Speaking as an old graybeard UI guy.... we have just come up with more and more complex solutions to the same old internet "one weird trick" of putting your information on someone else's computer.

Yeah, I remember "Server Side Rendering"... we called Java Servlets or JSPs or PHP or ASP. There were clear divisions of labors and boundaries were respected.

Even when we had to go to make everything feel like an app, at least RESTful stuff still had those boundaries.

Now that everyone needs the same code running front and back, and JS (I'm not a hater of JS by any means but still) stuff like this is bound to have happened.

10-15 years ago there was such a split for web engineering. They wanted to make everything on the web look like an app, and a lot of backend guys hate anything looking like UI, so lets have an amicable divorce and do everything through these god awful endpoints, so the backend folks don't have to touch UI and the frontend folks can think they're "more real" engineers by making stuff that looks like it's a black box app vs enjoying the natural versatility and iterability of the old web.

I'm sure I'll never get hired for it, but good ol PHP (hell for most things I skip the MySQL; poor mans no-SQL w/ JSON files on the file system works and scales well for so many things)... vanilla Javascript can even be beautifully declerative when you want it to, with string templates building up whatever new DOM you didn't get from the server. I have these sites that last for decades, and when it comes time to add something, they're easy to figure out and adapt and there's no library hell (browsers have gotten so GOOD yet still so backwards compatibile over the years)

So I look for like minded souls using terms like "buildless" and "evergreen". But it's like an underground movement...

I'm more interested in Skype vs Zoom...

I'm 50, in UI, and feeling similar.
I don't mind agile per se (but it's difficult to come in on a very established project - so many decisions were made, and you don't even have the full context to judge them properly. It's like learning a new language, basic fluency is hard won)

What I do mind is how much flavor of the month there has been - a lot of complexity and difficulty in following code path for very theoretical gains . Any redux project smells so much like 2019, it's sad.

So like 20+ years ago, Wired declared "free wins".
I think people - after being nickel and literally dimed by 10-cents-per-SMS - were rightfully shy of "pay per transaction", because thy weren't sure what their usage would look like and that shit adds up.

So two decades later we have this sad fork in the road, two main paths:
* "free", but shitty with ads or other ways they figured out how to commoditize your attention
* subscription, where they can keep collecting rent no matter how little you use it.
( with "pay per usage" the third way less traveled)

Cow Clicker did it first. Or at least, earlier.

Probably right that it's just catnip for people hunting Chevos or whatever the kids are calling them now.

Yes, well, that's capitalism for you.

Most Americans have no choice in insurer. And their choices are controlled by a powerful cartel that colludes to keep prices high. There is no competition in the health insurance field.

No American gives a rats ass about the "choice" of insurer. They want a choice of doctors and services, but really, and I can not stress this enough, REALLY hate all insurance companies. More than they hate the government even!

And yet, taxes have been cut again and again and again. How do you reconcile that fact with your statement that "Because the people raising taxes will never reach a point when they say "the government has enough money now, let's cut taxes"."

Seems that it's very, very easy for the government to cut taxes, at least for the rich. Why are you afraid of "the people who want to raise taxes" when those people have never actually done so? Seems you are imagining a scenario that is not just unlikely, but counter factual.

No, people want to pay for things with their taxes. The are not, in fact, idiots. They don't want predatory capitalists taking a cut, and figure, correctly, that government is more trustworthy than a man with a profit motive and no morals.

People recognize that certain endeavors are just not well served by a capitalist free market. Health care is a primary one that simply doesn't work unless heavily regulated or run by the government. You do not know what is wrong with you. You do not know how to fix it. You can not shop around for a new liver.

As it is, we are basically running health care like a for profit government, and we are getting the worst of both the public and private worlds. Health insurance amounts to a system of taxation that forces the healthy to pay for the sick, and lets a third party take a huge cut. Replace health insurance with actual government taxation and what have you lost, except for the greedy bastard trying to mark up your heart medications? Nothing.

You showed no proof of anything.

You assholes have no problem with kids reading those same types of sex scenes if it's straight. Just ask Beverly Cleary. Most YA novels have sex scenes. Doesn't make them pornographic or unsuitable for kids.

You aren't American so stop talking as if you know us or our culture, asshole.

You don't know shit then. Stop talking like you know America if you aren't from here, asshole.

We need to raise taxes on the rich back to what they were in the good old days Republicans pine for. Marginal tax rate of 90%. "Oh!" you whine, "Nobody paid that!" Yes, but they paid more than they do now and that's the point. Raise taxes on capital gains, raise corporate taxes, lower taxes for the middle class and boom! Deficit fixed.

Normal people are not lazy, they just don't want to be taken advantage of. The real drag on our economy is billionaires and other tax cheats.

Oh stop lying. You can't provide any evidence for any of your wild claims. You censorious assholes only ever talk in generalities. Be specific. What fucking books are you talking about?

What normal people have figured out is that it is the right wing and religious figures who are abusing kids. So many right wingers who shout "groomer!" have been caught with child porn. You disgust normal Americans.