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Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

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Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#121

Post by treehau5 »

nightski wrote: post #64
ng12 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think you get to a standard library? How do you package the best tools when you don't know what the best tools are?

How long do you think something like that should take? It's already been 25 years... I think it says something about the browser ecosystem and the language itself. The entire WPF ecosystem for example was developed and refined in a fraction of this period. Heck even .NET itself is only 14 years old.

Javascript development as you see it today started budding with Mootools, Prototype, jQuery, YUI, etc. Wasn't until the early 2000s that the concept of unobtrusive javascript was even a thing. Then bundling assets came, asset pipeline concept from the rails world got popular in javascript land, then you had all the grunt, gulps, webpacks come into the picture -- Point being .NET came out in what, 01? So Javascript has a few more years, I think we will be in a good place in a couple of years. Besides that point, how much work behind the scenes before .NET was even ever released to us was going on? How many man hours of development was put before that first public release? My guess is a lot more than we think.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#122

Post by cgag »

morgante wrote: post #47
nulagrithom wrote: post #46

I feel like the people complaining about how many libraries there are in this stack don't know what these tools do. Most are small tools that do one thing very well. Yarn installs packages, much like Gem, NuGet, whatever. Pretty standard. React is a frontend framework. Not surprising that you'd use one. I suppose you could opt to write a giant pile of vanilla JavaScript instead (I'm assuming you're not using this kit…

I like it too. People vastly over-estimate the complexity of these tools. As a freelancer, I start a new project every other week or so. It's really not hard to get up and running with these tools. They're also incrementally adoptable: since most of them are loosely coupled, you can get started with a new one without rewriting your whole stack (for example, I first used React with Gulp+Browserify, not I've switched t…

Coming back to my project from 6 months ago and upgrading dependencies and finding out nothing my tooling is obsolete os awful.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#123

Post by meddlepal »

djfm wrote: post #84
nulagrithom wrote: post #46

I feel like the people complaining about how many libraries there are in this stack don't know what these tools do. Most are small tools that do one thing very well. Yarn installs packages, much like Gem, NuGet, whatever. Pretty standard. React is a frontend framework. Not surprising that you'd use one. I suppose you could opt to write a giant pile of vanilla JavaScript instead (I'm assuming you're not using this kit…

I love this ecosystem. It's living, it's thriving. I love the fact that tons of great engineers are coming up with new ideas everyday to make my life as a developer easier. I love hearing a developer at a daily stand-up meeting saying he's been up all night trying out a new shiny thing and concluding by saying it also solves a big issue we had in our product and here's the pull request (timestamp 4am). The hype is he…

What exactly makes them "great engineers" other than they are visible? Great engineers are folks like Woz, Cutler, and Linus.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#124

Post by Can_Not »

setr wrote: post #104
Can_Not wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the fact that the entire Javascript community seems to suffer from ADHD and is constantly inventing a new tool that is marginally better than the last. If you assume that the entire Javascript community was one person or one coherent group, then yes. But it is not like that at all. You state this as if a single organization made grunt, then made gulp, then made webpack. This is nearly as absurd as saying "The…

Probably a better term than inventing is "standardizing". The community as a single general entity, is constantly changing what they accept is the "standard stack". I don't get to have my safe goto stack of LAMP for twenty years, and then swap out alternatives after research and my needs; the goto stack is radically different every year. And ofc there's a big push for frameworks and languages over libraries, and libr…

> The community as a single general entity, is constantly changing what they accept is the "standard stack".

You're operating on a false premise, the community is not a single entity. You don't oversimplify Javascript and pick the "standard stack", you have to do some basic research first. Maybe you need jQuery, maybe you need React. It would be pretty stupid to assume that all web development problems are nails then also assume the latest popular bleeding edge tool is a hammer.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#125

Post by Touche »

Wintamute wrote: post #17
anon1253 wrote: post #3

I appreciate the effort, certainly do. But, and this a big but: the amount of tooling, libraries, complexity and systems needed for a "modern" web app is almost comical at this point.

