day 7/100

Do they make things better or worse? Some may argue that they lead to too much fragmentation of development, but I am here to argue that that 1 issue is more than outweighed by the positives that come from alternatives being developed.

While this post will use development as an example, it does in most regards apply to almost everything in life. One good example to prove my point is the current state of web development. While there are many frameworks that can be used when developing for web, at the end of the day, they all compile to JavaScript, as that is the only thing that all modern browsers understand as a language. HTML and CSS also play an integral role in this, and again, there is no alternative to them in modern web development. This leads to innovation in the wrong areas, for example, SCSS trying to fix flaws in CSS, while still at the end of the day compiling to CSS. There really is no reason why CSS has to be the only styling language accepted for browsers, and lack of innovation in this area leads to stagnation. I personally have no issue with HTML (although I am sure some do,) and although I have had a decent amount of experience with it, I still hate CSS. However, as there is no alternative to CSS, I am stuck with what I have. At the very least, actual compliable languages instead of a patch on that doesn't change much would be an interesting change in my opinion. One good argument to this is that adding more languages to be viewed on a browser will lead to many new vulnerabilities in browsers. While I have no good point to counter this is it is a very good refute to what I have stated, however I still believe that it is overtaken by all the good that can come out of alternatives being created and used. I will leave you by saying that just because something has existed for a long time does not mean it is good, and there certainly are still a issues with JavaScript, something that has been present on browsers for years.

Tomorrow I will continue this by talking about the issues with web frameworks such as React, so be ready for that (if you care :)