How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

I had a dev write some "modern" Javascript in a project. We neglected to test in slightly out-of-date safari on Mac. Took forever to figure out that "let" keyword was not supported.

Obligatory links:

https://caniuse.com/let

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

It's amazing how recently some things arrive and how late competitors skip some elements.

Want a library faster than mithril, no runtime download, & handlebars syntax? Try Sveltejs.

Rollupjs also has "treeshaking", meaning your transpiled bundle only includes the functions that are referenced allowing you to organize your code into large modules or even use a monorepo.

We have recently implemented Angular4 in our project, and have started to pick it up. Recently picked up a story that was adding a simple confirmation modal to a page: "Alert" text in the top, body with some warning text, and a yes/no button.

This was my first experience with modern JavaScript frameworks and TypeScript. I wanted to do it right, so worked closely with team members who were more versed in this stuff, and followed the various recommended best practices.

By the time all was said and done the PR for this thing had 27 files in it.

For a modal.

This seems ludicrous to me. The frustration, somewhat humorous, expresses by TFA is completely understandable, though. While I came to appreciate TS, I'm still skeptical about this JS framework stuff. They seem overly complicated to me. (While I have only read casually about React, it seems similar in this regard.)

Yeah something's not right. A modal is a line of code, not 27 files. The most extensible modal could be a single file component.

Just starting fresh, what is a modal? It's a widget (we could use a div) which when activated is moved to the front of the z axis and steals focus. CSS can do that. Now all you need it do is keep attributes regarding the text of the modal and state representing whether it's activated (we can juse a regular JS object for both), and you've got a working modal.

Some of the frameworks are needlessly complex, which is frustrating, because it's hiding something very basic.