You probably don't need a JavaScript framework • Hacker News Board

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#71

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:42 AM UTC

takno wrote: post #66

Touche wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality JavaScript size means very little when a single image might be 500k.

My total image payload is 30k. Obviously getting there is more challenging for other sites, but at the end of the day if your page is >1mb I'm probably not going to wait for it to load

>but at the end of the day if your page is >1mb I'm probably not going to wait for it to load

Average size for the most popular sites has actually grown to ~ 2.5-3MB.

And since they're the most popular, it shows that people DO wait just fine for them to load.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#72

Post by takno » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:42 AM UTC

zxcvcxz wrote: post #61

vhiremath4 wrote: post #41

"Another example is the Fetch API"... That API has very limited cross-browser support. One of the largest reasons web frameworks exist is to bridge the gaps between browser incompatibilities/offering legacy support. I don't know if this person has even really scaled and deployed a web application that must work across several browsers - especially older browser versions. I always wonder that whenever I see people bas…

Yeah I find it hard to believe that the people who go on about how convoluted web development is actually get paid to do web development. 1) Where are all the people hiring web devs who don't know a single library or framework? 2) Why do huge tech companies like facebook and google develop web frameworks if they're unnecessary?

Do Google even really use angular? I know none of their core products use it. As to Facebook, their website is painfully slow, seems like it's not a model of the right way to do stuff

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#73

Post by AlwaysBCoding » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:43 AM UTC

You probably don't need Redux* but React is awesome

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#74

Post by zxcvcxz » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:43 AM UTC

edejong wrote: post #43

I still remember doing a PoC for an end-to-end secure messaging app with web support, around 3 years back. It was written in plain JS with jquery and one or two libs for crypto bolted on. Simple, easy, but not very maintenance friendly written. Took around 2000 lines all in all. One of four clients (Android, iOS and a bot framework in Scala/Java). Then the web-boys came in to rewrite my... well, contraption. In came…

>they buried a relatively simple and elegant messaging system in tons and tons of incoherent, unmaintained, inextensible and incompatible (with websockets at the time) stuff.

If all it was was a chat app then angular was over kill.

Leveraging frameworks on projects for which they're unnecessary doesn't show that the frameworks are bad, just that the devs are bad.

The reality was probably that those "web-boys" have to maintain dozens of applications and so follow a certain workflow for all of those applications.

Many frameworks allow for easy and streamlined testing, are more reliable across browsers, allow for easy extensibility, and help you easily track data.

In the real world, people can't be expected to maintain dozens of custom tool chains and there aren't a ton of job postings for people who don't know ANY web frameworks/libraries.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#75

Post by netghost » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

Touche wrote: post #18

takno wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you may well end up writing one, but it's likely to be a fraction of the size. My current entire app is running at half the size of jquery, which is getting me awesomely quick page loads even on poor mobile connections. The dev time was longer, but not crazily longer, and the surface area for testing is somewhat smaller

In reality JavaScript size means very little when a single image might be 500k.

It's not so much the time over the wire to download, but the time to parse and run all that JS. If you open up your web dev tools, I think you'll see the impact from a 50k gzipped JS file is probably greater than a 500k image, for one thing the site can probably function without the image loaded, but your page will not be user responsive until that JS has finished executing.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#76

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

gjolund wrote: post #63

I'm really glad I don't have to work with people who think like this. You don't NEED a framework, just like you could theoretically build a car from scratch. If your app isn't complex enough to merit using a framework, then you aren't really building something worth talking about. Frameworks do exactly what they say, provide a common framework for your team to work off of while they build a complex application. I fee…

>If your app isn't complex enough to merit using a framework, then you aren't really building something worth talking about.

That's the very mentality that gave us J2EE crapfest and poisoned JS.

The idea that a complex app requires a kitchen sink approach and framework-itis...

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#77

Post by takno » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:45 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #37

The point of React isn't its performance (though that is nice). The point of React is the simplicity and composability of functional components. You can create this on your own of course (and I have), but the solution of "just use the DOM" ignores an enormous amount of progress that React made with component design , not performance.

The main contention of the article is that this "simplicity" is illusory. You end up writing just as much code, but now you've added a complex dependency you don't really understand but have to make your customers download, and ultimately have to test against

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#78

Post by gjolund » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:45 AM UTC

edejong wrote: post #43

I still remember doing a PoC for an end-to-end secure messaging app with web support, around 3 years back. It was written in plain JS with jquery and one or two libs for crypto bolted on. Simple, easy, but not very maintenance friendly written. Took around 2000 lines all in all. One of four clients (Android, iOS and a bot framework in Scala/Java). Then the web-boys came in to rewrite my... well, contraption. In came…

Honestly, it just sounds like you are bad at managing your own software projects and trying to blame it on the web team.

If your code had been as easy to understand as you say it is there would have been no need to re-write it.

Also, your acknowledgement that it was difficult to maintain makes my point for me.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#79

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:47 AM UTC

statictype wrote: post #6

React doesn't exist to handle the massive amounts of data that facebook has. React exists to make complex UIs easier to build and maintain. Being able to just write the code once to render a UI from some state and then just reloading the entire UI when the state changes is an incredible simplification of your code. That the author kind of misses this point makes me pay less attention to the rest of the post.

Rarely anything insightful about an article was contributed by someone saying how they skipped it past the first few paragraphs...

And yes, an article can be both totally wrong at the beginning AND totally correct later on (or any combination of correct and wrong along its length).

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#80

Post by gjolund » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:48 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #76

gjolund wrote: post #63

I'm really glad I don't have to work with people who think like this. You don't NEED a framework, just like you could theoretically build a car from scratch. If your app isn't complex enough to merit using a framework, then you aren't really building something worth talking about. Frameworks do exactly what they say, provide a common framework for your team to work off of while they build a complex application. I fee…

> If your app isn't complex enough to merit using a framework, then you aren't really building something worth talking about. That's the very mentality that gave us J2EE crapfest and poisoned JS. The idea that a complex app requires a kitchen sink approach and framework-itis...

Complexity requires structure in order to be maintainable.

Its not a "kitchen sink", its scaffolding. If you don't understand then you are either writing huge amounts of documentation and test code for your custom solution, or you are acknowledging that your app will be unmaintainable once you leave your position.

Both are signs of inexperience.