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Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

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Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#231

Post by bennysomething »

alexb_ wrote: post #72
alexb_ wrote: post #63

This thread is also a good read: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1522633160483385345 Shows that a lot of people, ESPECIALLY programmers, vastly overestimate the competence of the average person when it comes to whatever they are an expert at. You may think that this person is silly - but that is tainted by your past experience of already knowing it warping what you think the baseline average knowledge level is…

Was going to edit this in but it quickly turned into a related rant about the state of things: if you don't want that, scroll past. The real problem is that there's no more room for the technological "middle class". We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world. You either have to have no interest…

On a related note I think this is what is sort of wrong about the raspberry pi as tool for teaching beginners: the first thing the user sees and interacts with is Linux. In the 80s on a bubber key spectrum as far as I can recall it booted straight into a basic prompt / repl (or whatever the right term is). Even 8 year old me could start programming. Compare that to trying to get anywhere with Linux as a beginner.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#232

Post by Jasp3r »

longrod wrote: post #212

It's still mostly the same. Nothing much has happened in the JS space in the last 2 years that would make all this easier. The JS ecosystem suffers from a huge issue of duplication. There's multiple module systems, multiple ways to make a function, multiple ways to make a class, multiple ways to make a variable, multiple ways to loop over the array. Some of those exist in other languages as well but it's pretty bad i…

The whole issue of JavaScript is that the standard library is worthless, so people have to write additions to keep yourself sane as a developer. This makes it seem that there are 5 billion ways to do something, because there are.

Just use TypeScript, it will fix all the issues you have with the language itself. Typing + build time errors + import/export syntax. If you want to run some this in the browser, and don't use Vue or React, it will still require manual work to setup webpack + babel

I still hear this hypetrain argument a lot, but only on hacker news. This hypetrain you have been talking about is however not the case anymore. JavaScript + TypeScript have been stable for the last 3 to 5 years, the only big change in FrontEnd development was that people have been pivoting to server side rendering.

As a fullstack dev, the most hypetrain stuff I see is with infrastructure. Docker? Kubernetes? Terraform? Combined with 15 different ways to do the same thing in AWS but worse, no thank you.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#233

Post by goodoldneon »

Jasp3r wrote: post #232
longrod wrote: post #212

It's still mostly the same. Nothing much has happened in the JS space in the last 2 years that would make all this easier. The JS ecosystem suffers from a huge issue of duplication. There's multiple module systems, multiple ways to make a function, multiple ways to make a class, multiple ways to make a variable, multiple ways to loop over the array. Some of those exist in other languages as well but it's pretty bad i…

The whole issue of JavaScript is that the standard library is worthless, so people have to write additions to keep yourself sane as a developer. This makes it seem that there are 5 billion ways to do something, because there are. Just use TypeScript, it will fix all the issues you have with the language itself. Typing + build time errors + import/export syntax. If you want to run some this in the browser, and don't u…

Yea, TypeScript makes things easier. I think it's _also_ way better than plain JavaScript, but the simpler tooling is a huge value add on its own

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#234

Post by BigJono »

lucidguppy wrote: post #189
maxloh wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not quite hard to learn actually. You just need to go through the webpack Concepts section[0]. Documentations in the JavaScript ecosystem are quite good and explanatory compared to other languages (like Java). Not every front-end developers learn the internals of the tool they chose, like create-react-app. Most of them settled down if the solution "just work". [0]: https://webpack.js.org/concepts/

X is not hard, you just have to Y. Be careful of these statements, you have to understand why a person says X is hard. The OP stated he did extensive work trying to get it to work and found it difficult. You posted one link out of thousands. When talking about these things - its not like there's a problem with one solution. There's one problem with thousands of answers that are frustratingly close to correct, but not…

That "one link out of thousands" is the first page of the official docs for pretty much the only complex bit of getting started doing frontend.

If people are getting stuck because they're trying to get into something by following a "Frontend stack in 10 minutes!" blog post that introduces 10 dependencies and aims to skip all the actual learning bit in the interest of "getting up to speed" then they fucking deserve to get stuck.

There's only thousands of answers because everyone is too stupid to just go and read the obviously correct one and thousands of people try and exploit that for some industry cred or something.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#235

Post by Verdex »

thepasswordis wrote: post #167
aahortwwy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Download Python. import csv ?

