Why If Satan Was a Web Developer it Would Actually Just Look Like Modern Frontend Engineering

We’ve all been there. You’re staring at a pull request with 400 comments, the build is failing for no reason, and your CSS is somehow leaking into a completely different micro-frontend. It’s in these moments of pure, unadulterated frustration that you start to wonder. You think to yourself, honestly, if Satan was a web developer, he wouldn't need to change much. He'd just keep doing what we're already doing.

Web development is a unique kind of torture. It's the only industry where the tools we use to solve problems usually end up creating three more. Think about the "Dependency Hell" we live in. You want to center a div? Great, now you’ve accidentally installed a package that tracks user keystrokes and hasn't been updated since the Obama administration. It’s a mess.

If we look at the history of the web, it’s a series of layers built on top of things that were never meant to support them. JavaScript was written in ten days. Ten. Days. Brendan Eich, the creator, has been very open about the rush job at Netscape in 1995. We are literally running the global economy on a language designed in less time than it takes most people to pick a new sofa. If that isn't the ultimate prank from the underworld, I don't know what is.

The Architecture of Eternal Suffering

If Satan was a web developer, his first priority would be complexity for the sake of complexity. He’d love the current trend of "Hydration." You know the one. We send the HTML to the browser, then we send a giant blob of JavaScript to the browser, and then we make the browser figure out how to attach the two together while the user's phone turns into a literal space heater. It’s inefficient. It’s redundant. It’s perfect for a malevolent deity.

Modern frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelte are amazing, don't get me wrong. They’ve solved massive state management issues. But they’ve also introduced a layer of abstraction that makes it nearly impossible for a junior developer to understand what’s actually happening in the DOM.

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• The Build Step: Remember when you could just refresh the browser? Now you need a 4GB node_modules folder and a build script that takes three minutes to tell you that you forgot a semicolon.
• The Breaking Changes: Oh, you liked version 12? Too bad. Version 13 is out, it's a complete rewrite, and the documentation is just a 404 page and a tweet from a developer who has since moved to a goat farm in Vermont.
• The Browser Support: Testing on Safari is the digital equivalent of being poked with a pitchfork. It is the new Internet Explorer, and everyone knows it, but we all just pretend it's fine because we like our MacBooks.

The Dark Pattern Masterclass

Dark patterns are the bread and butter of a devilish developer. These aren't just bugs; they are intentional design choices meant to deceive. If Satan was a web developer, he’d be the king of the "Roach Motel"—the UI where it’s incredibly easy to get into a subscription but nearly impossible to get out. You have to call a phone number that’s only active during a lunar eclipse to cancel your $5 a month gym membership.

Harry Brignull, the UX specialist who actually coined the term "Dark Patterns" (now often called Deceptive Patterns), has cataloged hundreds of these. Think about "Privacy Zuckering," where you're tricked into sharing more information than you intended. Or "Misdirection," where the button you want to click is tiny and gray, while the button that installs a toolbar is giant, green, and pulsing.

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This isn't just bad design. It's a choice. It's a developer sitting in a chair, drinking coffee, and deciding to make the "Unsubscribe" link the same color as the background. That is the true spirit of if Satan was a web developer. It’s the subtle, agonizing friction of a thousand tiny inconveniences that eventually break the human spirit.

Legacy Code: The Ninth Circle

There is nothing more hellish than inheriting a codebase that has no documentation and was written by someone who "doesn't believe in comments." We've all seen it. The utils.js file that is 5,000 lines long. The function named doThing() that actually handles the entire payment processing logic and also, for some reason, pings a weather API in Latvia.

In the world of professional software engineering, we call this "Technical Debt." But let’s be real: it’s a haunting. You change one variable in a CSS file and the login screen breaks. Why? Because five years ago, a developer used a global selector that happens to share a name with a critical React component.

1. The "Fixed" Bug: You "fix" a bug on Tuesday.
2. The Regression: On Wednesday, you realize that fix broke the entire checkout flow for users in Western Australia.
3. The Patch: You patch the fix.
4. The Collapse: By Friday, the entire repo is a Jenga tower held together by string and "TODO: fix this later" comments.

If Satan was a web developer, he would never let you refactor. He would insist on "shipping fast" until the weight of the legacy code became so heavy that the entire engineering team just quits to start a sourdough bakery.

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The Actionable Truth of Web Dev

Look, the web is beautiful and broken all at once. If you want to avoid the "Hellish" side of development, you have to be intentional. It’s easy to get sucked into the cycle of over-engineering and dark patterns, but there are actual steps to keep your soul (and your codebase) intact.

• Prioritize Performance over Packages: Before you npm install that new shiny library, ask yourself if you can do it with vanilla JS. Your users' data plans will thank you.
• Accessibility Isn't Optional: Making a site that only works for able-bodied people on the latest iPhone is, frankly, a bit evil. Use semantic HTML. Test with screen readers. It’s not that hard, and it matters.
• Write for Humans, Not Compilers: Your code will be read by a human much more often than it will be executed by a machine. Use clear variable names. Write comments that explain why, not just what.
• Audit Your UI for Deception: If you find yourself hiding a "Cancel" button or using "Confirmshaming" (making users click a link that says "No thanks, I prefer to pay full price"), stop. Just stop.

Stop chasing every new framework that drops on Hacker News. The "Satanic" version of web development is the one where we lose sight of the user in favor of our own technical vanity. Build things that work, build things that last, and for the love of all things holy, stop using !important in your CSS.