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Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

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Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#11

Post by RL_Quine »

phailhaus wrote: post #8
mxschumacher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the negative, I agree. I see all the hype around React but when I use Facebook.com I am thoroughly underwhelmed.

Eh? You can't "tell" what framework a site is using just by interacting with the site. What you see is what the designers decided. A better proxy, though weak, would be the number of UI bugs you encounter. The best metric would require you to have insider knowledge, to see how much work is saved by reusing components and writing them declaratively.

You can usually tell react based things from the poor performance and bad handling of network conditions.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#12

Post by phailhaus »

mxschumacher wrote: post #3

From a developer perspective, changes in frontend web development have been pretty dramatic: CSS Grid / Flexbox, React, WASM, extensions to the web API, lots of new JS features, countless frameworks, plugins and build tools more homogeneity between browsers. There is always lots of change and excitement. I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. As a programmer, I get a bit cynical ab…

> What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land?

Declaratively writing components and reusing behavior (e.g., hooks) across components/applications was basically impossible with the tools of 10 years ago. The benefit to the user is more stable interfaces and a faster release rate.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#13

Post by k__ »

I'm teaching frontend development to designers right now and after almost a semester, I have the feeling I have to cut out much more concepts.

There are just too many ways to do things to teach a beginner in one semester and they just should be able to create basic prototypes anyway.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#14

Post by Tade0 »

I feel like these problems are endemic to React and the surrounding ecosystem.

Since its introduction in late 2016 Angular 2+ has had no major changes on the scale of hooks and is unlikely to introduce them, because its target audience - large companies making large-scale applications is fairly conservative.

Vue I think had one measurably large syntax shift around v2.5(or 2.6) and will have another one with 3.0, but that's about it.

Meanwhile in React every year there's this new convention that isn't explicitly mandatory, but for some reason "cooler" than the previous one.

All this won't matter once the next gen compiler-frameworks reach maturity. My take is that hooks are React's swan song.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#15

Post by dahfizz »

phailhaus wrote: post #12
mxschumacher wrote: post #3

From a developer perspective, changes in frontend web development have been pretty dramatic: CSS Grid / Flexbox, React, WASM, extensions to the web API, lots of new JS features, countless frameworks, plugins and build tools more homogeneity between browsers. There is always lots of change and excitement. I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. As a programmer, I get a bit cynical ab…

> What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land? Declaratively writing components and reusing behavior (e.g., hooks) across components/applications was basically impossible with the tools of 10 years ago. The benefit to the user is more stable interfaces and a faster release rate.

> benefit to the user is more stable interfaces

Doubt. Websites are constantly redesigning their interfaces so that they can use the latest trendy technology.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#16

Post by no_wizard »

mxschumacher wrote: post #5

A good way to not be completely overwhelmed by all the new tooling and frameworks is to have a strong grasp of the fundamentals, here are three foundational resources: "You don't know JS": https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS "How browsers work": https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowser... "High performance browser networking": https://hpbn.co/

I also want to add the great Eloquent JavaScript[0] to this list. While its targeted at learning programming as a whole, its still a wonderful resource, even for seasoned programmers, to learn some ins and outs of the language if you haven't had a lot of experience with it.

I also want to give mention to JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford[1], and his new book, How JavaScript Workers[2]

[0]: https://eloquentjavascript.net/

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517742/wrrrldwideweb

[2]: https://howjavascriptworks.com/

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#17

Post by runawaybottle »

duxup wrote: post #9

I'm a little lost on the examples. There are reasons to use fetch and hooks, and the article seems to relegate them to being unnecessary 'trends' without doing what it suggests, actually evaluating what value they might have... In React you can use hooks with a class heavy application and still be just fine / get the benefits of hooks in a given component(s). If you want to use fetch, that also is hardly an ordeal to…

But do we get it? If we get it, why is frontend churn so prevalent?

I don’t think we get it.

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#18

Post by no_wizard »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #10
mxschumacher wrote: post #5

A good way to not be completely overwhelmed by all the new tooling and frameworks is to have a strong grasp of the fundamentals, here are three foundational resources: "You don't know JS": https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS "How browsers work": https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowser... "High performance browser networking": https://hpbn.co/

Agreed. I think a lot of folks suffer from not understanding how web 1.0 worked and really groking REST/HATEOAS (which has since been hijacked for JSON APIs, which is complete nonsense.) Sometimes I jokingly call htmx "web 1.1 tech", but increasingly I wonder if I'm really joking.

There is the the HATEOAS compatible JSON-LD standard being worked on at the W3C

https://json-ld.org/

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#19

Post by duxup »

runawaybottle wrote: post #17
duxup wrote: post #9

I'm a little lost on the examples. There are reasons to use fetch and hooks, and the article seems to relegate them to being unnecessary 'trends' without doing what it suggests, actually evaluating what value they might have... In React you can use hooks with a class heavy application and still be just fine / get the benefits of hooks in a given component(s). If you want to use fetch, that also is hardly an ordeal to…

But do we get it? If we get it, why is frontend churn so prevalent? I don’t think we get it.

Get what?

Re: Do Not Follow JavaScript Trends

#20

Post by tobyhinloopen »

phailhaus wrote: post #12
mxschumacher wrote: post #3

From a developer perspective, changes in frontend web development have been pretty dramatic: CSS Grid / Flexbox, React, WASM, extensions to the web API, lots of new JS features, countless frameworks, plugins and build tools more homogeneity between browsers. There is always lots of change and excitement. I wonder how much of that "innovation" really makes a difference to users. As a programmer, I get a bit cynical ab…

> What is possible today that was very hard to do 10 years ago in web dev land? Declaratively writing components and reusing behavior (e.g., hooks) across components/applications was basically impossible with the tools of 10 years ago. The benefit to the user is more stable interfaces and a faster release rate.

I totally disagree.

Reusable components were already there using jquery plugins. Everyone used them and they were easy to use and easy to install. They were deployed as a single file, with optional CSS.

Try writing a reusable component now. You have to target all major frameworks and tooling.

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