Download python. Data = open(“file.csv”, “r”) For line in data.readlines(): Print(line.split”,”)

Well...

Blah1, blah2, "blah3, blah4", blah5

Maybe using a library is a better route.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#236

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

Jasp3r wrote: post #232
longrod wrote: post #212

It's still mostly the same. Nothing much has happened in the JS space in the last 2 years that would make all this easier. The JS ecosystem suffers from a huge issue of duplication. There's multiple module systems, multiple ways to make a function, multiple ways to make a class, multiple ways to make a variable, multiple ways to loop over the array. Some of those exist in other languages as well but it's pretty bad i…

The whole issue of JavaScript is that the standard library is worthless, so people have to write additions to keep yourself sane as a developer. This makes it seem that there are 5 billion ways to do something, because there are. Just use TypeScript, it will fix all the issues you have with the language itself. Typing + build time errors + import/export syntax. If you want to run some this in the browser, and don't u…

I rarely, if ever, have to reach for anything outside of the standard library for computation/algorithms. ES6 added most, if not all, the building blocks to build 99% of the computation you'll ever need. What's missing that you'd deem as worthless?

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#237

Post by dglass »

golergka wrote: post #225
longrod wrote: post #212

It's still mostly the same. Nothing much has happened in the JS space in the last 2 years that would make all this easier. The JS ecosystem suffers from a huge issue of duplication. There's multiple module systems, multiple ways to make a function, multiple ways to make a class, multiple ways to make a variable, multiple ways to loop over the array. Some of those exist in other languages as well but it's pretty bad i…

This "duplication" allows tooling, libraries and ideas to compete with each other and evolve.

Languages that don’t have this duplication are able to evolve their tooling, libraries, and ideas just fine.

Duplication isn’t required for these things to happen. All it does is fragment the ecosystem.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#238

Post by rvba »

alexb_ wrote: post #72
alexb_ wrote: post #63

This thread is also a good read: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1522633160483385345 Shows that a lot of people, ESPECIALLY programmers, vastly overestimate the competence of the average person when it comes to whatever they are an expert at. You may think that this person is silly - but that is tainted by your past experience of already knowing it warping what you think the baseline average knowledge level is…

Was going to edit this in but it quickly turned into a related rant about the state of things: if you don't want that, scroll past. The real problem is that there's no more room for the technological "middle class". We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world. You either have to have no interest…

> We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself

it seems Excel is the last place like this - to make small pseudo apps, but it comes with its own fair share of problems (mostly calculations or Excel as a database, no sharing)

I think VBA used to be the thing, but the one inside MS Office is "technologically" stuck around year 1996

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#239

Post by prionassembly »

wrp wrote: post #168
aahortwwy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isn't true, though. I have quite a few non-technical colleagues who know just enough Python to Get Shit Done. My father (a writer) taught himself R for research purposes and is productive with it. Universal Paperclips has a super-basic JavaScript codebase[0] but was a really popular game. Thing is, if you search "how to do X in Python" you're going to get a bunch of resources aimed at professionals because…

But are they building software tools that are useful and stable enough to distribute? That's the level of capability he is talking about.

The onramp from

- script without a main function

- to personal or ad hoc codebase for non-tech workplace

- to packaged code to cope with namespaces + type hints + general best practices

- to code that reads like good code from the major open source project

is long, but the slope is easy. There are no discontinuities. Basically anyone who can use Python to glue together networkx/sklearn etc. can eventually write software tools that are useful and stable enough to distribute.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#240

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

AgentME wrote: post #100
mattlondon wrote: post #42

I think the problem was using Node in the first place - most the article is fighting node + NPM nonsense. I personally try to avoid Node + NPM where I can these days, and use Deno for backend stuff since it is much more sane IMO. I've never heard of people putting typescript into a .js file - is that some node thing? Modules in the browser for vanilla JS is a delight and Just Works though. I've started doing it recen…

+1 for Deno. It seems like it's taking the good ideas that developed from the node+npm ecosystem while filing off the unnecessary complexity that's accumulated in the ecosystem over the years. I've worked with node+npm+typescript/babel/webpack/etc for years and know the ecosystem pretty well, but I get apprehensive when thinking of starting a new project with it because there's such a deluge of not-very-meaningful ch…

Why not just use ts-node and be done with it?
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