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Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

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Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#121

Post by Aldo_MX »

OskarS wrote: post #59
plexicle wrote: post #17

Your first foray into web development and you picked a large, unfinished (it wasn't final) framework to learn with? Then you are complaining that there were breaking changes you had to deal with? I get your beef with the ecosystem, but this is a very unfair knock on Angular 2. Angular 2 was not the problem here at all. Am I missing something obvious?

He didn't pick up a pre-alpha nightly build of the framework, he used the release candidate for christ's sake. A release candidate is a "release candidate", that is to say "we're pretty sure we could release this whole thing right now, but we want to send it out to the community to make sure there are no catastrophic bugs we haven't noticed". In other words feature-complete, and with most of the kinks ironed out. It'…

  He didn't pick up a pre-alpha nightly build of the framework, he used the release candidate for christ's sake
Quoted for emphasis.

Release Candidate means "The API is considered finished and we are stabilizing the code before our final release"

Release Candidate doesn't mean "Beware! Don't you dare to build a real world application with our library since we will be breaking the API on a whim".

If I wanted a dependency to have unpredictable breaking changes every minor version I would pick an Alpha version, not a Release Candidate one.

Although to be fair, in my particular case it was my fault, seeing "Breaking Changes" in the changelog of a Release Candidate was a red flag I decided to ignore.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#123

Post by janfoeh »

rpeden wrote: post #106
janfoeh wrote: post #76

I've said it before here and I'll say it again: the JS ecosystem is moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes I feel that with Javascript, we developers have taken something that wasn't ours, and we're in the process of destroying the best thing there ever was about it. One of its best qualities used to be that you could have absolutely no idea what you're doing, read a few bad tutorials somewhere on the web, mash you…

Don't worry too much. I don't see browsers dropping ES5 support any time soon, and jQuery isn't going to disappear. There will still be plenty of opportunity for people to jump in seize great market opportunities using PHP, jQuery, and chewing gum while all of us full-time professionals are here on HN arguing about Angular vs React and whether npm is insane, awesome, or both.

Thank you, and I hope you are right.

Again, don't get me wrong - when I was writing what was called DHTML almost fifteen years ago, I would have killed for the APIs, capabilities and cross-platform stability we have today. It's a good thing. Lots of shiny.

I simply feel that this is a concern that doesn't get enough attention, certainly not around circles like these that in the end drive the further evolution of development on the web platform. And that we collectively would do well to at least acknowledge the trade-offs we're making in the process.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#124

Post by altern8 »

janfoeh wrote: post #76

I've said it before here and I'll say it again: the JS ecosystem is moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes I feel that with Javascript, we developers have taken something that wasn't ours, and we're in the process of destroying the best thing there ever was about it. One of its best qualities used to be that you could have absolutely no idea what you're doing, read a few bad tutorials somewhere on the web, mash you…

You can still do the exact horrible thing you're describing.

However, JavaScript now gets used by real programmers for real applications, and has therefore evolved to accomodate for that.

You're saying (incorrectly) that now inexperienced programmers can't put crappy scripts online without knowing what they're doing and hope the thing works. Well, you can still do that, but you can also actually learn the language and build serious stuff.

I can't see how this is the wrong direction for JavaScript.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#125

Post by untog »

janfoeh wrote: post #76

I've said it before here and I'll say it again: the JS ecosystem is moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes I feel that with Javascript, we developers have taken something that wasn't ours, and we're in the process of destroying the best thing there ever was about it. One of its best qualities used to be that you could have absolutely no idea what you're doing, read a few bad tutorials somewhere on the web, mash you…

jQuery isn't dead - they're still releasing new versions. You can still do everything you used to be able to. But now you can also do more - you can sensibly modularise your code. Virtual DOMs bring huge performance boosts with very little work.

IMO, the JavaScript ecosystem has matured. Sometimes in weird ways that aren't great, but it's still better to have an irritating package manager than no package manager at all. But there's no price to be paid here - if you don't want to use any of it, you don't have to.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#126

Post by Zelphyr »

oldmanjay wrote: post #98
janfoeh wrote: post #76

I've said it before here and I'll say it again: the JS ecosystem is moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes I feel that with Javascript, we developers have taken something that wasn't ours, and we're in the process of destroying the best thing there ever was about it. One of its best qualities used to be that you could have absolutely no idea what you're doing, read a few bad tutorials somewhere on the web, mash you…

If it were impossible to trivially build low-function websites, you'd have more impact with your point. As it stands, it comes off more like union guys complaining that hardworking people make them look bad.

