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Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

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Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#321

Post by gkya »

jhall1468 wrote: post #317
gkya wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody owes you anything. He gets to have whatever perspective he wants and it's not rude because you disagree with it. You need to take a step back and pretend for a moment that your perspective isn't the only one.

Nobody owes me anything but eaach and every on of us owe something to the FOSS community.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#322

Post by gkya »

collyw wrote: post #302
gkya wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Because I think the answer is obvious. BTW I did not see the Stack Owerflow part, that is the exact kind of compensation for tge greater community I was talking about. Thank you for that.

For the other paragraph, well, that's how I read you comment in its context, and I maintain my interpretation. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#323

Post by ryandrake »

detaro wrote: post #301
collyw wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree there are talkers and there are do-ers, and very few who are good at both. They do exist but they are rare. This is true for many professions, not just programmers.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#324

Post by School-Cotton »

perlgeek wrote: post #6

> 2.5 years for the youngest isn’t that old in the scheme of things - it’s less than half the support lifespan of your typical desktop OS, for example - but it’s still a ways off our caricature. Let's compare it with some server-side technologies: Python/Django: 2005 Python/Flask: 2010 Nginx: 2004 Perl/Catalyst: 2006 Maybe I'm biased towards older software, but the difference to the popular frontend stuff is striking…

PHP: 1995.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#325

Post by hajile »

gkya wrote: post #289
darepublic wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with large codebase written in jQuery here are some of my thoughts, There were a ton of times where the complexity of the situation made it so hard to know how to debug something. I mean you had to keep track in your head in a given piece of code what the UI state was, what classes or event handlers were toggled on or off, what the value of various variables were etc. In order to keep my sanity I would…

That sounds like an issue caused by an indecent debugger to me. I havent had to debug JS, but indeed the browser debuggers can use some sophistication and customisability, IMHO.

JS debuggers are generally very good. The level of interactiveness of JS also puts them ahead of most non-lisp languages.

Debugging async code isn't like debugging other code. Once you cross that async barrier, all stack traces disappear (I understand Google's doing some work on making that better).

In this particular case, debugging is harder because the UI is also holding all the data, so in order to reset to known good data, you have to reset the page itself. One of the biggest benefits to moving to React (or similar) is that you start keeping all that data in a central place.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#326

Post by tiberius1900 »

tw1010 wrote: post #2

"Unstable", "Issue", "Problem". The opposite of the front-end world is not something to desire. Change means people are fixing problems and giving away their solutions for free. To desire less change means wishing fewer people gave away their work.

Change is not necessary a good thing. Bad change is worse then no change at all. However, when it comes to programming frameworks, rapid, unstable, change is generally not very desirable. Take a look at the most popular open-source OS/kernel in the world: Linux.

It's a Unix-clone using a monolithic kernel made in a time when Lisp machines existed and microkernels were all the rage. It used ANSI C which, to be fair, was new at the time, but stuck with it, in the face of C99 and C++.

And, as a windowing system, it still uses X11, a system designed in the mid '80s. There has been a very slow migration towards Wayland (which is now already 10 years old).

As it's scripting language it uses bash (1989), which inherits a lot of it's characteristics from the Bourne shell (1977).

Yes, in the case of Linux may be a little bit biased as OS development back than was still more mature than front-end is now, but still, the principle still holds: "slow and steady wins the race".

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#327

Post by scruple »

christophilus wrote: post #249
tracker1 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is why, in the end, more and more... I do things "the hard way". If I'm using a dynamic language WTF do I need an ORM for, if I understand enough to write an SQL command, and use a library for that DB that does parameterized queries? On the front end, I tend to lean towards abstractions that work together... I really like React and the material-ui library's switch to JSS. It's relatively clean, and useful…

Have you ever looked into Clojure/ClojureScript? The Clojure ecosystem seems to favor your approach. They embrace the dynamic nature of this kind of programming, are data-oriented, shun ORMs, and generally have solid principles (in my opinion). I found it was well worth working through the (somewhat steep) onboarding curve.

> The Clojure ecosystem seems to favor your approach. They embrace the dynamic nature of this kind of programming, are data-oriented, shun ORMs, and generally have solid principles (in my opinion).

I've recently started my Clojure journey (< 1 month in!), after stumbling across aphyr's very interesting work, and it is being driven entirely by this line of thought. It's taken me a long time, at least a decade, of moving deeper and deeper in to web development to start to really appreciate this perspective but it _feels_ like The Right Way at this point in my career. I'm hoping to, at the very least, be able to take those lessons from Clojure and apply them to the areas of my professional life.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#328

Post by emodendroket »

jhall1468 wrote: post #314
emodendroket wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like microlibraries very much either, but that's a different question. A monolithic frontend framework can make your life easier.

Monolithic frameworks can also corner you into edge cases where you end up having to write shitty work arounds because their "opinionated" framework didn't have an opinion based in reality.

Yes, and a car can go off the road and kill you. Nevertheless I don't choose to walk everywhere I go.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#329

Post by jhall1468 »

gkya wrote: post #321
jhall1468 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody owes you anything. He gets to have whatever perspective he wants and it's not rude because you disagree with it. You need to take a step back and pretend for a moment that your perspective isn't the only one.

Nobody owes me anything but eaach and every on of us owe something to the FOSS community.

No, we don't. The FOSS community operates on the idea that people that want to contribute to it (financially, programming, etc) can do so. Nothing about open source obligates that behavior, outside of certain licenses. Nobody "owes" FOSS anything either, that's up to them.

Re: Why Is Front-End Development So Unstable?

#330

Post by jhall1468 »

emodendroket wrote: post #328
jhall1468 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monolithic frameworks can also corner you into edge cases where you end up having to write shitty work arounds because their "opinionated" framework didn't have an opinion based in reality.

Yes, and a car can go off the road and kill you. Nevertheless I don't choose to walk everywhere I go.

That was my point, that nothing solves every problem. Monolithic frameworks aren't inherently better than micro libraries, they are just different paths to achieving the same goal. I'm still going to choose micro libraries, because flexibility is more valuable to me than batteries included, which is just as good an argument as batteries included is better than flexibility.
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