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The Frontend Treadmill

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Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#171

Post by ewzimm »

Aurornis wrote: post #161
mplanchard wrote: post #2

I have recently been doing some upgrades to the build system for our FE code to swap out yarn for pnpm. I’m normally a backend engineer, but I’ve spent plenty of time in the JS mines. The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like literally everything is deprecated . Oh, you used the apollo CLI in 2022? Bam, deprecated, go learn how to use graphql-client or whatever, which has a totally d…

> It’s just nuts to me the degree to which FE development as a whole seems to embrace the breaking change, the deprecation, etc. I’m amazed at how much of this is driven by the FE influencers. The FE world has embraced social media, YouTube, and even Twitch to a degree that I haven’t seen in other domains. Influencers in these areas need to have a constant stream of fresh material to stay relevant, so they’re always…

That's fascinating, and I had no idea web dev influencers were so big. I checked, and there really are people with millions of followers doing development. Personally, the idea of learning anything related to coding through a video is extremely frustrating. It's a text medium. I want to look at things, take time, think it over, compare code, follow references, look up functions.

That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal. Even if you were raised on video content and started coding that way, at some point you have to reference text documentation, right? At that point, I would think you would just stick to the text and not go back to the video, but maybe it's just more entertaining the other way.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#172

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

I have fallen in love with the simplicity of Rails recently. Sprinkle a bit of stimulus where you really need it. Hell slap a turbo here or there.

And other than that? Pure HTML.

It’s downright lovely. And it’ll still work fine 20 years from now.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#173

Post by hyldmo »

lelandfe wrote: post #153
0x000xca0xfe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the craziest part is that it is built on top of JS/HTML which is an extremely stable technology at heart. 15 years ago I wrote a small (5KLOC) vanilla JS webapp that is still in daily use by around 10 people without a single line changed. It held up better then my Win32 applications! Almost all of the front end churn is simply a political/organizational failure.

This stability does mean that old React (or Knockout, or whatever) applications will still work just fine for the end users, likewise without a single line changed. The instability is on the tooling side (and peer deps). Getting back into a project that uses Broccoli and Bower is a nightmare. And that was just a handful of years ago. You have to become a detective, finding what combination of package versions and Hom…

I will note that Bower’s last non-hotfix release was 8 years ago :)

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#174

Post by codingdave »

jchw wrote: post #145

> Whatever framework you choose will be obsolete in 5 years. I am predominantly not a frontend dev, but when I do do frontend work, (and I don't avoid it by any means,) I have been using React for the past... 10 years now? And while some sentiment has been moving towards Svelte, by the time Svelte overtakes React, it will have been in production for just as long probably. And Angular might eventually run out of steam…

Agreed, and I'd add that "obsolete" is a strong word. You can run an older framework for a long, long time. So long as people exist who know your stack and can be hired to work on it when needed, your stack is not "obsolete". "Dated", maybe. "Legacy" is also sometimes an accurate term. But until the day comes when nobody is left who will work on it, it is not "obsolete".

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#175

Post by pmarreck »

mplanchard wrote: post #2

I have recently been doing some upgrades to the build system for our FE code to swap out yarn for pnpm. I’m normally a backend engineer, but I’ve spent plenty of time in the JS mines. The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like literally everything is deprecated . Oh, you used the apollo CLI in 2022? Bam, deprecated, go learn how to use graphql-client or whatever, which has a totally d…

It's more or less always been like this.

It's why I moved to mainly backend (where feasible).

Because someone has to maintain that crap at some point.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#176

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

Aurornis wrote: post #161
mplanchard wrote: post #2

I have recently been doing some upgrades to the build system for our FE code to swap out yarn for pnpm. I’m normally a backend engineer, but I’ve spent plenty of time in the JS mines. The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like literally everything is deprecated . Oh, you used the apollo CLI in 2022? Bam, deprecated, go learn how to use graphql-client or whatever, which has a totally d…

> It’s just nuts to me the degree to which FE development as a whole seems to embrace the breaking change, the deprecation, etc. I’m amazed at how much of this is driven by the FE influencers. The FE world has embraced social media, YouTube, and even Twitch to a degree that I haven’t seen in other domains. Influencers in these areas need to have a constant stream of fresh material to stay relevant, so they’re always…

I also don't think these front end influencers are even coding very much. Like if you hired them on a job on a serious team, they would probably come off like a junior engineer

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#177

Post by colordrops »

localghost3000 wrote: post #148

> And if you’re an engineer, you will be able to retain much higher market value over time if you dig into and understand core web technologies Been working in FE for nearly 20 years and lived through several major paradigm shifts. I think I am qualified to have an opinion here: I definitely think that you will be a more well-rounded engineer if you know all the core web tech. So strongly agree there. I am skeptical,…

I've been in the market for 30 years, had some of the best jobs on earth doing FE, and only did my first React project last year. Maybe I'm an anomaly but I never felt that not knowing React has been a problem. "table stakes" is too strong a phrase.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#179

Post by Raed667 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #81
Raed667 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because web apps you see today were not feasible even 10 years ago (and I'm not talking about simple static websites)

Like what? I think the web looked more or less the same in 2015 as it does today.

Wasm, WebGPU, a bunch of PWA features etc...

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#180

Post by sergiotapia »

mplanchard wrote: post #2

I have recently been doing some upgrades to the build system for our FE code to swap out yarn for pnpm. I’m normally a backend engineer, but I’ve spent plenty of time in the JS mines. The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like literally everything is deprecated . Oh, you used the apollo CLI in 2022? Bam, deprecated, go learn how to use graphql-client or whatever, which has a totally d…

one wonder how this liability of a tech stack became so popular. i have a theory it was VC dollars pumping up a ton of saas tools and they all came out with one-click integrations.

this is one house of cards that may never really be fixed.

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