Live data from Hacker News

State of JavaScript 2019

2019.stateofjs.com

71–80 of 372 posts

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#71

I'm surprised to see Angular drop in ratings and rank so poorly compared to React. I personally prefer Angular myself because it's (a) opiniated and (b) has everything included (HTTP REST calls, Material UI, etc). Just curious why so many people prefer React and mark it so positively.

It surprises me too personally - the testing experience is worlds better, better built in modules than what you get in the React ecosystem (especially routing, http request layer, forms, testing, etc.), and opinionation that helps improve the overall experience of working with it. I miss my time with Angular sometimes - my only gripes is TypeScript being limiting with regard to function composition, and creating a component in Angular requires quite a bit of boilerplate compared to React.

To some degree, I feel there are a varying set of reasons why people have settled on React - some were never fans of AngularJS/Angular and some disliked how Google handled the migration story from AngularJS to Angular are probably the strongest reasons. TypeScript also not being terribly FP friendly is also a huge negative to some, whereas React enables more functional patterns overall. Some also dislike separate HTML templates vs. HTML in JS templating, some prefer to cobble together a bunch of small modules together, even if the modules are weaker on average.

Ultimately, I think Google fell short on DX with the change over to Angular 2+ and the damage has lived on since, which is a shame because as a framework it was built really solid.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#72
Sad to see Atom take such a sharp decline. I've finally accepted the writing on the wall and began migrating to VS Code last week.

Thanks for all the memories, Atom! <3

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#73

Wow, 39.9% of respondents mark themselves as "Expert" at CSS. I've been doing front-end in various guises for 12 years and I would only rank myself maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. As I've gotten more experienced in my career I've become more aware of what I don't know as opposed to what I do know. It's funny that "Advanced" is mastering animations and transitions whereas "Expert" is being able to develop a full-front end con…

The description of "Expert" in the survey probably caused this.

"Expert: Being able to style an entire front-end from scratch following a consistent methodology"

Meanwhile, "Advanced: Mastering animations, interactions, transitions, etc."

I can certainly "style an entire front-end from scratch" without "mastering animations".

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#74

EmberJS should not be in the "avoid' section.. it is one of the most well thought-out framework which just gets the job done.. and it is a bit contra-indicatory that Ember guys are the highest paid.

Just the fact it uses Handlebars templates disqualifies it as a viable option for me. Handlebars is terrible to work with, especially once you're used to JSX type of options.

HBS = restrictive for nonsense reasons. The separations of Model, View, and Control really don't make sense anymore. It's outdated.

I've worked with it for years and I consider myself familiar with it up until 3 years ago, but I would never go back to EmberJS. And that's why the salaries are higher for Ember developers: they're rare.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#75
post #12

It looks like more people need to learn about PureScript. I was happy to see it included this year though.

I really don't see the point of strong typed programming. JavaScript is fine without it. I've been working with TypeScript for a while now and I never think "this solves a problem I had!"

On the contrary, I constantly think "why..."

I feel strong typing JS is just a result of backend developers not questioning their upbringings and failing to use proper naming conventions, progressive enhancement in the form of JSDOC comments, proper unit tests, and proper peer reviewing processes.

Honestly, I don't get it. In all my 20 years as a professional web developer (full stack and specialising in the frontend for the past 12 years) I have never needed it...

I really don't understand the charm of it.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#76

Wow, 39.9% of respondents mark themselves as "Expert" at CSS. I've been doing front-end in various guises for 12 years and I would only rank myself maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. As I've gotten more experienced in my career I've become more aware of what I don't know as opposed to what I do know. It's funny that "Advanced" is mastering animations and transitions whereas "Expert" is being able to develop a full-front end con…

Half of my income is from training people in JS and Python. I have 50% of those missions that are requested to be "advanced" courses.

The vast majority of the participants are not up to the task. They are paid professionnals, but they consistently overestimate they level, skills and needs. They often are not very good, and of course, they don't know what they don't know.

So I always check for that first, and rewrite my course on the fly to include the untold pre-requisites I identify. I don't tell them I do this to avoid making them feel bad. Nobody wants to hear "dude, you wanna learn react and you never used an arrow function, wtf ?" even if being comfy with JS is a listed requirement on the site.

Bottom line: most devs are not experts, and don't have the ability to assess that. But more importantly, it's enough for them to be productive and most industries don't need more.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#77

Wow, 39.9% of respondents mark themselves as "Expert" at CSS. I've been doing front-end in various guises for 12 years and I would only rank myself maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. As I've gotten more experienced in my career I've become more aware of what I don't know as opposed to what I do know. It's funny that "Advanced" is mastering animations and transitions whereas "Expert" is being able to develop a full-front end con…

I've been taking job applications from other frontend developers in the Silicon Valley fortune 500 area of work. Most resumes that get past the initial recruiter interview and make it to a tech review and claim expert knowledge of CSS... They don't. They don't know shit. They can often not answer basic flexbox questions. Not to mention CSS grid questions. And if you start questioning them about CSS animation performa…

CSS is just key-value pairs. How hard can it be? /s

There is absolutely an air of arrogance when people approach seemingly simple things such as styling. And then they implement all sorts of atrocities.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#78
post #2

Something that jumps out to me in the demographics is how few respondents are from Japan (0.6% vs e.g. 5.1% from Germany). Does anyone have a good explanation?

The Asian markets typically have their own news letters. They will report the findings from the State of JavaScript 2019 from the western world, but they'll probably have their own polls.

We are primarily English speaking (myself being European and working in the USA now) and they struggle with English immensely, in general.

Many projects from Japan that I see have faulty English grammar in variable names and is documented only in Japanese characters.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#79

Wow, 39.9% of respondents mark themselves as "Expert" at CSS. I've been doing front-end in various guises for 12 years and I would only rank myself maybe 5 or 6 out of 10. As I've gotten more experienced in my career I've become more aware of what I don't know as opposed to what I do know. It's funny that "Advanced" is mastering animations and transitions whereas "Expert" is being able to develop a full-front end con…

The description of "Expert" in the survey probably caused this. "Expert: Being able to style an entire front-end from scratch following a consistent methodology" Meanwhile, "Advanced: Mastering animations, interactions, transitions, etc." I can certainly "style an entire front-end from scratch" without "mastering animations".

This is makes little sense. According to this I’m an expert but not advanced.

CSS architecture (for a lack of a better term) is completely different from its more playful aspects. Stacking on on top of the other is just silly.

Re: State of JavaScript 2019

#80

I'm surprised to see Angular drop in ratings and rank so poorly compared to React. I personally prefer Angular myself because it's (a) opiniated and (b) has everything included (HTTP REST calls, Material UI, etc). Just curious why so many people prefer React and mark it so positively.

Angular ng-is ng-very ng-opinionated and requires a ton of boilerplate knowledge. It requires typescript knowledge, and I've noticed that (finally!) a lot of developers are realising that typescript actually doesn't make life easier at all. React, on the other hand, is a very intuitive library instead of an all-encompassing framework. You can easily setup a React application in a few seconds and get started, adding w…

Why do you typescript so much?
Post reply on HN