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Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

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Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#11

Post by rjknight »

I'm guessing a bit, but it sounds like you're suffering from trying to find the 'right' way to do something.

I've been in situations where I've spent weeks or even months re-writing things because I read one more article about how some given approach is better than the one I was considering. Ultimately it doesn't matter enough to make a difference in the real world - your application will not be appreciably better because you used gulp instead of grunt or React + Redux instead of Backbone.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a difference between those things, or that some aren't better than others (I like React and would recommend it) but the choice of tooling is not your main problem[1]. This is going to sound very dull, but your best bet is to make some simple choices, stick with them for a while, and see how far you get. Try to avoid questioning things for a while, even if that feels really unnatural.

I think there's a kind of tooling FOMO that afflicts developers, where we get worried that if only we were using a particular tool or technique then our jobs would be, say, an order of magnitude easier, more successful etc. This is hardly ever true, and if it is true then you will be unlikely to be able to identify the choice you need to make until you've spent a good while building version 1 of your application anyway.

[1] https://xkcd.com/309/

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#12

Post by throwaway000020 »

hyuuu wrote: post #5

I know exactly where you coming from, ESPECIALLY if you are in the javascript ecosystem. There are a lot of gaps in the whole flow, from what you have mentioned, build tools, frameworks, standards, architecture (flux? mvc?) Personally, I would suggest, to go at it one at a time. The reason being, these "things" (build tools, frameworks, etc) are there to solve specific problems. If you don't have that problem, then y…

Yes I am in the JavaScript ecosystem. I feel like I'm trying to escape from an Amazonian jungle of errors and things that don't work, trying to find a path that appears and disappears and sometimes is trodden by others and sometimes grown over, always with thorns and strangle vines, dead ends, thousand foot waterfall roadblocks. My food is running out and my feet hurt and by day the sun burns and at night there are the eyes of the beasts watching and waiting for me to fall.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#13

Post by davidbanham »

throwaway000020 wrote: post #6
mod wrote: post #4

Are you just learning? Use less-shiny stuff. Ditch the frameworks etc. Do the simplest thing.

I'm trying to build a real application and building real applications seems to need to sew together a whole bunch of real bits n pieces.

I build real applications out of real bits and pieces in a modern javascript stack. I do it for a living, have done for a while, and manage a team of people in a company that does it.

Don't get hung up on tooling. Things like babel, webpack, ORMs, graphQL, gulp, react, redux, etc etc etc. They're all useful things that have a place in the world. If you try to grok all of them all at once you'll send yourself insane. You don't _need_ any of them. Not a single one.

Just write some code to solve the problem in front of you. Then write some more to solve the next one. Then come back and refactor. Then write some more code and solve some more problems. Keep going like that. You'll end up with a useful thing at the end of it.

The thing you end up with may not be as modular/scalable/etc as something a seasoned professional could build with All The Tools. That's fine. It'll work.

Importantly, though, some slightly muddy, homebaked code will meet your needs a hell of a lot better than a collection of half-understood learning about the most fashionable frameworks of 2015 and no actual code.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#14

Post by elros »

I've read you saying you want to tryout modern JavaScript applications. Look for a boilerplate repo with the tools you like and fork it. It's tedious to set up the tooling part and if you want to focus on proper coding, that's the easiest way to get started.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#15

Post by rifung »

throwaway000020 wrote: post #6
mod wrote: post #4

Are you just learning? Use less-shiny stuff. Ditch the frameworks etc. Do the simplest thing.

I'm trying to build a real application and building real applications seems to need to sew together a whole bunch of real bits n pieces.

By real application do you mean complicated?

I'll second what others have said; you really don't have to use every framework. I really don't see anything wrong with building it with the simplest tools possible, and then if you feel like you need better tooling finding something which fixes your specific problem.

