Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#231

Post by matte_black » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #157

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding the growing celebrity culture of programming to be troubling. I find that programming is becoming less and less about code or architecture and more about evangelism and marketing, but I'm not sure what changed in the incentive structure for this to happen, and I would like to find out. Aside: This has made me reconsider being a career programmer.

Is this actually a new phenomena? I remember when I started programming c. 2000, the big-name programming gurus were folks like Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, Uncle Bob, Ron Jeffries, Dave Thomas, Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, Martin Fowler, et al. While some of them mostly knew their stuff, some were outright hacks (Peter Norvig's vs. Ron Jeffries' attempts to create a sudoku solver is one of my favorite examples [1]). Mo…

This is true for anything.

People that are actually doing stuff have no time to talk about it, and people that are talking about it are wasting time by not doing it.

So beware of gurus. No one gets that popular without spending a large proportion of their time promoting. In the decade I’ve been programming I’ve never had time to write even one damn article.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#232

Post by josephcooney » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:22 PM UTC

dnomad wrote: post #136

0xcolton wrote: post #116

Having worked as a frontend dev for a while, my observation is this - because the UI is closer to the user, and closer to the product side (for consumer-facing apps), it has faster iteration cycles, doubling or tripling the rate of technology decisions that are made. You'd never rewrite an API twice in a year, but maybe you'd rebuild your site or interface that often, if you're responding to users. With increased dem…

Yeah, there's a perfect storm that happens on the frontend. (1) Users are more empowered and expected to continually change requirements all the time. (2) The underlying technology is broken. Specifically, there is no component model that makes it easy to compose existing components. Every frontend app reinvents not just the wheel but the tools to cut the stone. (3) There is no UI component model provided by the brow…

I agree. Throw into the mix non functional aesthetic changes. Even if the actual requirements/functionality didn't change new design trends would mean you'd be at minimum re-skinning/themeing your site/web app every 18 months or so just so it doesn't look "dated".

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#233

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:24 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #24

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really shouldn't. Modern browsers have lots of the selector magic built-in, and frameworks that are very, very small can handle the rest without the spaghetti.

What if I tell you, you can write spaghetti code in vanilla javascript, small framework or big framework. You can also write decent code using jQuery.

jQuery alone isn't enough because it solves a completely different problem. It doesn't have a built in templating system which means you need a seperate plugin at which point it makes more sense to use Vue or React instead.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#234

Post by NullPrefix » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:25 PM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #131

Sorry but I find font-end development pretty stable. Having to learn a new library every 3-4 years (because of a new job, generally) is it really a big deal? In my career I also had to learn Java, PHP, C#, Node.js, bash, batch, Python… Build apps with Spring, CakePHP, Symfony 1 & 2, ASP.NET MVC 3 & 4… Query database with Hibernate, Entity Framework, Linq SQL… Handle dependencies with Maven, Nugget… Store data in Post…

>Store data in Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server

>British English, American English, Australian English

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#235

Post by winkeltripel » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:30 PM UTC

meredydd wrote: post #209

bjterry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great comment and an amazing insight. What's particularly interesting is that people have attempted to collapse (almost?) every stage of that abstraction hierarchy individually, but none of them have been so successful as to take over the world. If you were writing a desktop application, you would still have at least three of the layers (serialized data on disk, in-memory data, and the rendering of the obje…

Thanks! And funny you should mention that. We're challenging every layer of that heirarchy simultaneously, by building a development environment for the web and making it as integrated as Delphi or VB were on the desktop: https://anvil.works

How does one build/distribute modules for it? Do you have a package manager?

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#236

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:39 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#237

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #201

zoul wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a software engineer that loves to help others. Nothing to do with self-marketing, at least not intentionally, but a welcomed skill in the team. So the question makes sense to me.

I like helping others as well. I don't need to fart about writing blogs to do it.

I have a blog no one knows about. If I’m trying to teach a concept or find something interesting I’ll write it up.

The writing process itself acts as a check if I understand something. Then when people have similar questions/problems in the future I can just link.

The personal value of the blog makes it worth trying at least.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#238

Post by overcast » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:48 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #71

overcast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn dude, why so negative? Reading through your comment history, it's apparent. Life is too short to be miserable on the internet.

Well, I can say that I am just coming out of few years long miserable period of my life that came after I was kicked out of Canada thanks to "LMIA disaster" after spending 6 years of my life securing my future in the country. Right now, I am easily passing under the points system, but nah, after such shameless bait and switch with immigration policy, there is no way I am going back. Good things, I am out of webdev as…

I'm sorry you've had some unexpected life issues, and it's great to hear you're turning things around. But lighten up. You'll be happier as a result.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#239

Post by jrs95 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:48 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #83

underwater wrote: post #42

Calling out Vue.js as a possible solution is hilarious. Selling a trending technology as a silver bullet is exactly the problem he complains about in the article. Comparing the development methodology of Facebook - the company behind React - and this mindset is illuminating. Facebook famously rewrote PHP and added extensions like XHP rather than start their codebase from scratch. React follows a similar philosphy. It…

In my experience, Vue is much easier to integrate gradually than React. You can't knock it just because it's relatively "trendy". Do your research.

It's also much easier to adopt if you have a lot of people who aren't familiar with React or even SPAs in general. Templates feel more familiar to them than JSX. And if you're building something complex enough to need it, Vuex is a hell of a lot simpler to learn than Redux. In general, you don't have to know anything about functional programming to use Vue and it's core libraries, and that can be pretty nice if your team isn't familiar with it.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#240

Post by gutnor » Thu, May 31, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

meredydd wrote: post #56

Web frameworks are churn-y because they are incredibly leaky abstractions covering really awkward impedance mismatches. This means that they are never quite satisfactory - and that just to use one, you need to be capable of building a new one yourself. Think of a typical web app. Your data exists: 1. As rows in a database, accessed via SQL 2. As model objects on the server, accessed via method calls and attributes 3.…

You miss the last layer: user and browser.

Even with all the improvement is web technologies in recent past, the browser is still not close to native widget.

And finally the users themselves. No matter how neat you managed to be in the underlying layers, the UI is messy. It can change fast, meaning either massive cost rebuilding an entire application, or breaking those neat layer.

Users also wants everything connected to everything. It does not matter if those connections are explicitely done via ugly spagetthi code or implicitely through clever abstractions, they effectively exist and that's how the requirements, user experience feedback, bugs and testing will be based on.