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The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

nadh.in

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Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#51

Post by moron4hire »

arrow7000 wrote: post #20
dimgl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made an exception for TypeScript I was nodding my head until TypeScript. I still don't like it even after years of people telling me it's the future. Maybe this is what it feels like to be older.

What don't you like about it?

I'm a huge TypeScript proponent, but it took me a long time to get on board because getting it into an existing project structure is not easy. I don't even mean the translation portion (which you're also probably doing as you first learn the language), but the configuration of the tool. There are a lot of options and none of them are labeled "please just find my missing dependencies. I can see them right there".

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#52

Post by FpUser »

Tesl wrote: post #24
dimgl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made an exception for TypeScript I was nodding my head until TypeScript. I still don't like it even after years of people telling me it's the future. Maybe this is what it feels like to be older.

Nah you're probably just wrong. Generally speaking it's the older more experienced developers who demand typescript in my experience. Writing raw javascript is genuinely painful, I literally don't understand how people can even do it. Like, how do you even refactor code safely?

>" I literally don't understand how people can even do it."

While I definitely appreciate types and normally work with the languages like C++ sometimes I do some front end JS libs and frankly do not have any mental troubles using plain JS. As for whether it is "safe" - all that matters to me if it works to specs and the customers are happy. Since I am programming since like forever I guess I've got enough discipline, common sense, knowledge and experience to produce decent code.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#53

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I can definitely appreciate rants like this, and I think anyone who has been in JS development for a while has hit some sort of dependency incompatibility headache like this. That said, I'm also always left a bit annoyed when the author isn't really introspective to think about what benefits came with the environment he is bitching about.

As much as everyone loves to complain about "dependency hell" in the JS/Node ecosystem, the fact that there are tons of high quality (or, at least discernible quality) components, largely for free, is something that really didn't exist before say the mid '00s. I'd also highlight that "component reuse" was literally the holy grail of software engineering for decades prior.

The simple fact is that to get the benefit of a very robust dependency ecosystem requires more work managing those dependency versions. Running the equivalent of `npm update` on a regular schedule is pretty much required lest your dependencies get too far behind, and then when you are forced to upgrade due to a security issue you find you have tons of backwards incompatible changes.

I'm not saying things like NPM can't be greatly improved, but I think it's important to acknowledge the benefits that the JS ecosystem provides.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#54

Post by tyingq »

musingsole wrote: post #13
stevehind wrote: post #8

Out of curiosity what is the best counter argument to the general thesis, eg either what positives come entangled in the hot mess or reasons it’s not a hot mess?

That while it might be difficult to articulate, the churn of technologies does represent a meaningful search and forward march of progress. The churn is the result of ever more rapid progress on an increasingly abstract knowledge system. However, it is hard to recognize positive structural change as just another worker bee in the hive.

It's interesting you chose "march" because I see it as not that. There is rapid forward progress, as you say, but it's individual parts sprinting at different paces. "March" would imply they were moving together.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#55

Post by Phaedor »

stevehind wrote: post #8

Out of curiosity what is the best counter argument to the general thesis, eg either what positives come entangled in the hot mess or reasons it’s not a hot mess?

Its a result of a lot of trial and error and finding better way of doing things. I dont think anyone likes it, but its byproduct of moving fast and of requirements changing.

Personally I think the web-frontend ecosystem is getting closer to stabilizing. For example React has not been changing much recently in its API and most of its development happens under the hood. A counterexample right now is bundlers. Webpack was the king for a long time, but it has gained more and more features and the code bases it is working on are bigger so its getting slow and complex. Competitors like esbuild and vite that are simpler and faster are popping up. However this is not the fault of webpack but simply that the requirements has changed so much and webpack always had to follow the requirements. Now that the requirements are starting to stabilize new alternatives can be built that can skip all the cruft.

I find it interesting how people in this thread are praising python frameworks for being so stable, I'm in my mid thirties and I clearly remember a time when they weren't.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#57

Post by grishka »

dimgl wrote: post #15
nayuki wrote: post #6

I'm embarrassed to admit that for web development, I'm afraid to try frameworks like React/Vue/Angular as well as package managers like NPM/Yarn. So I settled on writing raw (X)HTML code and using only vanilla JavaScript APIs provided by the browser (ECMAScript standard library, DOM, multimedia, etc.). Because of this, I can't bang out complicated software quickly and easily like the stereotypical front-end developer…

> I made an exception for TypeScript I was nodding my head until TypeScript. I still don't like it even after years of people telling me it's the future. Maybe this is what it feels like to be older.

As someone who has mostly the same approach, I too use TypeScript. It makes JS saner and brings it closer to its more advanced cousin from the past, ActionScript. It also adds proper Java-like classes with inheritance, which I, as primarily a Java developer, appreciate a lot.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#58

Post by eatonphil »

jitl wrote: post #40

tl;dr blindly upgrading 100s of dependencies didn’t work out. But, is this instability due to the ecosystem, or the choices of the developer? I work on a large, highly interactive web app that does a lot of the fancy stuff like code push to native apps, offline caching, heavy use of browser storage, real time collaboration. Our stack is React, Express, Typescript, built with Webpack. Every year or so we upgrade one o…

Yours sounds like a reasonable practice, I do the same thing myself. I agree that it's up to the developer to make things easier on him/herself or to bring in unneeded dependencies or complicate the build process.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#59

Post by nsonha »

tyingq wrote: post #11
stevehind wrote: post #8

Out of curiosity what is the best counter argument to the general thesis, eg either what positives come entangled in the hot mess or reasons it’s not a hot mess?

High tool churn creates an ecosystem where you get paid well for knowing the new hotness.

That's a myth. I've been in a lot of tech interviews, no one gives a shit about what tools you use. Maybe things like terraform or docker, but not the libraries or tools inside the projects, no. You get a pat in the back maybe.

Re: The JavaScript ecosystem is a hot mess and so is software development

#60

Post by mattgreenrocks »

Life is too short to put up with this nonsense. My take is the JS ecosystem is dominated by devs who like programming more than they like solving problems via programming. And that’s fine, but the culture doesn’t reign them in, and everyone takes a maximalist approach to things, believing that just a bit more JS would make things a little less crazy.

Fundamentally, the web is not a great application platform. Decent, yes. This is the fact that cannot be papered over by more software.

I left webdev back in 2012 after doing Rails. Best decision I have ever made for my career.

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