Honestly most things are there to fix some use case, but in my humble opinion you're better off running into said use case before using some framework because you'll understand the problem it addresses and abstractions always leak.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#16

Post by jsharpe »

throwaway000020 wrote: post #12
hyuuu wrote: post #5

I know exactly where you coming from, ESPECIALLY if you are in the javascript ecosystem. There are a lot of gaps in the whole flow, from what you have mentioned, build tools, frameworks, standards, architecture (flux? mvc?) Personally, I would suggest, to go at it one at a time. The reason being, these "things" (build tools, frameworks, etc) are there to solve specific problems. If you don't have that problem, then y…

Yes I am in the JavaScript ecosystem. I feel like I'm trying to escape from an Amazonian jungle of errors and things that don't work, trying to find a path that appears and disappears and sometimes is trodden by others and sometimes grown over, always with thorns and strangle vines, dead ends, thousand foot waterfall roadblocks. My food is running out and my feet hurt and by day the sun burns and at night there are t…

Sometimes it helps to go back to the basics. Just write the simplest possible app, without frameworks or anything. You'll figure out what the pain points are for you, and suddenly frameworks and tools will make way more sense.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#17

Post by tlarkworthy »

elros wrote: post #14

I've read you saying you want to tryout modern JavaScript applications. Look for a boilerplate repo with the tools you like and fork it. It's tedious to set up the tooling part and if you want to focus on proper coding, that's the easiest way to get started.

+ 1, specifically either fork a github base project e.g.[1], use yeoman[2] and there are also some gems in maven archetypes[3].

[1] https://github.com/tylermcginnis/re-base

[2] http://yeoman.io/generators/

[3] https://maven-repository.com/archetypes

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#18

Post by brad0 »

throwaway000020 wrote: post #7
brad0 wrote: post #3

I'm guessing you're feeling depressed because you don't have a strong idea of why you're doing all this. I'd say that what needs to change is your mentality. There's a lot of things you can do to change how you're thinking. It all comes down to understanding the essence of why you're feeling this particular way. What are you trying to achieve?

I'm trying to get an application built using a modern JavaScript approach.

I'm a mobile developer by profession but I just started working on a web side project. The first web stuff I've touched in almost a decade! I feel your pain.

There's so much that can go wrong in modern web dev it seems.

The tech stack I'm using is: Nodejs backbone mongoDB

Is this the kind of thing you mean by modern JS approach?

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#19

Post by ausernamehere »

throwaway000020 wrote: post #7
brad0 wrote: post #3

I'm guessing you're feeling depressed because you don't have a strong idea of why you're doing all this. I'd say that what needs to change is your mentality. There's a lot of things you can do to change how you're thinking. It all comes down to understanding the essence of why you're feeling this particular way. What are you trying to achieve?

I'm trying to get an application built using a modern JavaScript approach.

I know where your coming from, a few months back I had a run in with getting a yeoman generator working on my system. I had all sorts of problems with that.

You probably already aware but just in case your not one possible option for you is to try a vm like virtual box using one of bitmani's pre configured systems

It's not a silver bullet but it may help

PS

If you do give virtual box a go don't use shared folders, at least not until you have got your build tools installed and running.

Re: Tell HN: I spend so much time solving problems I feel like giving up

#20

Post by chipsy »

Stop-and-start development is completely normal when you introduce a lot of project tooling and it's new and shiny.

For this reason, projects run by a solo developer tend to use less tooling and process than team efforts; the friction introduced by each new step in the workflow is a major penalty. The solo developer can just opt to ignore all the cruft and use a cheap, lazy option, because there is no communication issue.

This also presents a bit of a dilemma if your goal is to learn a workflow in order to get hired on a team using that workflow, because you will feel like you are making nothing interesting or noteworthy. Your best option is to temporarily change your mindset from "engineer building software" to "writer building documentation".

The person documenting has to play detective and ask questions constantly. It takes them four times as long to do anything because they have to write down the steps and make it digestible. But each time they make progress and write down those steps, they set down a little roadway for people to drive over in the future. They also gain more credibility as an expert in the process.

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