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Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

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Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#21

Post by bigmattystyles »

Etheryte wrote: post #11
bigmattystyles wrote: post #8

I think that if you want a page to impress or make a splash then sure, you always have to move to the next greatest thing, however, I don't work for them but I've paid for Telerik Kendo Controls (the react ones specifically)since they were released, before then, the AngularJs ones and it's been great - it keeps my (albeit internal app) UI development stable, fast and looks great with minimal fussing about. It's been…

I had to read your comment twice to be sure we're talking about the same Kendo. I've consulted for a number of companies over the years who have used it (or tried to use it), ever since the jQuery version to up until now, and it's always been pure pain. I understand how their components work, I understand the underlying architecture because I've stepped through it too many times with a debugger, and I still always fa…

I don't agree with you but I don't disagree either. Our use cases are very vanilla, and now that I have quite a bit of sway in my team, when people deviate from the showcased Kendo way, I push back and see if the desired way deviating from Kendo is a necessity or a nice to have. If it's the former, we sometimes have the experience you described, though I've often be helped by stackoverflow, their forums or Kendo's support team. (We pay for the 24 hour tier). If it's the latter then I force the Kendo way. FWIW, their ODATA v4 support OOTB with dotnetcore webapi with its ODATA v4 out of the box with an EF model is the perfect pattern for most of our use cases. But again, I don't disagree with you either - but I would stress that any alternatives I've seen have their same range of issues.

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#23

Post by bobthepanda »

ezsmi wrote: post #18
capableweb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't see too many people wanting to subvert HTTP making a billion homemade alternatives No? I constantly come across new protocols, promising improvements compared to it. Some even become relatively popular and are included in browsers by default. Just some examples are WebSockets, WebRTC and QUIC. I expect we'll see more of them in the future as specific use cases requires more specific protocols.

I think you make a fair point but on the other hand I don’t see many “top 20 alternatives to http in 2022” articles (which implies there are more than 20 alternatives) like we have for front end technologies. I.e. https://www.netguru.com/blog/front-end-technologies

I think part of it is also level of effort.

You could right click "inspect element" in any browser and mess around in the html or the JS console and see things happening live. This is an extremely low barrier to entry.

Low barriers to entry are good, our profession is very well compensated and developed economies could certainly use low effort ways to get people from lower compensated jobs into higher compensated jobs* but that also means that there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

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* yes, tech isn't for everyone (what job is?), and when I say low barrier to entry I mean you don't really need to subject yourself to what could easily be 5-10 years of schooling in medicine or law or engineering.

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#25

Post by darepublic »

nicoburns wrote: post #16
darepublic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, view layer may be stabilizing but what about Managing backend requests is too complicated!(react-query) You *need* gql don't you? Don't forget forms. Super hard to do right. react-final form, react form hook, etc We need a monorepo framework! Nx, turbo, rush, pnpm (too low level), Lerna (too old and unmaintained) What about bundlers huh? Vite, esbuild, rollup, webpack I still see plenty of opportunity fo…

The difference is that's all ignorable. If you want to standard React with classes, redux, npm and webpack like it's 2017 then you absolutely can, and it's still a maintained and supported solution. That's very different to say the evolution from JQuery to Backbone to AngularJS to React where you ended up being on an increasingly unsupported platform if you didn't upgrade.

It's not really ignorable, these frameworks come ready made with converts seeking to spread the good news to every codebase they find. Understanding, let alone improving, legacy code is a total waste of their awesome powers. It's raze the city and build paradise from scratch. Using shiny new framework (tm).

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#26

Post by HidyBush »

bobthepanda wrote: post #23
ezsmi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make a fair point but on the other hand I don’t see many “top 20 alternatives to http in 2022” articles (which implies there are more than 20 alternatives) like we have for front end technologies. I.e. https://www.netguru.com/blog/front-end-technologies

I think part of it is also level of effort. You could right click "inspect element" in any browser and mess around in the html or the JS console and see things happening live. This is an extremely low barrier to entry. Low barriers to entry are good, our profession is very well compensated and developed economies could certainly use low effort ways to get people from lower compensated jobs into higher compensated job…

the level of effort is determined by how deep in the stack you are. if you make a new JS framework every single browser will run it, if you make a new web scripting language good luck getting support from even one browser

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#27

Post by crooked-v »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

I think part of the reason is the evolution of common user networking. Initially, users had low bandwidth connections, and web pages were mostly static with links. Then came JavaScript interactivity and AJAX. As users bandwidth grew, we started having heavier frameworks and SPAs. I believe there is another revolution that is happening now because of decreased latency. Recently with protocols such as HTTP2, web socket…

React is also pushing in the 'edge computing' direction with Suspense and with major libs like Next implementing the idea of "server components".

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#28

Post by jokethrowaway »

Frontend is the entry level field for all those people who were not developers but wanted a slice of the salary pie. Designers, architect, lawyers. I've seen everything.

I know a few React engineers in my company who can make components and be productive - but they don't know JavaScript and they get stuck when something is slightly different from what they're expecting.

Similarly I'm mentoring a few engineers who started with react and are trying to learn backend and other languages.

Being the field where all the least developer figures start means you'll have tons of people, tons of visibility, tons of cargo culting and tons of crap being built just to make you look cooler. I'm guilty of this as well, I have my frontend framework on GitHub and it's quite useless - even if it's a nice idea.

Of course nobody bothers to maintain stuff and everything is trying to make money on their junior devs fanboys.

Re: Why is front-end development so unstable? (2018)

#29

Post by csande17 »

Atheros wrote: post #5

UI/UX is a fundamentally flawed field for a number of intersecting reasons, most of which boil down to not really distinguishing between when it's doing engineering, when it's doing psychology, and when it's doing fashion. And these days, on web apps and mobile apps, it mostly does fashion. Fashion must change for the sake of change. To more easily support these frequent changes, more libraries get invented to make d…

> Fashion must change for the sake of change. To more easily support these frequent changes, more libraries get invented to make doing new things easier.

The frontend "ecosystem" libraries discussed in the article are also subject to a fashion hype cycle, independently of UI/UX design trends. A lot of them don't actually make anything easier, or don't make rapid design iteration easier at least.

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