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Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

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Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#191

Post by chiefalchemist »

joshcrews wrote: post #154
Andrex wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly an interesting conundrum, and I agree that eventually without ecosystem support Alice and Bob might find things a little tough. However, it's important to realize that the way the web is moving is to not only benefit the working professionals being paid to write it, but also the consumers who experience it. Why do we have minifiers and transpilers and modules and font icons? Why do we aim for one scrip…

the advance of minifies and transpilers and modules doesnt seem to increase page performance. one of the effect of it being so efficient to minify and transpile is that large imports and frameworks are easier to use, and that boosts the total JS lines of code, making the JS parsing take a long time, and the page performance get "janky"

Mediocrity expands to fill the space and time available.

Mediocre solutions are fixed with an endless array of tools. Learning tools takes time. And that's just to break even. And around we go again.

Can we really say the average web experience is better than the average of 10 or just 5 years ago? (Hint: Nope.) Find someone who is less frustrated with technology and you'll find someone who has given up on technology.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#192

Post by ng12 »

flukus wrote: post #171
ng12 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, why can't we have both? Sure, Mr. Bakery, do everything in jQuery in a tag. I'd even argue that's probably the correct approach. But I don't work for a bakery -- I work for a large company with a complex tech stack writing web applications that will have to be maintained by some poor sucker long after I move on. Tools like React/Angular, Webpack, and npm allow me to do that in a way I couldn't as little as 3-4 y…

> But I don't work for a bakery -- I work for a large company with a complex tech stack writing web applications that will have to be maintained by some poor sucker long after I move on. Or rewritten because the flavor of the month has changed. >Tools like React/Angular, Webpack, and npm allow me to do that in a way I couldn't as little as 3-4 years ago. What exactly couldn't you do 3-4 years ago that you can now?

The big shift has been from managing complexity to avoiding it where possible, encapsulating it when not. In my current favorite webstack, every logical view is abstracted behind an API (which happens to be a React Component). Internally, everything about that component is encapsulated -- the internal implementation, the sub-components, even the CSS thanks to CSS Modules. In fact, if I really had a reason to write a specific component in Angular or jQuery I would be able to: it's easy to embed non-React code inside React, and as long as it exposes a top-level React Component I'm hunky dory. I refer to React because that's my library of choice -- but you can say similar things about Angular and Aurelia.

This has only been something we've gotten right over the last few years. jQuery trampled all over the DOM, data-binding heavy frameworks like Backbone were impossible to reason about, Closure Library turned your Javascript into Java-flavored spaghetti, Coffeescript was basically Perl, and CSS was global by default. Now React lets me write perfectly performant abstractable code. Redux lets me manage state in a functional, reproducible way. Webpack supports CSS modules which let me write sane styles and code-splitting so I don't need to worry about managing resources. Typescript lets me write code that's safe and easy for others to consume. ES6 modules allow me to actually architect my codebase without shoving everything onto window. And the ringer is I'm not married to any of these technologies -- I can scalp out Redux for another data store, Typescript for Babel, go back to global CSS, etc.

Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant. Web apps are a HUGE hack, and it's funny to me that a forum dedicated to hackers has so many who shun it for that reason. It's not "flavor-of-the-month", it's finally making progress towards a really hard problem in really exciting ways.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#193

Post by chiefalchemist »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #189
flukus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are downloading an application, arguably installing one temporarily too. Is this that much more efficient than "apt-get install foo"?

Yes, because it means all my users can install the same application and I only have to write it once for all platforms. Not every platform/OS even has a (good) package manager. So I think this alone is what makes the web great.

True. But users don't care. Not only that, such ease had only created more noise and less expertise. Piss all you want about MS and Apple back in the day but they understood quality control. Today? Ha. We just have lower expectations. We accept shite because we have no other choice.

Furthermore, free isn't free when my privacy is sold and/or my eye balls are subjected to even more ads. This is progress? No fucking way.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#194

Post by kyrra »

RussianCow wrote: post #88
jt2190 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google tends to release code and promote it without > really using it much internally first. Is this actually true? My understanding (from watching many AngularJS presentations) is that Angular was developed with input from many teams at Google. (edit: Angular was first used on an internal app at Googel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1A1VR0ibIQ&feature=youtu.be... )

"with input" != actually using it. There are very few public-facing Google apps/sites that use Angular, whereas a large chunk of the Facebook frontend uses React and their other libraries like Relay. That said, I have no idea if/how Google uses Angular internally, so it might get more use than we see from the outside.

External sites by Google using angular: https://www.madewithangular.com/#/categories/google

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#195

Post by flukus »

ecnahc515 wrote: post #189
flukus wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are downloading an application, arguably installing one temporarily too. Is this that much more efficient than "apt-get install foo"?

Yes, because it means all my users can install the same application and I only have to write it once for all platforms. Not every platform/OS even has a (good) package manager. So I think this alone is what makes the web great.

Which platforms don't have good package management? Linux has, if anything, too many. Windows has chocolatey. Apple has homebrew. Writing portable applications can be done in a variety of ways and packaged for each platform.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#196

Post by flukus »

ng12 wrote: post #192
flukus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't work for a bakery -- I work for a large company with a complex tech stack writing web applications that will have to be maintained by some poor sucker long after I move on. Or rewritten because the flavor of the month has changed. >Tools like React/Angular, Webpack, and npm allow me to do that in a way I couldn't as little as 3-4 years ago. What exactly couldn't you do 3-4 years ago that you can now?

The big shift has been from managing complexity to avoiding it where possible, encapsulating it when not. In my current favorite webstack, every logical view is abstracted behind an API (which happens to be a React Component). Internally, everything about that component is encapsulated -- the internal implementation, the sub-components, even the CSS thanks to CSS Modules. In fact, if I really had a reason to write a…

> Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant.

Probably because every feature you listed was achievable before react.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#197

Post by flukus »

pitaj wrote: post #187
flukus wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO the Node/npm ecosystem is far more stable than Angular 1&2/bower. I can't say if it's more stable than bower, but IME it's not stable at all. My simple blog static site generator breaks every time I write a new blog post.

What do you mean by breaks?

I mean the npm dependencies are broken.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#198

Post by gaastonsr »

flukus wrote: post #196
ng12 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big shift has been from managing complexity to avoiding it where possible, encapsulating it when not. In my current favorite webstack, every logical view is abstracted behind an API (which happens to be a React Component). Internally, everything about that component is encapsulated -- the internal implementation, the sub-components, even the CSS thanks to CSS Modules. In fact, if I really had a reason to write a…

> Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant. Probably because every feature you listed was achievable before react.

I just want to hear your answer with one of those...

How did you do type checking before TypeScript (or the like) in JS? give me a real answer.......

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#199

Post by ng12 »

flukus wrote: post #196
ng12 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big shift has been from managing complexity to avoiding it where possible, encapsulating it when not. In my current favorite webstack, every logical view is abstracted behind an API (which happens to be a React Component). Internally, everything about that component is encapsulated -- the internal implementation, the sub-components, even the CSS thanks to CSS Modules. In fact, if I really had a reason to write a…

> Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant. Probably because every feature you listed was achievable before react.

I actually regret writing out such a detailed reply. Congratulations, you're a top HN troll.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#200

Post by flukus »

gaastonsr wrote: post #198
flukus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant. Probably because every feature you listed was achievable before react.

I just want to hear your answer with one of those... How did you do type checking before TypeScript (or the like) in JS? give me a real answer.......

I didn't, and you didn't mention type checking above.

One very common way though was to avoid the need for it altogether in javascript, by rendering html on the server.

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