I’m not sure what you’re responding to regarding virtual magazines or fancy CRUD apps, but I’d guess that 99%+ of all web apps built are CRUD apps—fancy or otherwise.
By volume, crud apps are the vast majority. They're also one of the least engaging type of work IMO, particularly once you've done a few. Compare writing a crud app with making an immersive game, or an application like photoshop/davinci/etc. I don't know about you but I want to do interesting, deep work and if my stack is holding me back from that, that's a problem.
I’m working on a B2B app. Things get more interesting when you need background tasks, notifications, interaction with 3rd-party APIs, etc. Successful CRUD apps usually become more than “just” CRUD apps.
Also, using libraries like htmx is actually more suitable for the type of work you’re describing than modern SPA frameworks with all the bloat they bring along. Non-SPA libraries play well with other libraries, rather than take over the entire rendering process.
I’m old enough to remember how things were before SPAs; with libraries like jQuery the Web loaded much faster and was actually more interactive than it is with the currently dominant paradigm.
I'm not going to fault you for using boring tools to build a typical semi-interactive CRUD website, and I agree that a lot of people make SPAs that could have been multi page apps and provided the same or better user experience while being easier to develop.
That being said, having done all the job queues, API integrations and so forth you mention countless times, and having done graphics, AI/ML and symbolic stuff like compiler development, I can say confidently that at their best CRUD apps are still comparatively boring to write. I personally think it's a mistake to latch on and get religious with a stack that's going to leave you stranded on the isle of boring code.
I actually want learn to build every one of the non-CRUD programs you mentioned (I actually enrolled in a Compilers course once but had to drop out last-minute). I don’t __want__ to spend the rest of my life building CRUD apps exclusively, they’re just my forte, and bread and butter, in the present.
With that said, some things that seem boring to you may be interesting to others. And I don’t see how tech stack is relevant; if building CRUD-ish apps, I want the best possible DX. Of course, if/when I venture out of my comfort zone I will need to learn a new stack, but React and Vue become even less relevant for me at that point.
> Compare writing a crud app with making an immersive game, or an application like photoshop/davinci/etc.
I hear you, but I don't see how immersive games are limited without a CSS build step. Games in particular don't usually have a lot of CSS anyway.
As far as complex webapps go, I'm not thoroughly convinced that the dev team is limited by the lack of a CSS build step. Sure, it makes things slightly more tedious, but not that much more tedious, surely?
