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

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#301

Post by detaro » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #292

kasey_junk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have tried it a couple of times (I do have a couple of posts on my github pages). I just don't have the time / motivation combination to do it on a regular basis. I find it quite time consuming writing in a way that makes it clear to others what I am doing. I'll come over to your computer and explain the same concepts in ten minutes that would take me an hour or two to write up and format in a manner that I would w…

And because you don't have time / motivation everyone that has is a self marketer?

I agree it's silly to expect every developer to have a blog. I strongly disagree with the only motivation for it being self marketing, or it being a somehow unreasonable question if you have one.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#302

Post by collyw » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #297

collyw wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are being very rude with that statement. If you want to write a blog by all means do so. I have written a handful of blog posts but I don't have the time / motivation to do that in my spare time on a regular basis. I think its silly to assume that all software engineers want to and are good at writing blog posts. Could you explain what is rude about that? > you owe to the community a blog or something similar D…

I'm not going to answer the second part, but for the rudeness, you are being rude because you reduce blogging about one's experiences w/ programming and related stuff to self marketing.

You did that. I didn't specify any type of blog. Blogs are more often than not about self marketing.

Any why don't you want to answer the second part?

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#303

Post by zoul » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #292

kasey_junk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have tried it a couple of times (I do have a couple of posts on my github pages). I just don't have the time / motivation combination to do it on a regular basis. I find it quite time consuming writing in a way that makes it clear to others what I am doing. I'll come over to your computer and explain the same concepts in ten minutes that would take me an hour or two to write up and format in a manner that I would w…

I'll come over to your computer and explain the same concepts in ten minutes that would take me an hour or two to write up and format in a manner that I would want to display publicly.

That’s right, but multiplied by the number of people who read it…?

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#304

Post by eropple » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

digitalzombie wrote: post #163

eropple wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like React isn't even an application framework, though, it's a view library of compositional functions feeding into a tree diff. How does functional, side-effect-free code increase complexity ? What makes your side-effecting code more testable and verifiable than unambiguous in/out functional transforms?

Personally for me it's a trade off and it does increase complexity. With jQuery and such you just include a script and back then there were no package management system, glup/grunt, webpack, yeoman/brunch, etc.. Also the client side rendering make SEO hard. jQuery just get stuff done but at the same time the organization of your code is up to you and you do sacrifice some reusability but in general the trade off is c…

So I'm gonna be honest: I don't have much time or patience for "but webpack is complex" complaints. Webpack is complex, sure. It has many moving parts. It is not complicated, and that means its complexity is more or less "remember a few nouns". Each of the parts those nouns encapsulate is simple and obvious with straightforward inputs and outputs. The interactions may not always be so straightforward--but, in practice, they are. I am comfortable asserting that you shouldn't be surprised by anything webpack or gulp or whatever does. If you are, you haven't internalized what you're working on to a sufficient degree. Because it is just. not. that. big. a. deal.

"Just get things done" when the way you're doing so is less clear, less testable, and less reliable is not, to me, the hallmark of a developer I would trust with anything I cared about.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#305

Post by arunix » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

brylie wrote: post #298

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.…

Are there plans to publish Anvil as open source?

And are there any open source projects similar to Anvil?

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#306

Post by pavlov » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

Retra wrote: post #246

pavlov wrote: post #39

This part puzzles me: > "Put yourself in the shoes of a junior-to-mid-level JavaScript developer, writing a new application for the first time. > "It starts innocently enough. You have a completely clean slate and want to keep things simple. You are a devout Agilist and YAGNI is your watchword. So you begin with a ‘simple, barbones framework’. That sounds good, doesn’t it? (Even if it did not, that’s often the only c…

>How did it happen that junior JavaScript developers feel so insecure about using the standard stuff? Because job postings don't say "Wanted: Junior developer with standard stuff JavaScript experience."

Someone writing their first app shouldn’t be worrying about that.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#307

Post by hajile » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #82

At some point, when modules get "micro" enough, the effort of managing them and learning their usage outweighs the effort of implementing the thing yourself. Most JavaScript projects seem to walk that line quite closely. I'm a React developer at work, but I recently gave Vue a try at home. This is one of the things that most stood out to me about it. React makes a selling point out of the fact that it's "just renderi…

My small goto has been preact with director plus a small custom redux implementation (which contains thunk, action arrays, event emitter, etc). At less than 5KB zipped, it's amazing how well it performs.

If absolutely simple is the goal, maybe hyperapp?

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#308

Post by RodericDay » Thu, May 31, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #162

RodericDay wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mithril is my favorite by far. It's not even close. It's depressing how little-known it remains.

@RodericDay, I just vouched this comment which was [dead]. You've been shadowbanned since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14982937 (9 months ago) you may want to appeal that decision or create a new account.

Yeah I'm aware. Some guy insulted Varoufakis and I insulted him in turn and dang banned me.

I'd appeal but honestly this place is hostile to any kind of anti-status quo sentiment from the left so I'd just get banned again. This way I just post rarely.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#309

Post by sanderjd » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #196

sanderjd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I couldn't get through it! It seemed like its own kind of hype-y proselytizing and I didn't find its examples spoke to the kind of issues I actually have. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I don't know, I had been hearing for years that it's so great and I was really excited to start reading it, and it just didn't speak to me at all. Anyway, YMMV I guess!

It's not a religious text or anything (I suspect that the proselytising tone comes from the fact that at the time it was written, it's recommendations were still a bit controversial, especially in the kind of organisations likely to have these kinds of codebases). If it's not useful to you, then that's that. The point is, other books written ten years ago by people with deep expertise (rather than a hypey blog post b…

This is a different topic than my comment that you replied to but the "ten years ago" thing stuck out to me: I think books (and blog posts!) written very recently by people with deep expertise are likely useful as well. Figuring out which ones those are is the tough part.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#310

Post by boomlinde » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

ayrx wrote: post #286

boomlinde wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they have a genuine interest in the problem they're addressing, and in solving it. I work on some open source projects that gain little attention from others but have great utility to me, personally.

It's a nice sentiment but that's how you end up with abandoned, low quality projects that no one uses. Or even worse - abandoned, low quality projects that half the Internet relies on.

> It's a nice sentiment but that's how you end up with abandoned, low quality projects that no one uses.

How is it a bad thing that a piece of software that no one uses is abandoned by its developers? Or should i put it like this: how is it bad that no one uses a piece of software that has been abandoned by its developers? Whichever way you prefer to put it.

> Or even worse - abandoned, low quality projects that half the Internet relies on.

It's not my responsibility to make sure that my software is used for things that it is useful for. In fact, I typically use a license where I deny responsibility for fitness for a particular purpose, like MIT or GPL, exactly because it isn't and shouldn't be my problem.

I think this should be accounted for when deciding whether to use open source software in your project. Of course, with Javascript projects I often end up looking at shitty dependencies because some popular library depends on some slightly less popular library which depends on a brain fart someone put on github 10 years ago and never touched since despite stale, open issues. This is a problem with the community's attitude towards dependencies, not with what software I make available for others to use.

Besides, a low quality project that half of the internet relies on doesn't really need any additional promotion or advertisement, does it?