Your example does not align with your closing statement. Using Arc is certainly not "sticking to web standards" in the way you're proposing.
HN is simple and works, from a user perspective. I don't have my hands on the codebase, but I imagine it's kind of fun to work on precisely because it isn't "close to the metal". DX is just as important as UX is, you have to strike a balance.
Not sure there's much correlation between frameworks and apps becoming complicated or losing touch with their userbase. Using AdWords as an example, I'm like ~75% sure they went from one framework (Google Web Toolkit) to another (AngularJS).
GWT and Facebook’s PHP stack were both effectively server side technologies. GWT was pretty awful, but angular is probably the worst of the bunch when it comes to front end frameworks too. What I’m saying is you should run your app on the server and use HTML as a presentation layer. This is standard, it gives you visibility into bugs, it simplifies the end user payload, and it works quickly and reliably without needing huge refactoring projects and complex abstractions that your business does not need.
You probably don’t need a front end stack. You should just use the web standards as designed first, and then add improvements that customers like.
HN is simple and works, from a user perspective. I don't have my hands on the codebase, but I imagine it's kind of fun to work on precisely because it isn't "close to the metal". DX is just as important as UX is, you have to strike a balance.
Not sure there's much correlation between frameworks and apps becoming complicated or losing touch with their userbase. Using AdWords as an example, I'm like ~75% sure they went from one framework (Google Web Toolkit) to another (AngularJS).