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Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

bradfrost.com

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Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#11

Post by reificator »

nexuist wrote: post #3
throwaway8879 wrote: post #2

The last time I did a bit of frontend for a side project was in 2004. Then I took a long break from dev and computers in general. Earlier this year I'd decided to brush up on the whole frontend/JS ecosystem. It was weird initially and there was a lot of friction, as I was especially fixated with a "why can't I stick this in a tag, what even is NPM..." mindset. I have the say, after getting the hang of typescript, rea…

I continue to believe that the loudest perpetrators of JavaScript hate are those who overcomplicate simple things or follow other people's advice to overcomplicate simple things. Things like using SPAs for five page sites, throwing Redux into every CRA installation, npm installing useless packages like is-odd or leftpad (lol), etc. You don't need to use ! You don't need JSX! You don't need ! Surely you still don't ne…

> Surely you still don't need to support !?

We exist. I'm still forced into document mode 5 by the top level frame.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#12

Post by chocolatkey »

nexuist wrote: post #3
throwaway8879 wrote: post #2

The last time I did a bit of frontend for a side project was in 2004. Then I took a long break from dev and computers in general. Earlier this year I'd decided to brush up on the whole frontend/JS ecosystem. It was weird initially and there was a lot of friction, as I was especially fixated with a "why can't I stick this in a tag, what even is NPM..." mindset. I have the say, after getting the hang of typescript, rea…

I continue to believe that the loudest perpetrators of JavaScript hate are those who overcomplicate simple things or follow other people's advice to overcomplicate simple things. Things like using SPAs for five page sites, throwing Redux into every CRA installation, npm installing useless packages like is-odd or leftpad (lol), etc. You don't need to use ! You don't need JSX! You don't need ! Surely you still don't ne…

Even though I use quite a bit of modern JS, it's not the idea of react, vue or whatever frameworks and modern utilities that makes me dislike JS, it's what the author of the article mentioned under "stuff i’m still working through with react" that applies more generally to the community. Some examples:

- `I’m no fortune teller, but I have a hunch a lot of teams are going to spend the next few years untangling a constellation of former “new hotnesses”`: I have seen this multiple times now, where a medium article (I was in fact able to find the exact article based on the stack used and the year in question) inspired someone to create a site with what was (at the time) the trendiest framework. Fast forward 2 years, and things are a complete mess. Patching of the node_modules folder, overloaded MongoDB instances on overpowered servers (just..create an index..), and dependencies so out of date the npm warnings/errors fill your entire screen when you npm install. I tried so hard to "update" the application, but it was hopeless. Spent hours migrating react versions, alpha version of material ui, spaghetti code etc, and eventually gave up. I had never before completely given up on a codebase like this, but updating/migrating things every single month is stressful and takes actual time away from improving the functionality and features of your own code, which brings me to the second quote

- `Every team I work with tells me how hard they’re trying to keep up with the Joneses.`: I love the new possibilities JS has unlocked for creating cool programs that run in the browser. WASM, service workers, etc. are cool innovations, as well the frameworks and packages made by people far more talented than I could ever be. But the way this new ecosystem works, I am constantly pressured by peers to uses the latest, trendiest, best ever tools. I'm fighting to maintain projects less than a year old without the "no one uses sass anymore, use postcss!" "no one uses webpack anymore, use rollup!". For personal projects, I have free reign, but I have lost the battle for stability in the workplace where the majority are more concerned with migrating to a new build tool, framework, or paradigm rather than maintaining existing code. Not to mention the utter disregard of semantic versioning both in workplaces and by package maintainers, causes me to wince in fear when I type `yarn upgrade` because things are almost guaranteed to break if it has been over a month since the last time I did so. By the time I have fixed up things to work again (looked at every github/website for discussion of migration or figuring it out manually) I am exhausted and have ran out of time for working on the codebase iteself.

- `Not super into the quasi-religious vibe of it all` I already said this in the previous bullet point, but people swear by their tools, and want to convert you to their tool of choice. Instead of "that's a nice project, but here's criticism of such and such" you get "that's a nice project, but why didn't you use Framework X for it??" (because framework x didn't even exist a year ago). I do enjoy certain benefits of modern JS, but I don't enjoy being forced to go along with the flow when I don't want to.

- `Trying to figure out what’s a real trend vs a flavor of the month` This one you have to spend a few months on when you start off in the world of modern JS. Once you've found your personal favorite, stick to it! A great thing about the massive size of the JS community is there is some framework/toolset somewhere that will fit you.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#13

Post by krapp »

nexuist wrote: post #3
throwaway8879 wrote: post #2

The last time I did a bit of frontend for a side project was in 2004. Then I took a long break from dev and computers in general. Earlier this year I'd decided to brush up on the whole frontend/JS ecosystem. It was weird initially and there was a lot of friction, as I was especially fixated with a "why can't I stick this in a tag, what even is NPM..." mindset. I have the say, after getting the hang of typescript, rea…

I continue to believe that the loudest perpetrators of JavaScript hate are those who overcomplicate simple things or follow other people's advice to overcomplicate simple things. Things like using SPAs for five page sites, throwing Redux into every CRA installation, npm installing useless packages like is-odd or leftpad (lol), etc. You don't need to use ! You don't need JSX! You don't need ! Surely you still don't ne…

>JavaScript stepped up to the plate because nobody else did.

Javascript didn't "step up" to any plate. Browser vendors simply refused to support other languages.

