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The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

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Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#61

Post by madeofpalk »

extrapickles wrote: post #29
officialchicken wrote: post #2

I thought the article started strong and skipped around serious issues so it could focus on a pretty nice history of JS, but the conclusion was horrible. > Babel has worked it’s way into the standard Javascript toolchain, and now most builders include it as a first-class plugin Which version of Babel, 5? or 6? Because there's a lot of incompatibility issues right there and I think it is just as symptomatic of the typ…

At least with the C explosion you could check all the libraries into source control or other asset management system (filing cabinet, etc). Most of the JS library tools seem to encourage keeping code outside of source control which is pure crazy. It might work tolerably for a evergreen SaaS application, but you still have way too common complaints from developers that they couldn't build because someone else's server…

> NPM has trouble weekly

Interesting. We deploy daily, always fresh from NPM at each deployment stage and have never had an issue with NPM. We had one legacy dependency downloading from github (ugh) which caused an issue the last time it went down, but we quickly sorted that out.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#62

Post by porker »

madeofpalk wrote: post #56
samcodes wrote: post #44

I have learned so much from comments on Hacker News. Every time one of these articles gets posted I hope that I will get to see some thoughtful commentary on why the ecosystem looks like this: is it the enormous influx of new talent? Is it the consensus to finally drop IE support, and that we're getting a decade of progress in two years? What business demands are driving this technology? Is this a race to make the br…

I can't help but think this is just a whole bunch of people up in arms about not wanting to learn something they think they have to because 'all the cool kids' are. This discussion is often brought up in relation to React/Redux/Babel/Webpack, and people thinking they have to completely master all of them to start making websites, when the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Twitter had an amusing quip of the…

> I can't help but think this is just a whole bunch of people up in arms about not wanting to learn something 'all the cool kids' are.

There may be that. There's also:

a) Some of us are old enough to have mortages/kids/parents to support/houses needing renovation/desire a balanced life. We value skills that stay useful, and don't have the free time to keep learning variants of the same again and again*

b) Companies we work at/for value stability. They look at IT choices on a 5+year horizon; they don't have VC money to burn to 'rewrite' when JavaScript framework X no longer works. Which am I more likely to get sacked for? 1) Not using the cool thing and us missing out, or 2) using the cool thing and having to explain in 18 months time that we need another $20,000 to rewrite it into the Next Cool Thing?

Before you write us off, please do a 360 and see what the field looks like from other perspectives.

* I didn't say 'don't have time to learn'. We learn - but what we learn is evaluated carefully, and we have a much wider field to learn (Programming/Management/PM/Negotation - just a few of the core work-focused skills)

[Edited for formatting]

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#63

Post by marklgr »

phpnode wrote: post #57
marssaxman wrote: post #46

This is interesting but good lord, I want nothing to do with any of this. How are you supposed to get anything done if you have to spend so much time just ramping up on whatever the new hotness happens to be?

You don't have to. The tools which worked 10 years ago still work today. The tools which worked 5 years ago still work today. No one forces you to switch to the new hotness, people choose to.

This is not just about tools still working; it's also about maintenance, evolutions, bugfixes, libraries, available workforce etc. If you happen to use an unpopular tool, then you can't easily leverage other people's work and it's harder to find qualified engineers to work for you.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#65

Post by rk06 »

vmware505 wrote: post #22

I still dont understand this fatigue rant around JavaScript. Because I started to work with Ember.js 4 years ago, and it is the solution for everything. The framework evolved nicely and works perfectly. It was not a bet, it was serious choice which based on a real perspective and concept. Ember is matured and production ready for years now. You can focus on your product. So, as an Emberjs dev never felt that problem…

to me, ember is the only source of peace in js framework wars. I do not use it yet.(cause i am js noob). but if i require a full blown js framework, ember will be my choice.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#66

Post by _pmf_ »

samcodes wrote: post #44

I have learned so much from comments on Hacker News. Every time one of these articles gets posted I hope that I will get to see some thoughtful commentary on why the ecosystem looks like this: is it the enormous influx of new talent? Is it the consensus to finally drop IE support, and that we're getting a decade of progress in two years? What business demands are driving this technology? Is this a race to make the br…

> Is this a race to make the browser experience on-par with native?

Everything points into the opposite direction, unfortunately.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#68

Post by madeofpalk »

porker wrote: post #62
madeofpalk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think this is just a whole bunch of people up in arms about not wanting to learn something they think they have to because 'all the cool kids' are. This discussion is often brought up in relation to React/Redux/Babel/Webpack, and people thinking they have to completely master all of them to start making websites, when the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Twitter had an amusing quip of the…

> I can't help but think this is just a whole bunch of people up in arms about not wanting to learn something 'all the cool kids' are. There may be that. There's also: a) Some of us are old enough to have mortages/kids/parents to support/houses needing renovation/desire a balanced life. We value skills that stay useful, and don't have the free time to keep learning variants of the same again and again* b) Companies w…

Why is everyone so anxious about this? That's the part that confuses me. When we introduced a library for a new project (at a Big Old Media Company with a team varying from interns, to working-70-hours-a-week millennials, to 9-5 family people) it was fine. If someone had something to learn about one of the 5 APIs, they read the entire library documentation (which takes like 20 minutes) or just turned around and asked someone.\

I'm not convinced we found the only developers who like React, but it does seem like there's a certain audience of people (which overlaps heavily with HN) who love to complain about their self-inflicted anxiety.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#69

Post by maze-le »

cubano wrote: post #14
officialchicken wrote: post #2

I thought the article started strong and skipped around serious issues so it could focus on a pretty nice history of JS, but the conclusion was horrible. > Babel has worked it’s way into the standard Javascript toolchain, and now most builders include it as a first-class plugin Which version of Babel, 5? or 6? Because there's a lot of incompatibility issues right there and I think it is just as symptomatic of the typ…

No, I lived the C-explosion of 30 years ago and it was absolutely nothing like what I see these days. It utterly nuts how we are expected a learn a full-stack like Mongo/Angular/Backbone and then 6 months later is like NO we need AWS/React/Redux now! It's my oldman opinion that IT has become too much like fashion and not enough like engineering, but that's what oldmen think so who cares.

> how we are expected a learn a full-stack like Mongo/Angular/Backbone and then 6 months later is like NO we need AWS/React/Redux now!

I live under the assumption that you don't have to. The thing you should figure out is: finding a stack that suits your needs (and the needs of your customers) best. If you find it, is is perfectly reasonable to beeing a bit more conservative and stick with it. On the backend for example I used rails for years, and with good reason. I am not planning to switch, but I am open enough to consider my options and experiment with other stuff. I know there are (maybe pretty good) alternatives: enterprisey Java-frameworks; good old django; nodejs; experimental stuff with erlang or haskell.

I think the frontend/js-world is not so much different. You don't have to know every framework, because it is the latest hot shit... It is not wrong knowing the strenghts and weaknesses of new frameworks, but you don't have to use and adopt to everything thats new.

Re: The Deep Roots of JavaScript Fatigue

#70

Post by UweSchmidt »

In my opinion the current abstractions that are used in web apps are not good enough. Frameworks may be "elegant" in a certain sense but never get intuitive enough for the average developer, and eventually the framework's author will lose interest as well.

I predict eventually we'll come full circle and get something like ASP.NET forms with Javascript controls that spans both frontend and backend.

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