The create-react-app tool from Facebook lets you create a "modern" (air quotes yours) web app with one development dependency and zero configuration. https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/07/22/create-apps... It's surprisingly full featured. Testing, ES6, CSS, live reload dev server, building for production ... everything you need for the majority of React based web app builds. Literally up and running in minute…

There's nothing modern about a website that does nothing without JavaScript

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#126

Post by Touche »

beejiu wrote: post #48
giancarlostoro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been a front-end guy, and now the barrier grows with all these frameworks to make amazing applications still holding me back. Plus the fact that if I have NoScript installed, all my work is now pointless. I hate going to websites that literally don't work @ all if I have no JavaScript enabled, with the exception of HN and those rare sites that have minimal JavaScript in use.

> I hate going to websites that literally don't work @ all if I have no JavaScript enabled It is no surprise that businesses don't want to spend an extra 20% development time supporting 0.5% of web users. At some point, it becomes a problem for the user - you cannot support everyone.

Progressive enhancement isn't about people with JS turned off. It's about resiliency to failures. That might be network congestion, it might be a mistake in your code, or something else.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#127

Post by skizm »

stevoski wrote: post #61

From section 1 of the tutorial: > Since it came out in October 2016, [Yarn] received a very quick adoption and is becoming the new package manager of choice of the JavaScript community. We are going to use Yarn in this tutorial. It's October 2016 as I write. Tell me this tutorial is satire. Please.

I think it is the worst/best kind of satire: The kind that is completely indistinguishable from how large groups of people actually operate.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#128

Post by ythl »

20years wrote: post #42
dglass wrote: post #20

This is exactly why I don't do frontend development anymore. The number of tools needed to get an app up and running is ridiculous. Add in cross browser compatibility and it's all just one big headache.

You don't need all of these tools to get an app up and running even though reading the tech blogs may make it seem like you do. Frontend dev isn't really that difficult if you focus only on what is really needed for your app at hand.

It's just tiring though. I want to make a simple website. But in order to do it "right" or "optimally" or whatever, I need to flush all the old stuff I know down the toilet (jQuery, etc.) and learn a mountain of new stuff.

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#129

Post by zemo »

based on the title, I thought it was going to talk about how to build a modern front end from scratch. That is, "modern" meaning that it meets the user's expectations, fits the realities of how they are browsing, and makes use of the features of current browsers (web sockets, local storage, etc); "from scratch" meaning using only your own code written in vanilla javascript. I thought this was going to be about the fact that you can do compelling work on the front-end without needing to get bogged down in a tangled web of dependencies. I struggle to see how this qualifies as "minimalist".

Re: Step-by-step tutorial to build a modern JavaScript stack from scratch

#130

Post by vcarl »

neandrake wrote: post #119
Klathmon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's what leads to monumentally difficult to use tools. Instead of choosing between gulp or grunt, you'd need to choose which config flags you want for this hypothetical "gunt". So instead of having simple to use tools (but a bunch of them), you have a few tools which take weeks of learning before you can even scratch the surface on them. And it leads to tools that have settings that nobody knows about beca…

Even if that were the case I would think learning powerful tools over the span of a few weeks would be worth the effort if you had the reliability that these tools would exist for years to come. It seems like the rapid change and throw-away-ability of the tool ecosystem reflects the final product as well -- and maybe that's the large difference which is emergent from web technology? What is the average lifespan of a…

I don't think the past few years will be representative of web development in the future. The community has had a lot of churn because basic questions (How do I ensure my code has what it needs to run? How do I include dependencies? How do I efficiently deliver my code?) weren't answered, but now those questions have robust, widely used solutions, we don't have everyone figuring that out for themselves (and writing throwaway tools).

I think most of the current crop of tools that are in vogue will stick around for a while. There have been a few challengers to Webpack offering feature improvements (Rollup, Broccoli), but the ideas they introduced were added to Webpack, rather than replacing it.

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