Ask HN: How to write a web app that will outlast the latest JS trends?

How do you write a modern web app and be sure it will still be maintainable in the 2-3 year time frame?

If these systems are planned to have a life time of say 5-7 years, it would be best to not start developing parts of them with libraries and frameworks that are due to be phased out in just 2 or 3 years.

E.g. AngularJS, the writing is clearly on the wall. Google are investing in a number of libraries and technologies that are the "next thing": Polymer, Dart, Web Components + Shadow DOM in Chrome etc. It appears that in the big picture AngularJS is a stepping stone, which is a problem when you plan on building something that should be supportable for 5+ years.

Remember GWT? 5 years ago it was all the rage. At the 2012 Google I/O event they announced they're handing over control to a steering committee - their way of letting go and moving on. Imagine if you needed to continue supporting GWT based code for another few years, when the catalyst for the technology are phasing it out themselves. The worst part of this is the lack of developers - they see Google dumping GWT and stop learning about it. How do you hire developers to continue maintaining your software? This should qualify as being "in a rut".

So it begs the question, should an organization start using AngularJS (or any other fashionable framework trend) for long-term support systems? If so, how should one decide?

Certain server side frameworks such as rails let you build apps that feel very similar to client side js apps without having to use them.

There is no magic.

1. Write your code using standard JavaScript, avoiding corner cases and features that aren't universally supported.

2. Use libraries (you decide the architecture and when to call them) instead of frameworks (they establish the architecture and your code has to fit within it).

Neither of these is a new argument, it's just the usual trade-off with using bleeding edge functionality or building around a framework, now applied to the world of front-end web development and JS: you can do more things quickly at first with these tools, but at the expense of introducing portability and maintenance overheads that might cost you further down the line. Whether the benefit outweighs the cost is something you have to consider on a case by case basis.