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Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

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Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#21

Post by _bxg1 »

Much of JS's turbulence in the past 5 years has centered on it coming into its own as a "real" programming language/ecosystem. Modules, a headless VM, reactive patterns for user interfaces. All of these are things that other languages started out with, whereas JavaScript started out as, well, a scripting language. It was just sprinkled atop HTML pages, not running the whole show.

So my guess would be that things are going to slow down soon. Not completely; JS might remain one of the most turbulent ecosystems. But I think there will be a sharp dropoff in churn.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#23

Post by emilecantin »

_bxg1 wrote: post #21

Much of JS's turbulence in the past 5 years has centered on it coming into its own as a "real" programming language/ecosystem. Modules, a headless VM, reactive patterns for user interfaces. All of these are things that other languages started out with, whereas JavaScript started out as, well, a scripting language. It was just sprinkled atop HTML pages, not running the whole show. So my guess would be that things are…

Yeah, Javascript just lived through its "adolescence", with all the changes and hormonal swings such a phase entails.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#24

Post by epicureanideal »

rolleiflex wrote: post #11

From what I could see, the amount of churn in the Javascript world is unsurpassed by anything in software or product, almost to an order of magnitude. I ended up being a product designer (my main, academic education), a frontend, and a backend with varying levels of expertise in my lifetime, so I have some direct experience. My current advice as of April 2019 is to keep calm, if you can stay away from JS, do it, if y…

What do you think is problematic with Webpack? Or do you think it will simply become unnecessary at some point?

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#25

Post by notduncansmith »

rolleiflex wrote: post #11

From what I could see, the amount of churn in the Javascript world is unsurpassed by anything in software or product, almost to an order of magnitude. I ended up being a product designer (my main, academic education), a frontend, and a backend with varying levels of expertise in my lifetime, so I have some direct experience. My current advice as of April 2019 is to keep calm, if you can stay away from JS, do it, if y…

I like your advice to avoid Webpack and prefer TypeScript, but I think the advice to lean away from JS in general is poorly-founded. JS is a powerful, portable language with lots of opportunities to add value. It’s a good language to have in your toolkit along with others, and you can make a good living by learning to write good JS programs.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#27

Post by Jorge1o1 »

rolleiflex wrote: post #11

From what I could see, the amount of churn in the Javascript world is unsurpassed by anything in software or product, almost to an order of magnitude. I ended up being a product designer (my main, academic education), a frontend, and a backend with varying levels of expertise in my lifetime, so I have some direct experience. My current advice as of April 2019 is to keep calm, if you can stay away from JS, do it, if y…

What's the matter with Webpack? It carries quite a lot of advantages, like tree-shaking, code splitting, and lazy loading.

These are real, tangible performance benefits, so I'm going to need some kind of compelling evidence as to why avoid Webpack.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#28

Post by ummonk »

The way of doing things in front end was rather crappy until 5 years ago. Front end development was basically in development and not ready for production yet until the creation of react. I expect it to slow down and behave more like a mature framework / language now.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#29

Post by doodpants »

No, there are plenty of areas of software development that are much more stable. Nearly 6 years ago, I took a new job to develop a Windows desktop application using C# and WinForms. It hasn't changed much since then. There have been a few updates to the C# language to add some syntactic sugar, and to better handle certain niche concerns, but nothing that's had any major impact on how we typically implement things.

Re: Ask HN: Is all programming constantly changing or just front-end JavaScript?

#30

Post by ng12 »

Honestly, I don't think it's really changed all that much. I think React/Vue/Angular/etc are confusing for people who don't write a lot of front-end applications but honestly I'm writing the same code I used to write years ago with jQuery except now it's a whole lot easier and more maintainable.

I think what has changed is a lot more people are writing SPAs (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones) and are shocked by the complexity. It's like any other type of development: pick the right tools for your job and know them well.

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