Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#241

Post by olivetti » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

AtheistOfFail wrote: post #192

rhizome31 wrote: post #141

Because nobody has yet invented a compelling way to write JavaScript applications, so people keep trying. We're still waiting for the Ruby on Rails of frontend development. I'm not saying Ruby on Rails is the best backend framework (I don't use it anymore), but when it came around everybody understood that it was getting something right. It popularized a new model for server-side web development that all other commun…

How about Sails? It's pretty damn good for Javascript as a Rails alternative, even uses some of the same context.

...the whole Sails thing is currently a hot mess. At least one core contributor has bailed and moved on to Trails.js. Accusations of incompetence, malfeasance, character assassination, etc., abound.

As far as I know (GitHub is down, cannot confirm) Sails is still running Express 3 (the maintainers are supposedly upgrading to 5), has a variety of other major issues with respect to its ORM, Waterline, and is a bit lacking on the "contemporary best practices" front. Long story short, it's broadly (perhaps unfairly, perhaps not) considered dead or dying.

There aren't any viable Rails alternatives for Node. (Flask, Sinatra, on the other hand? — sure. You'll have no trouble finding a good micro-framework.)

ThinkJS, Adonis and Strapi are the only entries I've seen in the Rails/Laravel/Django space, but they all have problems too -- to wit, ThinkJS recommended hashing passwords with MD5 (!!!) on their front page until quite recently, Adonis is aggressively NIH, and Strapi uses Waterline, which is (by many accounts) bad at just about everything.

There's also Nodal, which I've heard good things about, but it's limited to APIs with Postgres.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821986

http://thinkjs.org http://adonisjs.com http://strapi.io http://nodaljs.com

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#242

Post by mahyarm » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

Roboprog wrote: post #202

tscs37 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to assume that A) Types are low level B) C++ and C are the only competition to JavaScript C) Not having to worry about types makes you faster or in any way better A) is simply refuted by looking at java or SQL. SQL is a very high-level language compared to other stuff, yet it's heavily typed simply to ensure that data is either valid or the query fails (SQL Injection is still valid data in this case) B) Take…

Compile time types are nice to have, if they stay out of my way (type inference, the ability to easily opt out for certain "tricky" code...) Types keep things (except for database column names or JSON import...) from blowing up the very first time you try to run it, rather than stopping the compile. That's useful, as far as it goes. (as long as it saves me more time not fixing a typo and rerunning than it does genera…

Type inference is horrible. Mostly because as soon as your project gets large, type inference eats inordinate amounts of time during compiling and indexing and developer experience degrades. Combine that with operator overloading and generics and it gets even worse. Right now I'm suffering through it with swift with a +100k LOC project. The obj-c equivalent compiles and indexes 5-10x faster.

If you can make type inference scale, then I would be all for it. If I'm restricted to a small LoC count, might as well use a dynamic language.

Static typing is a scalable tool. It lets me avoid an entire category of bugs and unit tests. It make refactors easier as I just have to change my thing and then fix all of the obvious compile errors once. It helps me define parts of API contracts in code vs documentation and unit testing. And when a project gets large, the automated nature of static typing helps a lot!

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#243

Post by LeoNatan25 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #187

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing here disproves the claim you try to disprove. "There are smart people" - that's a given, but how does that disprove that the barrier is low, and the vast majority of less-to-none experienced developers choose JS these days?

I was tackling the blanket assertion that Javascript developers are novice programmers. It's understood that there are programmers of all skill levels who use Javascript. However statements like the aforementioned are dangerous when people just assume it must be true. There are novice programmers and many of them choose Javascript is more accurate. The aforementioned assertion is used as a pejorative by programmers f…

"There are novice programmers and many of them choose Javascript is more accurate." - this is how I read the GP's comment.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#244

Post by minitech » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #237

minitech wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebAssembly is a neater target format, but we can already compile to JavaScript today.

And several projects already are compiling to it. But it is not neat, what makes those projects less reliable and featurefull. Often enough for people to say "fuck it!" and go back to JS. If WebAssembly takes too long, I can see JS compilers getting very good, but it's looming availability is discouraging that.

> Often enough for people to say "fuck it!" and go back to JS.

Because having an extra compile step or language to learn is inconvenient no matter what you target.

> If WebAssembly takes too long, I can see JS compilers getting very good, but it's looming availability is discouraging that.

