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

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#161

Post by jonathankoren » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:29 AM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #141

gjolund wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If your code had been as easy to understand as you say it > is there would have been no need to re-write it. In theory, only difficult-to-understand and/or difficult-to-maintain code is rewritten. In practice, the definition for “difficult-to-understand” and “difficult-to-maintain” often boil down to whatever the team decides they are familiar with... Or want to be familiar with. I wouldn’t assume there’s any corre…

This. I've seen thing rewritten for purely political purposes more often than technical reasons.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#162

Post by zwily » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:30 AM UTC

I wrote dbmon at Instructure (first with jquery, then in ember, then in react, where it has been for a couple years) to give us a birds eye view of a bunch of databases. It's been kind of surreal to watch it blow up into what it has.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#163

Post by jonathankoren » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:31 AM UTC

cname wrote: post #158

userbinator wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very suitable verb for describing this process: "enterprisify" This trend toward "frameworkfulness" probably started with OOP and Java in the mid 90s, and spread from there. Fortunately they seem to be realising the ridiculousness and gradually getting out of that mindset, but unfortunately other developer cultures like JS are now headed in that direction.

Using a JS framework like jQuery or Angular or React isn't even remotely similar to Enterprise Java Beans and all that nonsense. You must be joking.

Oh that's only because there's a new framework every 6 months.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#164

Post by jonathankoren » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:35 AM UTC

gjolund wrote: post #145

Vendan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may surprise you, but we used to make web pages without JS. I know, it's a shocker!!! But guess what? 1 is irrelevant, 2 is irrelevant, 3 is there by default, 4 is easily solved, and so is 5. Turns out, logic on just the server side is simpler. It may not be as pretty, but please don't assume that your way is the only way.

When were you building web pages without JS? 1994? Server side logic MAY be simpler in SOME cases. Overall applications have become a lot more complex over the last 20 years and your oddated methodologies have been replaced by tested thorough solutions built and used by some of the biggest companies in the world.

Dude. This site has onlylike 6 lines of JavaScript, and that's just to make the arrows disappear after you click them.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#165

Post by hawkice » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:39 AM UTC

For those who read the comment about Object.observe: Don't use that. It's being removed from everywhere it exists, and pulled from the standards recommendation. Just have a set(state) function that calls your callback instead, it's like three lines of code.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#166

Post by gjolund » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:41 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #164

gjolund wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When were you building web pages without JS? 1994? Server side logic MAY be simpler in SOME cases. Overall applications have become a lot more complex over the last 20 years and your oddated methodologies have been replaced by tested thorough solutions built and used by some of the biggest companies in the world.

Dude. This site has onlylike 6 lines of JavaScript, and that's just to make the arrows disappear after you click them.

This site is also extremely simple and only requires 6 lines of js.

HN is not a complex app.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#167

Post by joesmo » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:45 AM UTC

While we're at it, let's just write everything in spaghetti ASP because you don't need a [insert programming language here] framework.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#168

Post by acemarke » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:50 AM UTC

prewett wrote: post #151

acemarke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're referring to https://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/ , which compares React to a Win32 WndProc function.

Ah, those were the days! I think I still have that Petzold book somewhere. It had to come with examples, because Stack Overflow didn't exist yet, so that was the only way you could get stuff working in a reasonable amount of time. (Except for when it didn't work in your code for some reason.) I really like the article, but I'm not sure how else you're really going to do it. You could have magic functions that get cal…

So to clarify:

* React is generally considered to be "just" the view layer. You feed data in, and based on that data, return what the current output of a given component should be. It does include a per-component state feature, which can easily be sufficient state management for a smaller app.

* Redux is just state management. Put all the write logic into a single "reducer" function structure, and the only way to run any of that reducer logic is to call Redux's "dispatch" function with an object describing the action that took place (such as `{type : "ADD_TODO", text : "Buy Milk"}`. That's where the switch aspect usually comes in, similar to WndProc.

* There's "official" bindings to hook together React and Redux, but also bindings for a bunch of other view libraries as well (Vue, Angular, Mithril, Deku, etc), and all they really do is subscribe to Redux's state change callback and pass the new state along.

For what it's worth, my last year of learning React and Redux has already drastically changed how I think about programming. It's a great first step into functional programming and thinking about things in terms of state and output.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#169

Post by deadowl » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:52 AM UTC

edejong wrote: post #106

zxcvcxz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Your comments reflect my feelings at the time. Trying to push a round peg into a square hole. Angular had (and still has) some really useful features and so do many other frameworks/libraries. However, it's the combinatorial complexity of having a dozen of them at the same time, each with their own DSL, coding conventions, community (or lack of it), that makes it overkill. By the way, as the nature of these messaging…

I imagine designing thorough unit tests for 2000 lines of code could take a few weeks, and continue to have sparse edge cases crop up over the course of years. They're nice to have for mature software components. If you're prototyping, they're a waste of time.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#170

Post by Achshar » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:52 AM UTC

Nitramp wrote: post #91

One thing many people underestimate is how easy it is to run into XSS, XSRF, XSSI when not using a framework, in particular XSS when using native DOM APIs ("location.href = ..." - pwned. "e.innerHTML = ..." - pwned. "a.href = ..." - pwned. "*.src = ..." - pwned.). You might not need a framework, but you'll need a structured approach to avoid those problems, and frameworks can help a lot with security.

None of those are "pwned" if you know what you're doing. Idiot proofing is a real feature I grant you but it's not something you can blame the native DOM APIs for.