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The art of Front end Engineering

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Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#31

Post by echelon »

austincheney wrote: post #30
echelon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time you build your solution in native DOM, you've missed the market. This is why we don't write applications in assembler. If performance is your only metric, write Rust and target WASM. But that's probably not the right solution for 95% of cases.

I built a Windows like GUI, including basic file system display and population, using native DOM for the front end of a node app. It took me, one person, two weeks. It includes state management. If you think that’s the same as writing assembly you probably aren’t the right guy to drive the success of a startup.

> you probably aren’t the right guy to drive the success of a startup.

Since when did giving honest opinions about speed and practicality merit personal insults?

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#32

Post by echelon »

krychu wrote: post #22
echelon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time you build your solution in native DOM, you've missed the market. This is why we don't write applications in assembler. If performance is your only metric, write Rust and target WASM. But that's probably not the right solution for 95% of cases.

VS Code must have been lucky then.

VS Code requires more careful engineering than a CRUD web app. It also has a lot more dedicated talent with eyes on the problem.

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#33

Post by austincheney »

echelon wrote: post #31
austincheney wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a Windows like GUI, including basic file system display and population, using native DOM for the front end of a node app. It took me, one person, two weeks. It includes state management. If you think that’s the same as writing assembly you probably aren’t the right guy to drive the success of a startup.

> you probably aren’t the right guy to drive the success of a startup. Since when did giving honest opinions about speed and practicality merit personal insults?

It’s not an insult. If you took that as an insult you probably aren’t as open to honesty as you imagine.

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#34

Post by austincheney »

echelon wrote: post #32
krychu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code must have been lucky then.

VS Code requires more careful engineering than a CRUD web app. It also has a lot more dedicated talent with eyes on the problem.

These technologies aren’t limited to CRUD apps.

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#35

Post by brotzky »

austincheney wrote: post #11

There’s a deep understanding of the tools they use every day. They may use a framework as a starting point, but they also understand the JavaScript that makes the underlying work. They leverage CSS like a fluent language, manipulating DOM elements to their will. They see browser APIs as the foundation of their process rather than puzzling concepts pulled from Stackoverflow answers. I wish that were true, I have not s…

Hey, OP here! I think I could've worded that better. It does sound a bit anti-framework when it wasn't meant to be at all. I was thinking more in broader terms where you'll inevitably be using Browser APIs even within a framework like React.

I specifically tried to avoid talking too much about stuff like React, Next, Tailwind, etc.

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#36

Post by jazzyjackson »

nawgz wrote: post #28
jiofih wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, the product, did not use React until very very recently. Do you use FB? If Facebook’s interface represents the “UI leaders of the world” we’re in troubled waters!

Can you say more about why we'd be in troubled waters for such a thing? Facebook and its non-titular products are probably used by the most people in the world. The org is 50k people, and I imagine their engineering staff is proportionally quite large - they rarely introduce bugs and seem to have quite a good update cycle. There is a huge featureset and the website performs very well.

> the website performs very well

IME you could measure page transitions in seconds, it is an extremely slow website

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#37

Post by echelon »

austincheney wrote: post #33
echelon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you probably aren’t the right guy to drive the success of a startup. Since when did giving honest opinions about speed and practicality merit personal insults?

It’s not an insult. If you took that as an insult you probably aren’t as open to honesty as you imagine.

I'm probably not a lot of the things you call me. :)

Re: The art of Front end Engineering

#38

Post by austincheney »

nawgz wrote: post #26
austincheney wrote: post #11

There’s a deep understanding of the tools they use every day. They may use a framework as a starting point, but they also understand the JavaScript that makes the underlying work. They leverage CSS like a fluent language, manipulating DOM elements to their will. They see browser APIs as the foundation of their process rather than puzzling concepts pulled from Stackoverflow answers. I wish that were true, I have not s…

I’m not sure I agree with your takes on frameworks. It definitely depends on what you’re building, but in React to have composition and reuse for free immediately sets it apart from any bespoke solutions. I’m also struggling to imagine how you propose to out-scale the React framework with early & tough design decisions... these are Facebook engineers that made those same decisions, and they managed to scale the frame…

If composition is your first concern you lack vision. Instead start from a good idea, form a vision on how you want to execute that idea, determine what you need, and then build those pieces in isolation. You get separation of concerns for free and composition becomes the last step. If you spend all your energy over concerns on how to build something you are spending creative energy thinking about what cool things to build.
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