Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The boring front-end developer

thebfed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 149 posts

Re: The boring front-end developer

#2

Post by vilmosi »

Good article, I agree with a lot of this, but I can't help myself from commenting.

>>> When given the choice to add a preprocessor (e.g. LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript etc) to the technology stack, the BFED realises there is a deeper impact beyond just "writing less code". Will it be harder to onboard developers? Will debugging code be more difficult? If the answer to any of these questions is yes then the BFED will say no to preprocessors.

Really? You will ignore the many many advantages of pre-processors because it will be harder to train new people? Come on...

>>> Furthermore, the BFED realises that Single Page Applications cause severe problems and that by avoiding them and leaning on the server appropriately provides a better experience and reach.

That's a bit one sided. There's a time and place for SPAs, you can't just dismiss it entirely. Every web app today should be an SPA.

Edit: I should clarify that by webapp I don't mean website. There seems to be some confusion.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#4

Post by xb »

Boring has its place, and certainly can add a lot of value to a project. If everyones goals are aligned in creating a rock solid web site or app that never needs refactoring and has 100% legacy browser support, then boring is great.

Some of us are attracted to new technologies, and appreciate learning the lessons of what advantages or disadvantages come from building the same type of site or app with a different framework or technology stack. Especially those of us who aren't yet mature enough to write our own apps without the guidance of frameworks, and have not had a chance to work with all of the different possible approaches.

I think a healthy balance can be struck between the type of stability gained from the 'boring' approach, and the types of gains that can be realized from newer 'non-boring' technologies. Sometimes supporting IE6 is not a concern at all, and learning new language features from ES6 is an attractive proposition.

If doing front-end development were boring, I don't think I'd be as interested in doing it.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#5

Post by serve_yay »

A nice thought, but front-end tools are not really mature enough to be boring, sorry. I mean one could credibly say "oh I'm so boring, I use jQuery everywhere" but... that's not actually going to be a boring development experience. It will be exciting, in the bad way.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#7

Post by xwkd »

vilmosi wrote: post #2

Good article, I agree with a lot of this, but I can't help myself from commenting. >>> When given the choice to add a preprocessor (e.g. LESS, SASS, CoffeeScript etc) to the technology stack, the BFED realises there is a deeper impact beyond just "writing less code". Will it be harder to onboard developers? Will debugging code be more difficult? If the answer to any of these questions is yes then the BFED will say no…

I agree with your first point. Pre-processors, especially in the CSS realm, are so intuitive that there should be negligible training overhead. I believe they should be used past a certain threshold.

I disagree with your second point, however. Single page applications are good for pages with a high amount of short, repeated interactivity where concurrency and frequent status updates are prioritized. However, there are plenty of applications that I use where I prefer to have a workflow built on discrete states (pages). They typically perform better in terms of rendering time and latency, both in terms of request and user action. (Just compare reddit's mobile beta to their previous mobile site. I still type in /.compact because I can't stand the new SPA.)

Re: The boring front-end developer

#9

Post by kylnew »

Hmm pretty broad strokes. I think its constantly important to scrutinize ourselves and our tech decisions like this though.

I don't think I'd ever take a front end job that doesn't use a CSS preprocessor, though I understand it was part of a larger example.

It seems like the best product might come out when a BFED and CED need to work together and have the appropriate chemistry not to kill each other.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#10

Post by j_baker »

Blah. Yet another "new-fangled technologies have no place" post. Granted, there's a grain of truth to the core thought. As I've become more experienced, I've seen more frameworks and libraries that re-invent the wheel and solve problems that have already been solved long ago, albeit in a trendier manner.

But at the end of the day, software engineers are technologists. Our job is to create and consume technology. Being afraid of new technology is counter-productive.

Post reply on HN