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How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

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Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#111

Post by seanwilson »

oelmekki wrote: post #69
revscat wrote: post #17

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, a…

I've been doing heavy javascript interfacing since the end of the 2000' (it was still a rare skill back then, and made me good freelance money), and I totally understand how you feel. I experienced the same thing when learning angular, flux and redux. It all screamed "overengineering" to me. But then I realized why it was that way, and why it had to be : you now have teams of like 50 js developers working on the same…

How could the 27 file commit example comment not be a clear case of overengineering though? I frequently add similar functionality to Vue and Angular 1 projects in a way close to how you describe and it's simple. Even if the change involved adding a modal library (you should not be wasting time implementing that yourself) to your project first, it shouldn't be more than about 10 lines.

Personally, I'd find it very hard to be motivated to work on a project like that. It sucks all the fun out of coding when things that should be simple aren't simple, it's draining for the whole team and it creates a lot of friction in adding new features.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#112

Post by seanwilson »

cknoxrun wrote: post #105
seanwilson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > By the time all was said and done the PR for this thing had 27 files in it. Can you not just use a library for this and do it in a few lines...? I found Angular 2 verbose but I don't see how the above is common. I just did something similar in Vue today and i…

Or, perhaps instead of a library, use the built in browser confirmation dialog?

That's not an option for anything but maybe enterprise apps because the dialog styling is just too ugly usually.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#114

Post by GrumpyNl »

alayek wrote: post #78

A refreshing read. Was expecting a satirical negative take on the complexity. However, this only covers a small part of front-end development with VDOM based approach, and a few ES6 constructs (destructuring, arrow functions, let-const). The author misses out on mobile development, Node JS and NPM modules, server side, and Electron-based desktop apps. It's a good thing to take the positive approach, and get introduce…

You dont need node.js or react for mobile developement, its not a must. I build fully responsive with html5, jQuery and a PhP api

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#115

Post by austinhyde »

expertentipp wrote: post #94
vturner wrote: post #16

"I have to confess, the build setup is the most intimidating part of modern web development for me." Here here.

It cannot be simple - it's there to intimidate the new employees/team members. The setup is never wrong, but "the way we do it here" - a particular initiation ceremony. Those indocile will be reported to line manager as bad team members who undermine the team spirit. Usually a junior QA person and a scrum master are the gatekeepers of the setup, green build, and the history of git commit messages.

In all seriousness, if this is what you encounter at your workplace, you need to get out and work somewhere else; this is an extremely toxic environment.

Even if the build setup is the most complex thing on the face of the earth, if you or team members get reported for undermining the team because you don't understand it, then those are not the team members or managers you want to work with or for.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#116

Post by wruza »

oelmekki wrote: post #63
edem wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A language without a proper stdlib and with programmers who have no idea what the O notation is about has no place in any serious programmer's "to learn" list.

Aka "javascript is not a real language", I thought we were done with that since almost a decade :) Maybe you should consider that just because a language doesn't work like what you're used to, it doesn't mean it's a bad language. Because saying nowadays that javascript is not worth learning sounds pretty absurd. Sure, you can live without it. But that's probably the most useful language to know as a "second language"…

Abstracting from js, rates and popularity of the only available solution are not an argument. It is like asking 'but who else?' in a dictatorship country. Pretty absurd, right. You folks are so blind that don't even understand how this straightforward non-blocking code works in decent languages:

  sql = client.read()
  res = remote_db.query(sql)
  client.write(res),
still writing tons of boilerplates and spaghetti instead. We drown in happy ignorants, and they can't stop doing this to us, because they're happy with penetration rates, not technologies.

The fact that the big web scripting monopoly influences other scripting and embedding markets is self-explanatory.

As for 'second' language, I'm pretty sure I'm not happy to do main work with a 'second' language, because it is second only after top 3-5 that I use on daily basis.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#117

Post by mod »

seanwilson wrote: post #110
aphextron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's really trendy to complain about JavaScript changing too fast right now but the last few years have brought some great changes to JavaScript. I'd say they've made JS development bearable , but great is really stretching it. We still don't have a type system, static analysis, multi-threading, first-class IDE support, or any of a myriad of other features that are standard in any modern programming language in 2017…

Do you actually code in JavaScript? TypeScript addresses many of these issues and even statically checks for null variable usage which puts it ahead of some mainstream type systems in my opinion. I don't hear people making fun of Python for example and that has a huge following.

I mean, I do occasionally, but I think one big difference is that nobody is forced to use python. If they want a feature a normal language doesn't have, they can easily choose another.

That's simply not true for JS.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#118

Post by trynewideas »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12
cabaalis wrote: post #11

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.

You're probably aware of this but that's why you put everything through Babel or Typescript to convert it. That setup is easy enough.

Assuming they read the post, they're not only aware of it but also read the post's author warning their fictional subject about the performance problems of using transpilers in production, and shrugging it off for the example because it's just a learning exercise and "easy to change later".

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2017

#119

Post by mod »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #8
lghh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be pedantic, but if you have a 5k line JS app that "wasn't written by programmers" who was it written by? If they wrote and shipped a 5k line JS app, in my eyes they are programmers - but possibly not very good ones.

Well, they weren't professional programmers (not their main job, done out of necessity) and they weren't trained. As I understand it they were actually learning it all on the go (like a lot of new programmers). It wouldn't be shocking if a lot of JS devs were in a similar boat, which explains the community a little bit. So yeah, they're programmers now, but they didn't start out that way and the app showed it. That's…

So experienced devs are afraid of learning something that took non-programmers a week to get up to speed and develop a well-architechted app with reusable components etc?

I don't buy that, not for a second.

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