> Electron is there because nothing else could provide the same level of power for total novices to come in and make groundbreaking applications.

Electron is there because software developers wanted to create apps with cheap labor and there were plenty of javascript web devs around.

> Node is there because nothing else let you hire a guy who could handle literally every single aspect of your business's digital presence, from front end sites to internal employee portals to mobile apps to APIs to vendor integrations.

Node is there because of SV hype and money, and no company should (or would) have the same employee handling "literally every single aspect of your business's digital presence, from front end sites to internal employee portals to mobile apps to APIs to vendor integrations," nor does knowing Javascript qualify a single person for all of these roles.

That's not a use case, it's a power fantasy.

I agree with most of your comment, although it seems as if you believe there was no open source development or public development of software before javascript came along, and the line you're drawing between "javascript" and "elitists manipulating society and capitalism" is specious, but none of what's good about javascript excuses what's bad about the ecosystem, culture and the increasing centralization and control over both by corporate interests.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#15

Post by krapp »

corebit wrote: post #7
nexuist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to believe that the loudest perpetrators of JavaScript hate are those who overcomplicate simple things or follow other people's advice to overcomplicate simple things. Things like using SPAs for five page sites, throwing Redux into every CRA installation, npm installing useless packages like is-odd or leftpad (lol), etc. You don't need to use ! You don't need JSX! You don't need ! Surely you still don't ne…

But seriously why can’t I just do modern webdev with a ?

You absolutely can, and should if you want to, just be prepared for people to look at you like you drive to work in an automobile made of logs and animal skins by pushing your feet against the road.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#16

Post by dbetteridge »

corebit wrote: post #7
nexuist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to believe that the loudest perpetrators of JavaScript hate are those who overcomplicate simple things or follow other people's advice to overcomplicate simple things. Things like using SPAs for five page sites, throwing Redux into every CRA installation, npm installing useless packages like is-odd or leftpad (lol), etc. You don't need to use ! You don't need JSX! You don't need ! Surely you still don't ne…

But seriously why can’t I just do modern webdev with a ?

You can, no-one is going to leap out of the bushes and mug you for doing so.

That said, you lose some of the advantages that come with modern tooling and frameworks such as easily breaking things down into components, using the latest language features before browsers ship them (I'm looking at you mobile safari) and handling things like minification, tree-shaking etc.

BUT that is OK, if you are happy with the tradeoff.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#17

Post by rhaksw »

jypepin wrote: post #10

every time Brad Frost writes something a bit controversial, it always feels like he can write and understand html and css, but anything else (including React) is way over his head. No disrespect, it just feels like he's not spending the time necessary to understand how things work and instead of doing so, he just goes on and vents on his blog.

he writes,

> I also got — and continue to get — a whole lot of (often private) correspondence from a slew of people who feel equally overwhelmed.

Adopting a new framework can be tricky. IMO it's okay to write about "the process of learning" to show that it isn't always a breeze. Posts like this can give perspective to both learners and experienced practitioners.

Speaking for myself, I've enjoyed learning React, though looking back on my first project I can see I've made some pretty bad mistakes with my use of state. I don't know if there is a guide I could have read to avoid these mistakes, or if I just needed to struggle through it.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#18

Post by cljs-js-eval »

ng12 wrote: post #4

> While I’m definitely a lot more fluent in it now, I dunno, it just still feels a bit weird to me. I could share some specifics but that would only invite a bunch of angry nitpicking comments. All I’ll say is that when I go over to projects where I’m writing HTML or HTML-like stuff (Vue, for instance), it feels like a breath of fresh air. JSX is fine, the real power is building your HTML in pure JavaScript. I'll nev…

You should check out CLJS's reagent. It mixes the best of both worlds, everything is a plain CLJS object without special syntax, but it's also obviously HTML/CSS:

  [:div {:style {:display "flex", :flex-direction "row"}}
   [:label {:for "email"}]
   [:input {:type "text"}]]

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#19

Post by cljs-js-eval »

jypepin wrote: post #10

every time Brad Frost writes something a bit controversial, it always feels like he can write and understand html and css, but anything else (including React) is way over his head. No disrespect, it just feels like he's not spending the time necessary to understand how things work and instead of doing so, he just goes on and vents on his blog.

Yeah - I've seen and worked with (very talented!) people like Brad, and I feel for them. They're good at working with this presentational stuff, but it's never been necessary to learn that when they're creating an they're secretly creating an HTMLInputElement. And then one day, they're expected to learn this framework that fits so nicely with the frontend because they try to emulate that hierarchy of objects on the frontend and deal with them in code.

It would be weird to go from a DSL and realize that to move forward you have to get good at general programming. I'm not sure that I would handle that transition very well.

Re: Front-end design, React, and a bridge over the great divide

#20

Post by rhaksw »

patientplatypus wrote: post #14

This feels so foreign to me. Just...use React? JSX syntax isn't hard : Like if it was Haskell or something I would be understanding, but this just sounds like lazy.

React is more than JSX. I don't think the author is lazy. Some relevant points from the blog,

> I’ve done a CodeAcademy class, completed Wes Bos‘s React for Beginners course, bought books, listened to podcasts, and read tutorials. Hell, I even paid someone to build a side-project app I designed in React so I could learn how it works

> I’ve written elsewhere how I’ve never had a computer science course in my life, and I call myself a frontend designer,

> Tooling and build step stuff are tough to get my head around

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