You might not need JavaScript • Hacker News Board

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#211

Post by sn0v » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

nkassis wrote: post #172

nfriedly wrote: post #143

When I was hired on the Watson team, the first thing they asked me to do was help improve performance of their AngularJS-based website. It was all-around slow, especially for the initial page view. I stripped out AngularJS and most of the other JavaScript, and published a website that was almost pure static HTML. It loaded very quickly. My manager thought it was hilarious - his "JavaScript expert" came in and deleted…

I've had interview candidates for frontend developer positions who only know how to build web pages using frameworks like Angular and React. They don't seem to understand how those frameworks work but essentially patch together a bunch of example online to get something going. It's truly unfortunate that many beginner web development tutorial introduce these technologies first in my view. Without giving new developer…

How would you suggest breaking out of that silo?

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#212

Post by egypturnash » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #156

ryangittins wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two were actually making a good point. This website (yours, presumably) is just jumping on the bandwagon and sticking an affiliate link in it. I'm not against affiliate links, but this site lacks substance.

HTTPS and full contrast text are important. The 2nd attempt is a downgrade from the first. This 3rd attempt is an actual improvement.

The second one is the only one that puts any effort into actual legibility. There's a nice comfortable amount of space between the lines! The text doesn't render right at the edge of the page! There are MARGINS and WHITESPACE.

If you just take your browser's defaults for all the typographical stuff like that, everything looks like trash.

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#213

Post by eyelidlessness » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

marxidad wrote: post #193

eyelidlessness wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would syntax highlighting need JavaScript?

The browser doesn't natively support syntax highlighting (they aren't features of HTML or CSS).

It depends what you mean by "support". There are two things a JavaScript syntax highlighter is doing:

1. Classify each token (whether this is building up an AST or doing something more fuzzy/clever is immaterial for this discussion); 2. Construct a DOM tree (HTML) that is styled (CSS).

Step 1 does not have to happen client-side at all. Step 2 doesn't require JavaScript at all.

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#214

Post by marktangotango » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

nkassis wrote: post #173

klodolph wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large percentage of the "very skilled" developers I know will much sooner brag about how much code they deleted or didn't write than how much code they wrote.

Lazyness is a virtue for software engineers in my opinion.

Generally when I hear people talk about having imposter syndrome in software development, I feel like they're missing this key insight. The fastest code, and the easiest to maintain is the code that's never written. I've been trying to formulate how to express this idea to people who don't have it ie paraphrasing YAGNI:

"Strive to optimize for less code, and the minimum level of abstraction."

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#215

Post by favorited » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

matchagaucho wrote: post #209

G3E9 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when a project includes jQuery for a single AJAX call - someone somewhere got paid for that ridiculous insight.

Given "fetch" is not yet a standard, jQuery $.ajax is actually a decent cross-browser polyfill.

I've been out of the JS world for a few years, but for a single Ajax call, why wouldn't you use XMLHttpRequest?

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#216

Post by __s » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

nkassis wrote: post #192

noobermin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another perspective. I started learning JS in reverse and ended up just creating my own framework because it was less verbose. But you would hire me over your patch-and-patch fellows? Perhaps the right answer is to code know the basics but also have a handle on the popular frameworks too.

"Here's another perspective. I started learning JS in reverse and ended up just creating my own framework because it was less verbose. But you would hire me over your patch-and-patch fellows?" Yes more likely. In fact I would find informative to see the framework that you have built as an example of understanding web development. To expand a bit I think learning the framework is easier once you have an understanding…

My framework looks like this: https://github.com/serprex/openEtG/blob/master/dom.js

The code that uses it looks like this: https://github.com/serprex/openEtG/blob/master/views/MainMen...

The site looks like this: http://etg.dek.im

I recently worked on a site at my job where I was able to implement it with JS + C#/OWIN, all static html, only uses toastr/jquery. Was nice they let me break away from the illusion that the choice is only between WebForms or MVC

If you ask me to compare this to Angular, I'd have to say I've never used Angular so I don't know

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#217

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:35 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #180

nkassis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had interview candidates for frontend developer positions who only know how to build web pages using frameworks like Angular and React. They don't seem to understand how those frameworks work but essentially patch together a bunch of example online to get something going. It's truly unfortunate that many beginner web development tutorial introduce these technologies first in my view. Without giving new developer…

Here's another perspective. I started learning JS in reverse and ended up just creating my own framework because it was less verbose. But you would hire me over your patch-and-patch fellows? Perhaps the right answer is to code know the basics but also have a handle on the popular frameworks too.

I'd hire you but I'd still make you use a framework.

Convention makes code readable and maintainable. A framework is essentially shared convention that you don't have to maintain. Making your own framework shows that you understand the value of convention.

A framework means that spaghetti code can only get so bad. A bad ad-hoc implementation of a web platform is an order of magnitude worse than bad code written on top of a popular web platform.

When I look at ugly React code, I know how to extract logic, where to push it, how to identify poorly-named concepts. When I look at ugly vanilla JS, I don't know what to make of anything.

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#218

Post by Zeklandia » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

sn0v wrote: post #211

nkassis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had interview candidates for frontend developer positions who only know how to build web pages using frameworks like Angular and React. They don't seem to understand how those frameworks work but essentially patch together a bunch of example online to get something going. It's truly unfortunate that many beginner web development tutorial introduce these technologies first in my view. Without giving new developer…

How would you suggest breaking out of that silo?

Asking for a friend? ;)

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#219

Post by clifanatic » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

nkassis wrote: post #172

nfriedly wrote: post #143

When I was hired on the Watson team, the first thing they asked me to do was help improve performance of their AngularJS-based website. It was all-around slow, especially for the initial page view. I stripped out AngularJS and most of the other JavaScript, and published a website that was almost pure static HTML. It loaded very quickly. My manager thought it was hilarious - his "JavaScript expert" came in and deleted…

I've had interview candidates for frontend developer positions who only know how to build web pages using frameworks like Angular and React. They don't seem to understand how those frameworks work but essentially patch together a bunch of example online to get something going. It's truly unfortunate that many beginner web development tutorial introduce these technologies first in my view. Without giving new developer…

> only know how to build web pages using frameworks like Angular and React

I've never been able to fathom how anybody can do that without understanding the foundation that it's built on. At the bare minimum, how the heck do these people troubleshoot errors? If you have so much as a typo in your code, Angular is going to give you a completely cryptic jQuery error message.

Re: You might not need JavaScript

#220

Post by truth_sentinell » Wed, Oct 12, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

matchagaucho wrote: post #209

G3E9 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when a project includes jQuery for a single AJAX call - someone somewhere got paid for that ridiculous insight.

Given "fetch" is not yet a standard, jQuery $.ajax is actually a decent cross-browser polyfill.

Why would you care about IE8 - 9 or whatever other browser you might be thinking about that has probably an infinitesimal market share?