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Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

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Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#91

Post by gfs78 »

Things are not changing that much faster. What changed was the business model of software companies.

In a distant world the tools took years of closed work to get to version 1 and version 2/3/4 each took a couple of years too. And in most cases what you got was the whole package (Visual C++ with the C++ compiler, the IDE and MFC for example).

Nowadays is all in the open in github or similar. Feedback and updates are faster, community involvement is higher but things are less stable because all the polishing (architecture, interfaces, etc.) is done, from the perspective of the framework writer, "in production".

Basically is the agile business model of release early and often applied to software tools.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#92

Post by rhlsthrm »

rco8786 wrote: post #33

It's all changing, but it seems that front-end JS is changing the fastest . That's (IMO) due to a handful of reasons. But three standout in particular... 1) The state of Javascript's standard library is getting better but still pretty bad. So people continually reinvent new ones. 2) Every company with a frontend (see: Every Company) has to work with Javascript (esoteric compile-to-js aside) on the front-end, so the s…

Agree with the first two points, but do you really think "new developers" are the ones who are creating the "ideas/platforms/frameworks/etc/etc"?

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#93

Post by coldtea »

slezyr wrote: post #70
mamcx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About web pack and many others: I use Vue with several others dependencies. But 0 package managers. This is mine: cat js/vue.js js/vue-router.js js/vuelidate.min.js js/validators.min.js js/vuex.js js/vuex-i18n.umd.js js/translation.js js/vue-moment.js js/vue-virtual-scroll.js > js/build.js 0 problems. Predictable, not folder with millons of little JS files, etc...

What about Babel, JSX? I'm a C++ dev that's trying to learn JS. As I know if you want to use modern JS you have to compile it with babel to "portable" JS with Babel. And it was really painful to create DOM elements with createElement and small wrappers around them, so JSX should help here. Or you can just skip those?

Libs are all ready to use, you don't need to compile them with babel.

And for stuff you write yourself, they'll only need babel if you (a) want to support some ancient browsers (e.g. IE7), or (b) you want to use fancy new JS features.

If you're OK to target 90% of the people with actual browsers from 3-4 years ago, then you don't need Babel at all (at least not for that).

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#94

Post by miedpo »

pmoleri wrote: post #43
rolleiflex wrote: post #11

From what I could see, the amount of churn in the Javascript world is unsurpassed by anything in software or product, almost to an order of magnitude. I ended up being a product designer (my main, academic education), a frontend, and a backend with varying levels of expertise in my lifetime, so I have some direct experience. My current advice as of April 2019 is to keep calm, if you can stay away from JS, do it, if y…

Does Vue + TS remove the need for Webpack? Which one creates the JS and CSS bundles?

You technically don't need bundles for Vue. It can be inserted in a plain script tag and work with other tags on the page. You can even do components that way and import them with a script tag. CSS can be done the old fashioned way too. Vue's nice like that. It's easy to not use a bundle or to use one depending on what you'd like to do.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#95

Post by mamcx »

colecut wrote: post #82
mamcx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About web pack and many others: I use Vue with several others dependencies. But 0 package managers. This is mine: cat js/vue.js js/vue-router.js js/vuelidate.min.js js/validators.min.js js/vuex.js js/vuex-i18n.umd.js js/translation.js js/vue-moment.js js/vue-virtual-scroll.js > js/build.js 0 problems. Predictable, not folder with millons of little JS files, etc...

Are you able to use vue components? I would love to see how you manage your app js code with this approach.

I have a single JS file, not vue components. Is still possible, but then my DIY build.sh need to be more complex.

Still, the main point is that you can bring as much extra machinery as needed, instead of bring all then only use a fraction.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#96

Post by vbezhenar »

I'm Java developer for the last 10 years.

I learned Java 1.5 back in the day. This knowledge is useful. I added some syntax sugar over the years and Java 8 was huge release with lambdas and significant standard library improvements, but old knowledge is relevant.

I learned a lot of J2EE libraries. Enterprise beans, Portlets. Most of this knowledge is obsolete. But servlets and web services are still relevant.

I learned Spring and Hibernate back in the day. Well, Spring evolved a lot, but basics stayed the same, so that knowledge is revelant. Same about Hibernate.

All my JVM internals knowledge is relevant.

I learned Maven back in the day. Recently I switched to Gradle because it seems to be better system, but Maven is not obsolete and I could continue to use it. Though those systems are extremely easy and it's not a huge investment to learn them anyway.

Recently I added Kotlin to my tool set. But this language is heavily based on Java, so all knowledge about Java, JVM and standard libraries is relevant.

So yeah, Java is pretty stable platform and very few things were obsolete. Most of my knowledge is stayed relevant.

JavaScript is crazy world. I have to dive into it once every few years. Everything changing. My old projects don't have a chance to work with new libraries (especially fun with dynamic typing). JavaScript really needs One Big Architect With Beard who will make everything right for everyone to accept.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#97

Post by geodel »

Using the terminology of Hardware, firmware, software where changes are slowest in hardware and fastest in software. I suspect JS introducing something which is even faster than software. May be called Slipperyware. By the time one grasp it slips out and take form of yet another framework.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#98

Post by eitland »

hutzlibu wrote: post #86
eitland wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java and .Net is steadily improving. But unlike the JS world things are mostly backwards compatible and there exists stable (some have argued too stable) dependable frameworks. We are starting to see this in the frontend world as well with Angular. After throwing everything away between 1 and 2 it is now mostly smooth (until Google decides to ditch it for something else).

JS is not backwards compatible? Where?

JS the language probably is AFAIK. I and many others in this thread are talking about the JS ecosystem.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#99

Post by ummonk »

armadsen wrote: post #5

No, it’s not, or at least not as fast as the current churn in frontend JS dev. I started doing Cocoa dev on the Mac in 2005. There have been changes to be sure, the biggest being the introduction of Swift I’m 2014. But I’m still using AppKit. I can (and do) still use Objective-C alongside Swift. And I have a pretty big codebase dating back to 2006 that still compiles and runs fine even with the latest version of Xcod…

>And I have a pretty big codebase dating back to 2006 that still compiles and runs fine even with the latest version of Xcode.

I mean, the same is true for any webpage written using JS + html + css in 2006.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#100

Post by jaequery »

it seems to me that the devs who been at it for a while, sees the frontend landscape as huge chaos.

but the newcomers coming into the scene, seem to either love or embrace the fast pace changes.

i'm not really sure what to think of this situation.

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