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The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

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11–20 of 87 posts

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#11

'toxic positivity' that's a new one

Yeah, that's the part that really kills me about JavaScript. I can deal with the language, npm, some curious conventions in the community, every "npm install" telling me I have 100+ security vulnerabilities. It's the whole "THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING OF AWESOMENESS SINCE THE INVENTION OF AWESOMENESS!!!!" that kills me, which is really just my snarky way of saying that I found there's generally some serious lack of introspection in the community at large. Something like, say, the Python packaging situation is far from ideal, but people are generally pretty honest about the fact that the situation sucks, and that it has sucked for quite a few years. Python devs tend to get embarrassed when you ask about packaging, or the GIL, and most ecosystems have some pain point(s) like that.

I understand that some problems are just hard, that there are obstacles, or that things you build don't always turn out to work as well as you intended when you started out (sometimes what seemed like a good idea at the start turn out not to be so good ideas later on), and that many things are also trade-offs where there is no perfect solution. That's all okay. It's the whole attitude I find hard to deal with.

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#12
I feel the author misjudges the people making these decisions because for them in their own situation, the choice of large frameworks isn't the right one.

But many smart people are in different situations in which the best decision is to use a framework.

If I'm Amazon or Google and each ms of time to page load (p99 and average) is measurably worth a 6+ figure sum of money per year, then yes, cutting out the framework and going very very basic is the right thing to do.

If I'm a startup with 3 engineers who need to iterate quickly and don't care about page load time (yet) then I'm going to reach for React.

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#13

What's the missing context for this thread? This person seems upset at something, but it's entirely unclear what they're actually talking about...

I dunno, he seems to say at first that not naming whatever he is talking about is a bad idea. And then never names what he's talking about.

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#14

Ah, yes. Everyone’s favorite whipping boy: the front end developers. I don’t think the last decade was a mistake. React (and Preact and similar) are my favorite ways to build out UIs. I prefer it to every other thing I’ve tried— and I’ve tried just about every other thing, including building native UIs for a decade. It’s not perfect. I think we’ll find a better approach eventually, which is why I’m fine with the chur…

Yeah, I think people who pretend that modern FE is possible without React or another similar framework haven't built a modern frontend and dealt with all the demands for interactivity that users have nowadays and the complexity this brings regarding rendering logic, state, etc.

There's still a time and place for sending HTML and maybe a few tiny JS files down the wire, but for anything "application-like" it's just not feasible, unless your business is so big and performance matters so much that hundreds/thousands of engineering hours are a valid tradeoff to achieve it.

Regarding data loading and performance, there is a lot of exciting stuff in the near future - Remix loaders, Next.js RFC, React 'use' RFC, Quik, Astro, better bundling/build tools, etc.

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#17

As a PM, I’m used to being blamed for shit going wrong (it’s part of the JD). But c’mon… the state of modern FE development… that’s my fault too???

You’re a pm. By default, everything is your fault :)

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#18
post #2

After reading the entire thread I am still in the dark about what exactly the author wants to see changed. The narrative that frameworks = bad and vanilla js = good falls apart quickly IMHO in medium to large sized projects since the complexity has to be abstracted in some way in order to reach a realistic timeframe for completion.

I'm in the same boat, I was expecting some punchline .. it's just moaning without anything concrete

I couldn’t even get through it. I sort of hate Twitter threads. Lost are the days of making your point in 140 characters or less.

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#19

Ah, yes. Everyone’s favorite whipping boy: the front end developers. I don’t think the last decade was a mistake. React (and Preact and similar) are my favorite ways to build out UIs. I prefer it to every other thing I’ve tried— and I’ve tried just about every other thing, including building native UIs for a decade. It’s not perfect. I think we’ll find a better approach eventually, which is why I’m fine with the chur…

I hate my spouse's lousy cooking; the slow, clunky way their hips move when they walk; but most of all, their cringe poetry. But until I find someone better or at least less embarrassing to be seen with in public, I'm sticking with 'em.

OK, so what about Vue.js? Or is it dead to you already?

Re: The front end community wants to wash its hands of the decade we lost

#20

'toxic positivity' that's a new one

Yeah, that's the part that really kills me about JavaScript. I can deal with the language, npm, some curious conventions in the community, every "npm install" telling me I have 100+ security vulnerabilities. It's the whole "THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING OF AWESOMENESS SINCE THE INVENTION OF AWESOMENESS!!!!" that kills me, which is really just my snarky way of saying that I found there's generally some serious lack o…

maybe people enjoy working with it .. I love it, I went from a systems admin/customer support to being a senior react dev, I learned angular, than some javascript, than some programming and then some more and some more.
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