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How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

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Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#161

Post by johnnyb_61820 »

greg5green wrote: post #85
zzalpha wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? If your application become sufficiently complex that it can't be easily grokked by a decent dev, that's when you know it's time to switch. Until then it's just over engineering (which the JS community admittedly loves).

Very few teams have the opportunity to switch later on, and if they do, it's at the expense of the job of the person who chose to go without a framework.

Everyone has to refactor into new frameworks later on. Going without a framework early on doesn't add an expense, it actually just subtracts one. It is only if they had chosen the framework (and other code decisions) with perfect future vision that this cost would be mitigated.

I estimate that every 20% that a codebase grows it needs some amount of refactoring. Definitely anything that moves from skunkworks to production will need some pretty heavy rewrites, and will probably need a framework that better meets its newer needs. The question is how much cost was sunk in getting there. The refactor will have to happen no matter what.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#162

Post by anta40 »

The last time I touch JS was probably many years ago, while learning web development in the university.

I mostly write desktop+native mobile apps, and without doubt my JS skill is very rusty :(

Any suggestions how to catch up with JS trend nowadays? JS for web dev is pretty much unavoidable, right?

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#163

Post by minitech »

arctangent wrote: post #70
voidfunc wrote: post #64

Just a couple days I got into a conversation with my coworker about UI stuff. I had to test something against our dev UI. Last time I did UI work was back when having index.html, img/, css/ and js/ directories with maybe a script or two was the norm. I had to fucking run make and I still have no fucking idea what was going on when I ran make which compiled a bunch of shit. There was all this NPM shit going on (isn't…

It doesn't have to be this way. Unfortunately, we live in a world where younger developers "show their skill" by making things overcomplicated in order to create unnecessary barriers to entry to our proto-profession. My usual response is to refuse to work on such a project if I don't have the authority to change how things are done to make them more sane.

“make and npm” doesn’t sound overcomplicated. It sounds like someone didn’t take the time to find out what they were working with, didn’t really need to because it’s not their area, and decided to have an opinion about it anyway.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#164

Post by badminton1 »

Web development is very volatile.

It is also a discipline that lowered its entry barrier a lot, and now coding camps are producing a deluge of graduates, all of them attracted by the promise of a 6 figure salary.

Even if pessimistically only 10% of them are good, they graduate every 14 weeks compared to 208 weeks for a CS graduate.

As of 2016, learning JavaScript might be very profitable, but I wonder for how much longer.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#165

Post by thatswrong0 »

andybak wrote: post #157
thatswrong0 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things has anything to do with the inherent simplicity of the library itself.

Out of the two simplicities one has an actual impact on usage.

I guess what I really meant to say is that you could levy the exact same concerns on many other libraries / frameworks. None of that is specific to React.

I guess I was also assuming that if the OP was considering using React in the first place, that they were doing more with jQuery than just minor interactivity improvements. But I suppose your concerns are valid if that assumption isn't true. I'm thinking app, not blog.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#166

Post by thatswrong0 »

atemerev wrote: post #111
natmaster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React is really very simple. It only takes a short amount of time to learn it, and then when you do you won't get headaches all the time trying to keep track of state. You don't need to know all the toolchains and crap if you just use create-react-app.

React is simple, right until the point it isn't anymore. The point of breakdown probably starts with Redux. There is no simple way of structuring multi-component pages in React. All is suddenly complicated.

I'm confused what you mean by "multi-component pages". I work with a mildly complex React SPA using a library like Redux and we haven't really had issues with things becoming too complicated.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#167

Post by antfarm »

Zelphyr wrote: post #133
throwmenow_0139 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that it's fair to blame the frameworks. You should see it the other way 'round: They save you 80% of your time. The 80/20 rule is real ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle ), 20% of the whole work needs 80% of your time. If you have problems explaining why features need their time, it's not about your frameworks, it's about explaining the clients in all honesty what happens. Or, if you want…

I have to disagree. In my experience, the frameworks get me to 80% completion but I'm not spending the next 20% on achieving completion. I'm spending orders of magnitude more than that fighting the framework, trying to make it function the way my product needs to function. In other words, all of the time saved to get to 80% is lost, and then some, because the framework can't do what my project needs. I've seen this t…

It's more like spending 20% of the time on 80% of the features (the standard ones), then 80% of the time on 20% of the features (the details, hard stuff and integration).

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#168

Post by pdimitar »

trowawee wrote: post #84

It continually shocks me how much whining developers do about sometimes having to learn new things. The requirements for continued education are shockingly low (read: non-existent) in our industry, compared to other, similar intellectual/white collar industries - doctors in California are legally required to do 50 hours of CME/2 years, lawyers in California are legally required to do 25 hours of CLE/3 years, and thos…

There is always that one person that says "others have it worse, thus you're whining if you have trouble doing your job".

Not a valid argument, and won't ever be.

Plus don't forget our education isn't formal. Doctors and lawyers have it much, MUCH more standardized than ourselves. We the devs are pretty much do-it-alls that have to learn 95% of their skills on the go.

You won't ever hear me complaining about learning things on the go. I love it. What I hate however is putting up with the lame work of people who probably can't do much more in their lives beyond tying their shoes. That's what this thread is about -- partially anyway.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#169

Post by pdonorio »

LaxisB wrote: post #103
Fuzzwah wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a content guy who knows enough web dev to be dangerous. I made 3 manual edits to a css file to fix a couple of incorrect background colours in our web content the other day. I was a good boy and made a pull request for those same changes in the git repo. Our developer explained that he doesn't actually edit the css file. He would have to work out the change in the hue (as a percent of the base colour) and update…

a big problem with npm is, that a lot of package authors don't use the .npmignore [0] which leads to EVERYONE downloading your source/, test/ and docs/ folder even if only that one file in build/ is needed. That, combined with the micromodule mindset, leads to insanity [0]: https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/developers#keeping-files-out-of-...

Fear not. We have a tool for that in bower https://github.com/blittle/bower-installer, so I guess there will be one very similar in npm too. :)
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