Seems to me OP is stating the exact opposite. That the JS ecosystem used to be more egalitarian with a much lower barrier to entry than (ironically) what frameworks like React and Angular provide.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#127

Post by moloch »

RKoutnik wrote: post #82
WalterSear wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfinished? How about never finished. >Angular 2 is going to have breaking changes only every 6 months from now on. So the next one would be around February with Angular 3. Yes exactly, they’re also finally switching to semantic versioning which is a huge win in my opinion. IMHO, breaking changes every six months is the recipe for an shitshow of an ecosystem. http://juristr.com/blog/2016/09/ng2-released/

One other project comes to mind that also updates every six months: Ubuntu. Last I checked, their ecosystem was doing fairly well. I wouldn't consider Ubuntu "unfinished" unless we're talking about the state of all software everywhere.

Ubuntu also has LTS releases for this exact reason.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#128

Post by kelvin0 »

Udik wrote: post #120
kelvin0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the path I've taken. I figured if I start out with right off the bat, and not understand the foundation, I'd be screwed in the long run. My reasoning is that once I grasp JS's quirks/ins/outs (I'm looking at you 'this'), well I'd be ready to see the light and better choose a framework. So far, I think ReactJS nailed it, but keep in mind I am fairly new to Web Dev (coming from PC/Console/C++ world) so…

You'll certainly have a hard time if you think you can use any javascript framework without knowing javascript itself. Not understanding how 'this' works is like not understanding how classes work in an oo language, and no framework will ever hide that from you.

Although what you mention seems obvious, you have to remember that is quite easy nowadays to cobble up some functionality with minimal knowledge by applying ready-made 'recipes' and following the ton of tutorials available in any language/framework (especially as an experienced programmer). The gotchas become painful when you start to dig through without prior knowledge of the nuts and bolts for debugging/profiling/scaling your application.

So I completely agree with you, but I've seen many programmers whip up something in a weekend and not be able to extend the functionality of their app because they had no idea how everything fit together in the 'magical framework' of their choice.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#129

Post by bombtrack »

LouisSayers wrote: post #103
stupidcar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it! Literally all you need is React. Oh, plus react-router for routing, I guess. And Redux, obviously. Plus react-router-redux to link them together, and react-router-scroll for scroll history. Also react-intl to handle internationalisation. And react-helmet to do document header stuff. You'll need to use immutable as well, obviously , so you'll need redux-immutable. And redux-saga. Hmm, you'll definite…

Lmao, this is exactly how I've felt, and why I'm using ordinary js with closures and a bit of jquery for the time being while I get up to speed and figure out wtf is going on. "Javascript the good parts" has served me well.

If what you're trying to accomplish is feasible and maintainable with "ordinary js ... and a bit of jquery" then using a full React+Flux stack like the OP outlined is complete overkill. If someone has experience with those libs and tools then they'll probably use it even for trivial projects. However that does not mean it's prescribed for _everyone_ to use _every time_ they need to write a bit of javascript functionality.

I really wish people would qualify what they're trying to accomplish when they bang on about things being "needlessly complex". Maybe for what they're doing it totally is and they shouldn't be distracted with React, Flux, Webpack, etc. There's nothing wrong with that. However, when taking on a project where these sorts of things are immensely useful, it's nice they exist.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#130

Post by [deleted] »

RussianCow wrote: post #88
jt2190 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google tends to release code and promote it without > really using it much internally first. Is this actually true? My understanding (from watching many AngularJS presentations) is that Angular was developed with input from many teams at Google. (edit: Angular was first used on an internal app at Googel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1A1VR0ibIQ&feature=youtu.be... )

"with input" != actually using it. There are very few public-facing Google apps/sites that use Angular, whereas a large chunk of the Facebook frontend uses React and their other libraries like Relay. That said, I have no idea if/how Google uses Angular internally, so it might get more use than we see from the outside.

[deleted]
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