I haven’t seen any of this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#245

Post by datavirtue » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

jameskegel wrote: post #69

jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a large extent this is true because the javascript community is busy with the re-invention of all of computer history, only without applying all of the lessons learned. Activity does not equate quality.

I'll admit, you got a laugh and a smirk out of me, but this still seems like an unfair statement. The JS community at large isn't reinventing the wheel, just iterating on a wheel as it moves, if that makes sense.

It's wheels within wheels. Eat a mushroom.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#246

Post by EpicEng » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

erlich wrote: post #204

nobleach wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been a programmer for the past 18 years, I can say that JavaScript definitely suffers from "rock star" syndrome. There are great people in every programming community... and JavaScript is no exception. But never have I seen a community so plagued by the conference speaker, twitter famous types. (The types that refer to people not in their perceived realm of popularity as "filthy randos") It's incredibly toxic.…

Some ppl simply are rock stars. They are better than everyone else at the whole open-source lifecycle. They know how to do the marketing, manage scope, ship features, manage issues, etc. To make a successful open-source project is not easy and is about balancing a range of factors, including balancing their work/life. Not everyone can do this, or wants to do this. I think rock stars earn their status.

Yeah, I don't know about that. In my mind, the true rockstars are the people solving hard problems, e.g., kernel contributors, safety critical code, driverless vehicles, etc. I couldn't care less that you can quickly tape together 100 libraries and 7 frameworks to get the latest rendition of pets.com off the ground.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#247

Post by scotty79 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

It's due to openness of npm ecosystem. Any other language you'd have 50 different angulars at the same time but almost noone would know about any of them because they'd be confined to the companies that spawned them.

Frameworks as a popular thing started because people (rails?) started sharing their code and no other can share code as easily as JS and npm.

Angular 2 should be called Begular because it doesn't have anything to do with Angular but inspiration. You can stay on Angular but don't be surprised that people will prefer to develop something else since Angular folk painted themselves into a corner so hard that to make framework that sucks less they need to go back to drawing board.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#248

Post by erlich » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

bloomca wrote: post #207

erlich wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ppl simply are rock stars. They are better than everyone else at the whole open-source lifecycle. They know how to do the marketing, manage scope, ship features, manage issues, etc. To make a successful open-source project is not easy and is about balancing a range of factors, including balancing their work/life. Not everyone can do this, or wants to do this. I think rock stars earn their status.

Well, the thing is that in JS community there are tons of rock starts who basically do simple stuff (which was done 100 times before them), but only after their presentations it goes crazy. People retweet them, use as a credible source, etc. Also, there are a lot of people who are very opinionated and just push it and by this become famous in JS land. Yeah, that's true, that they invest a lot of personal time in this…

> people trust them in important questions like performance

I think this is part of the tradeoff that they excel at. There is a huge difference between perfecting and optimizing vs. shipping and growing an ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#249

Post by erlich » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 7:00 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #209

erlich wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ppl simply are rock stars. They are better than everyone else at the whole open-source lifecycle. They know how to do the marketing, manage scope, ship features, manage issues, etc. To make a successful open-source project is not easy and is about balancing a range of factors, including balancing their work/life. Not everyone can do this, or wants to do this. I think rock stars earn their status.

> I think rock stars earn their status. I think that's mostly bunk. For every rockstar there's 100 equally talented individuals who will never get recognition because they were not in the right place at the right time. Rockstars are incredibly lucky.

And if Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, someone else would have.

Re: Ask HN: Why is everything in JavaScript changing so fast?

#250

Post by erlich » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 7:02 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #215

erlich wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some ppl simply are rock stars. They are better than everyone else at the whole open-source lifecycle. They know how to do the marketing, manage scope, ship features, manage issues, etc. To make a successful open-source project is not easy and is about balancing a range of factors, including balancing their work/life. Not everyone can do this, or wants to do this. I think rock stars earn their status.

As an outsider to the community, I see it as a pathology that there are people you are supposed to recognize outside of the language creator. Not that a culture is a bad thing but in a healthy technical community recognition should come from decades of hard work - not from a nice landing page and a framework of the week. IMO, social media and blogosphere driven complex work cannot be deep, just confused.

I think its democratic which is the best system we have.

Any kid with a new idea can have his ideas listened to. This means we don't get stuck.