Comment by apsurd
7 hours ago
Web technologies got so many things right. People complain about it so much but it's amazing.
I worked with a vibe coded app at my last job (and since quit due to it) and because it was a nextjs SPA frontend with a separate API backend, the user facing urls didn't match the backend endpoints. Because AI uses react hooks for everything, state is in-memory, url-based routing isn't a thing unless you design for it. So links aren't free and thus we have no way for users to link to anything other than top-level entry points. LINKS! Especially for internal tools, everything being linkable is vital to collaboration and problem solving.
The need for uniform resource locations and verbs was so well thought out, 30 or 40 some odd years ago.
Wait so when u navigate to a different page/tab the url wouldn’t update?
it does, it's a nextjs app so there's a bunch of top level pages that work as you'd expect. The issue is that we're trying to be a real company, those pages have nested logic, multiple views, sub navigation, search, filtering, wizards, all of which are in a cascade of react hooks because AI is obsessed with self-contained hooks. none of that state is linkable.
What i learned, by fire, is that nextjs works well with its nested routing and layout-to-hold-context magic. it's quite nifty but it's not free and not obvious, you have to design for it. I can't state enough that AI will ship a billion hooks, it loves hooks for self-contained state. My colleague made a good point that that style is a feature; it limits blast radius of N features all building on top of each other.
Yeah i had to move on from there.