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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)

#71

Post by moonchrome »

jhgb wrote: post #48
moonchrome wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. As shitty as Android support matrix can be - it doesn't compare to IE6 web days (at least in terms of UI development, stuff like OS services is entirely next level - but you can't even start doing that in JS so it's n…

> Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. But of course JS needs neither a build system (runs from source files) nor a package manager (runs from URLs) and recently even plugged the "no modules" hole.

Majority of people using JS with these frameworks are using package management and bundling - and suffering because the ecosystem has such shitty tools for dealing with it.

If you're linking jquery from your favorite CDN and writing your code inside of tags you're not dealing with the issues this article is describing.

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

#72

Post by pojzon »

lopatin wrote: post #62
pojzon wrote: post #56

Frontend is unstable because it attracts ppl whose attention span is often lower than the one of a goldfish. Every JS frontend dev I met was speedrunning trying to prove himself by "inventing something new" which in fact was already a state of art. The amount of rehashing and reinventing the wheel with new catchy names in the field is staggering. TBH, if the field wants to improve -> its time to ditch JavaScript and…

Thank you! Part of the reason that I love these front-end threads is because inevitably somebody will make a fool of themselves by spouting anti-js-dev "backend master-race" nonsense, and this certainly did not let me down.

It would be true if I was working in backend development. I dont.

JS is just not good enough for what we want it to do.

Someone sooner or later has to make a decision to move further.

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

#73

Post by spion »

Lack of standardization is the primary reason we have this problem in the JS ecosystem.

"Productive" ecosystems (e.g. Rails, Elixir) usually have one central framework that provides the standard basics. Libraries, tools and other extensions are built on top of the framework to enhance the feature set. Everything typically works well together.

JavaScript has multiple frameworks to implement components, multiple tools to implement bundling, multiple tools to implement modular/extensible stylesheets, multiple package managers with somewhat different features (e.g. when it comes to monorepo support), and multiple libraries to implement basic standard functions.

Many of these are not compatible with each other. Compatibility is a combinatorial explosion problem that cannot be solved without standardization. Without it, you need to have m*n modules to have m things talk to n other things. Extensions to the ecosystem therefore typically have partial compatibility with all the tools, which further widens the breadth of the problem.

There's been very little effort in the community to standardize interfaces and protocols: but for the few things where it has been successful (e.g. see package.json) we've seen much nicer and smoother interop/tool interchangeability. We need more of this, especially when it comes to open-ended "plugin" style stuff (e.g. bundler plugins/extensions, component interfaces, monorepo structures)

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

#74

Post by sbf501 »

Here's an unpopular opinion: it is unstable because we don't know what exactly "front-end" means. First it was static HTML pages, then it was CGI (ColdFusion & DHTML FTW!), then it was PHP, then it was Rails, then it was Node, then it was React, Angular, Vue...

Those aren't random progressions. On the contrary, they are front-end devs responding to needs of the UX moreso than the UI. There have been major efforts to make reactivity match what the user is trying to do, but we're still in unstable-land because we're building the bridge while we cross (I hate that analogy but it is true).

Just my $0.01.

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

#75

Post by chrisco255 »

moonchrome wrote: post #45
holoduke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know one single UI/UX development environment which is elegant and nice. From Android to iOS to Linux to Linux and Windows to browser UI kits. They are all complex and require constant searching for answers. The libraries are very big and require a complex tooling setup. You can never be an expert in all of them. At least not me.

Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. As shitty as Android support matrix can be - it doesn't compare to IE6 web days (at least in terms of UI development, stuff like OS services is entirely next level - but you can't even start doing that in JS so it's n…

Very few websites/frameworks/libraries support IE nowadays. And Edge being Chromium-based, means most of the polyfill issues have been resolved. You can reach 99+% of browsers by writing in modern web standards (HTML5/CSS3) without having to worry much. Web dev is probably nicer than it's ever been.

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

#76

Post by vosper »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
pljung wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed reading your article, thanks for writing it. I think your recommendation to new devs to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. > I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. Do you mind elaborating why you believe this is the case?

>to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. now that it is 2022, what's the new flavor that would be prescient? I don't ask to actually know, but to reiterate the problem of nothing being solid in this world.

NextJS is still looking pretty good if you're in React land. There's new competition, like Remix, Astro, etc... but I don't see any of them putting NextJS to bed. I'm starting a new application, and I'm still choosing NextJS.

(Now what you couple with NextJS for data access is an interesting question - this is where there's a lot of innovation. Personally, I'm going with tRPC. I would look at Edge DB, but in this application I'll need a recursive CTE and Edge can't do it.)

Edit: I do think Astro might replace NextJS for purely-static sites, or ones where the "islands of interactivity" pattern is compelling.

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

#77

Post by truthwhisperer »

sbf501 wrote: post #74

Here's an unpopular opinion: it is unstable because we don't know what exactly "front-end" means. First it was static HTML pages, then it was CGI (ColdFusion & DHTML FTW!), then it was PHP, then it was Rails, then it was Node, then it was React, Angular, Vue... Those aren't random progressions. On the contrary, they are front-end devs responding to needs of the UX moreso than the UI. There have been major efforts to…

No post body was provided.

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

#78

Post by markhesketh »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
pljung wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed reading your article, thanks for writing it. I think your recommendation to new devs to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. > I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. Do you mind elaborating why you believe this is the case?

>to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. now that it is 2022, what's the new flavor that would be prescient? I don't ask to actually know, but to reiterate the problem of nothing being solid in this world.

I'm not in the JS space, but if my twitter feed is anything to go by it'll be https://remix.run/

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

#79

Post by Jenk »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
pljung wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed reading your article, thanks for writing it. I think your recommendation to new devs to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. > I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. Do you mind elaborating why you believe this is the case?

>to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. now that it is 2022, what's the new flavor that would be prescient? I don't ask to actually know, but to reiterate the problem of nothing being solid in this world.

Still next.js, probably. Keep an eye on Svelte.

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

#80

Post by ricardobeat »

zero_shift wrote: post #54

I'm the author of this piece. I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. I think there are a lot of _vendors_ trying to usher in a revolution around their particular products - there's a lot of VC funding in JavaScript tooling nowadays - but that's a different problem.

You covered the frameworks, but a lot of the feeling comes from the tooling and library ecosystem. For example, a recap of the last 10 years:

- grunt / broccoli / gulp / browserify / webpack / metro / esbuild / parcel / swc / turborepo / bun

- flummox / redux / unstated / mobx / mobx-state-tree / xstate / apollo / apollo-link-state / swr / react-query / zustand / recoil / jotai

And this is just within React, and off the top of my head. Then you add all the ECMAScript versions, browser feature churn, node.js, npm/yarn, immutability, classes, functional components, hooks, fiber, the list goes on and on.

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