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JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

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Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#61

Post by turtlebits »

sametmax wrote: post #13

But JS dev has never been fun. Web dev is fun because the browser is a freaking awesome plateform. However, it is _despite_ of JS. There's not a single characteristic of this language that makes it better than any other mainstream high level language out there. We use it because we have no reasonable alternative on the browser. It has always been a pain to use, requiring: - avoiding part of the language that is badly…

Async is super simple in JS. Yes callback hell can be an issue, and it may be ugly, but there's many a time where I wished for it in Python and ended writing a script in NodeJS.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#62

Post by sixsence »

gtsteve wrote: post #7

I don't think there's that big a problem with how many front-end frameworks there are, and the pace of development. I think the problem is people who feel they have to use the latest and greatest feature and they have to know all the frameworks. At my company we picked a stack and stuck with it. That happened to be React and Redux. I hear Angular 2 and Vue are really great frameworks but I feel under no pressure to r…

With all due respect, React and Redux are still "in" and one of those buzz word frameworks right now. Your sentiment would mean a lot more if you were still having success with something like Angular 1.

You aren't proving you are resilient to changes by using one of the most current buzz-word filled frameworks out there for two years. The real test happens when your framework of choice truly becomes obsolete, like with what happened to Angular 1.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#63

Post by alexfl »

cc81 wrote: post #18

React + (early flux and later mobx) made web development fun again for me. I was burned out at the end of the jquery era with all the different homemade structures and the limitations of browsers. Then I came back to React and babel/gulp (later webpack). Suddently there was structure in the front end that was easy to get into a project and contribute. Building components just felt right. Also js was almost a modern l…

I feel the same way... web development was hard, until I've learned about es6/babel, webpack, redux and react (I'm using morphdom as react replacement, but idea is the same). Now web dev is easy and fun. I have state, components, events and routes. That's it. Update the state and stay calm.

The idea to concisely manage the state together with dom diffing, are my personal favorite game changers.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#64

Post by moron4hire »

> After I was done with the front-end of a project, I hated that I had to do the back-end. I also was not good at it.

After many, many years of tutoring students in a variety of subjects, there is definitely a connection between the last sentence and the first. People who work hard to get good at a particular subject often find themselves enjoying it a lot more. But humans don't care much for delayed gratification. If we have work that we could be doing that we enjoy more than some other work, than the hated work gets put off. Often indefinitely, as no skill in it ever gets developed, the more it is put off.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#65

Post by saosebastiao »

amelius wrote: post #31
StavrosK wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frameworks don't rust. Ah, the optimism of youth. Frameworks don't rust if you don't mind sticking with the security bugs of 10-year-old kernels. If you need to upgrade your OS, you need to upgrade your programming languages, which means you need to upgrade your frameworks. Everything rusts pretty quickly. Maybe you don't need the new features, but you definitely need the new bugfixes.

The problem is that everybody publishes bugfixes alongside new features. This practice should be stopped, because it leads to dependency hell.

The problem with publishing bugfixes separate from new features is that you end up with an ever expanding tree to maintain, and you eventually run into problems where bugs become intertwined with features and the right thing to do is extremely hard.

It's a little much to ask from an unpaid open source maintainer, and if you really want it that bad you should be willing to pay for it. Companies like Red Hat have made a living off of people willing to make that tradeoff.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#66

Post by Spivak »

eropple wrote: post #36
amelius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that everybody publishes bugfixes alongside new features. This practice should be stopped, because it leads to dependency hell.

Open-source maintainers should totally leverage this opportunity to make their projects sustainable. Sell your backports. Enterprises want them.

I work at one such large org. We would pay good money for a 5 year support contract for a fixed version of a framework getting backported security (and maybe a few feature) updates.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#67

Post by davedx »

lanna wrote: post #17
gtsteve wrote: post #7

I don't think there's that big a problem with how many front-end frameworks there are, and the pace of development. I think the problem is people who feel they have to use the latest and greatest feature and they have to know all the frameworks. At my company we picked a stack and stuck with it. That happened to be React and Redux. I hear Angular 2 and Vue are really great frameworks but I feel under no pressure to r…

> I think the problem is people who feel they have to use the latest and greatest feature and they have to know all the frameworks. The problem is the marketplace and the companies that will demand the skills when one is job searching.

This works both ways.

When we evaluated what tech to migrate to from Angular 1.4, we looked at React and Angular 2. We were also hiring, and the overwhelming majority of devs we spoke to had experience or wanted to work with React.

The marketplace is directed by both buyers and sellers.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#68

Post by buchanaf »

madamelic wrote: post #41

It sounds like he doesn't dislike JS, he dislikes what web development has become. I dislike build tools and all the little doo-dads that we have to have now. Like, sometimes I just want to write some CSS and launch it with `npm start`

Well create an index.html, inline a style tag in said file, write some CSS, npm init, npm install http-server -g, update package.json to with this script "start": "http-server", and profit.

Fear not, we have the technology.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#69

Post by Spivak »

tobltobs wrote: post #59
blktiger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you should choose a frontend framework with a LTS (long-term support) program. (For example, Angular 4 or Ember.) You don't have to upgrade to the latest version of the framework, just the latest LTS version which will have all the relevant bug/security fixes. Only when the framework starts to drop support for the LTS version do you have to deal with upgrading and learning whatever new features they have…

Maybe it is worth to add that a LTS release in JS land isn't what non JS developers would expect. LTS releases with support for 6 months? Seriously?

For comparison Red Hat supports their servers for a minimum of 10 years and you can buy extended support after that.

Re: JavaScript development is not fun for me anymore

#70

Post by Klathmon »

rhapsodic wrote: post #52
Klathmon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this kind of thinking sounds so strange. A framework is (like it's namesake) a frame that you can build around, it's a tool that enforces restrictions on you by design. Obviously there is some overhead to learning that framework, but the idea is that the framework is built by someone who spends their day-job building the framework. They are going to do a better job of designing a framework than you will in most…

> They are going to do a better job of designing a framework than you will in most cases. My own framework will do exactly what I need. No more, and no less. It will only solve problems that I actually have, not ones that I don't. My framework will suit my needs better than theirs will, each and every single time. >If the answer is that you only want a working product, time spent on building your own framework is tim…

If time isn't the main factor, then by all means you have the right idea! But I've never really been in a situation where I can afford the time and manpower to do everything myself, so my view is skewed by that.

And I do apologise for going off on the tangent there about not telling people to do X or Y. I got a little wrapped up in it and that comment was less targeted at you and more at other people I see advocating for it.

Also, I wouldn't say I perceive a great deal of value in these frameworks, just that I use them like tools where they make sense. Across our codebase we have 2 react applications (one with webpack, one with just script tags), one node.js application without any real framework, and one jquery+vanilla-js codebase. We use the frameworks where they make sense, and don't where they don't. And while i'm absolutely certain that a purpose-built framework would serve us better in many areas than something like react will, I don't have confidence in my skills to create something that will stand the test of time. I know what I don't know, and I'm pretty sure that I made the right choice externalizing that work on to someone who has a team of people working just on that aspect.

I try to spend my time where it's best used, and in the vast majority of cases I've found that it's best spent working directly on my problem domain, and not on aspects like state management, rendering performance, cross-platform compatibility issues, and more where it's not needed.

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