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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?

#131
post #34

Every 15-20 years everything changes, the new generation ditches the old, repeating the same mistakes nth time but making some progress.

2 steps back, 3 steps forward. Sometimes, during spring cleaning, you have to make a bigger mess to get to a cleaner state than when you began. It's a timeless issue. Continue to patch existing codebase with known flows that are so severe that it will never allow for full completion, or scrap the whole thing and start over using $newHotness that has the potential to get you where you need to go?

Yup. Rewrites are tricky but doable. I think the best way to rewrite is to do it inside out, sorta like DNA replication or gradually move things into micro services of sorts.

Porting however is more difficult IMO, like rewriting everything in Rust or from jQuery plugins to React.

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

#132
post #55

I had primary been a C# dev, then switched to JavaScript/TypeScript for a few years. Lots of change in those years: JQuery, Angular 1, Angular 2, TypeScript, etc. Then I recently switched worked on a C# project. Other than a few Dot Net Core changes, it was basically the same, and easy to switch back to C# land. Not I am back in JS land. This time using Angular elements. When I left, I was getting used to declaring l…

Aha! And Angular is already one of those tech pieces that's "on the way out". I've had similar experiences working primarily on the backend where paradigms may slowly shift but the tools for their declarations are _thankfully_ pretty stable.

Angular is not on the way out, at all

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish programming was more like playing a musical instrument. I feel like there is too much tuning not enough playing.

I think programming is more akin to developing and/or manufacturing instruments. Playing them would be the users.

I think the subparent meant the developer experience - this counts as playing as well.

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

#134
Most of the languages are constantly changing but the JavaScript world is way faster than anybody else moves.

Although might be over-hyped, I personally believe it's more a good thing which moves the community even the industry forward. React was kind of enlightened the functional and reactive patterns to the mainstream developer community.

In contrast, most of the back-end communities still struggle with data synchronization between microservices, while all modern front-end frameworks are able to update all of the view or other read models almost magically.

If anyone wants a more specific example, I think it's quite shocking to me that there are only very few back-end architectures knows clearly how to design a whole large scale architecture push WebSocket notification for a given user -- just like typical google suite stuff. WebSocket has been there for years, there are so few people know how to develop and operate a stateful service... unbelievable.

I agree with that shipping business functionality is the most important value in technology. However, I feel most of the back-end communities worries about the problems they are encountering too much. And they don't really care about the art of the programming itself, yet advanced architectures indeed require language or platform level construct, for example, immutable data structures are much easier to be concurrent safe, or just the computation should be pure to be safely rescheduled on other core or machine, etc.

In the front-end world, I think for example React and Mobx which I'm using are pretty much taking care of most of the accidental complexity of software development. In the back-end world, I can imagine something similar to a full-blown framework like Rails but built on top of something like Orleans or Lasplang would help us get rid of all the accidental complexity, and just expressing the domain itself instead. We're still too far from there.

A quote from SICP lecture: https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?list=PLE18841CABEA24090&t=81

"And the Egyptian who did that, geometry really was the use of surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think about computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that Egyptian thought geometry was about surveying instruments."

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

#135
post #4

I would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface. People expect more, and we have to give it to them to survive. Addressing your specific question => have the backend languages/ frameworks changed? meh. sorta. They've made incremental changes, but the meat and potatoes look the same from 4-7 years ago for the opinionated frameworks.…

> would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface

Are those expectations met though? I have yet to see a fast and delightful user experience in a SPA.

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

#136
post #13

As somebody that's in JS all day but rarely touches backend, hearing about go, rust, kubernetes, docker, etc make it feel like backend is similarly fast-changing. The difference seems to be in the narrative about the older tech. The "rails is still fine" crowd is loud, which is great. There is no equivalent for older JS tech. Though I would be willing to believe that's because things like jQuery are full of dated pat…

I think jQuery and IIFE/AMD modules are fine. Tools for the job, React might be overkill for some smaller apps, and jQuery is a hassle with larger SPA/PWAs.

But why bother with jQuery? Vanilla is pretty decent.

Prefer React/Vue for the big stuff. But you can't beat vanilla when you need perf and control.

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

#137

I've been doing frontend dev for 10 years and had to change my stack & way of working only 3 times: - HTML templates (served by Symfony/ASP.NET/Rails/Django) + jQuery + dependencies manually downloaded/updated/deleted/added to the index.html - ~2014: Angular SPA + Grunt + dependencies managed with Bower and added manually in the index.html - ~2017: React SPA + Webpack/Babel + dependencies managed with NPM and added a…

Can you elaborate on your backend changes? I've been doing django for 10 years and still am. So for me, the biggest server-side change is dev ops, cloud, etc.

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

#138
Front end javascript really hasn't changed. The newer native stuff is great but you cant really use it without dropping support for anything Microsoft, or writing a bunch of shims not good.

SPA is an anti-pattern, don't buy into the whole craze to learn hottest new SPA framework which fixes all the problems with the last framework. They are all trying to make an anti-pattern work, it wont and no gimmick will fix that.

Stop learning gimmicky front end frameworks and start learning front end design patterns.

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

#139

I've been doing frontend dev for 10 years and had to change my stack & way of working only 3 times: - HTML templates (served by Symfony/ASP.NET/Rails/Django) + jQuery + dependencies manually downloaded/updated/deleted/added to the index.html - ~2014: Angular SPA + Grunt + dependencies managed with Bower and added manually in the index.html - ~2017: React SPA + Webpack/Babel + dependencies managed with NPM and added a…

I wish programming was more like playing a musical instrument. I feel like there is too much tuning not enough playing.

Programming is a lot like playing a guitar. You can play old songs forever, but you can’t fairly complain that they went out of style. Plus like guitar, your skills at playing one genre don’t directly translate to another so if you want to keep up on the trend threadmill it takes a lot of extra practice.
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