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Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

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Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#21

Post by EricDeb »

Encosia wrote: post #19
wprl wrote: post #9

I too think Angular is overly complex and "magical." The JavaScript world should be learning from the mistakes of monolithic and semi-monolithic frameworks such as ASP.NET and SEAM not trying to recreate them. For my part I'd like to see separate libraries for events, views, models, syncing models to persistent storage, and binding models to forms. Small micro-libraries allow maximum flexibility and efficiency, and f…

I wish I could give this comment a million upvotes. From my perspective as someone who has developed on the MS stack for 15+ years, frameworks like angular and ember strike me as (retroactively) following right in the footsteps of Silverlight and ASP.NET WebForms. To be clear, I don't think that's a good thing.

I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. It takes so much more mind-energy for someone to implement/refactor/add-to/test complex code written by someone else as opposed to simple/verbose code.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#22

Post by grrowl »

wprl wrote: post #9

I too think Angular is overly complex and "magical." The JavaScript world should be learning from the mistakes of monolithic and semi-monolithic frameworks such as ASP.NET and SEAM not trying to recreate them. For my part I'd like to see separate libraries for events, views, models, syncing models to persistent storage, and binding models to forms. Small micro-libraries allow maximum flexibility and efficiency, and f…

One of the first things that "broke my brain" when starting with Angular.js (during its wild 0.x days) was inferred injection — I know Javascript. I know how arguments are passed. What the fuck is happening here??

At that time documentation was sparse and often incorrect, but I'm very glad they're moving to a more predictable and sane DI model.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#23

Post by batoure »

AdrianRossouw wrote: post #20
batoure wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also pretty excited to see the next release. I have read about potentially including lazy loading in the base which personally would be really huge. Not having to integrate Require would be a pretty interesting to me if it happens

have you met my friend [1] browserify? I'm probably not the audience for require.js, because I've never had a situation where I was forced to not have a build step. Once you just accept that there's always a build step, life becomes so much easier. [1] http://daemon.co.za/2014/03/subtly-meta-introduction-to-brow...

>Once you just accept that there's always a build step, life becomes so much easier.

Sigh... but I don't want there to be a build step... :(

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#24

Post by Bahamut »

I'm a huge fan of dependency injection, it makes life infinitely better when designing your code & testability.

That said, I'm somewhat sympathetic to this complaint - it turns me off towards Backbone. However, I argue that it isn't nearly as bad as views with Backbone. In addition, this is changing in 2.0 with a much cleaner injection mechanism.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#25

Post by AdrianRossouw »

wprl wrote: post #9

I too think Angular is overly complex and "magical." The JavaScript world should be learning from the mistakes of monolithic and semi-monolithic frameworks such as ASP.NET and SEAM not trying to recreate them. For my part I'd like to see separate libraries for events, views, models, syncing models to persistent storage, and binding models to forms. Small micro-libraries allow maximum flexibility and efficiency, and f…

How I feel about angular now is that it's a vision of what web development could be like in the future.

A lot of this stuff only really makes sense once the entire environment is present. Polymer is actually fairly similar, but trying to tackle the problem from a different angle.

It has the potential to do less in the future, and I think right now it's an interesting proving ground for and ideas and teaching people to think about things differently.

You should see this slideshow about their plans : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Gv-dvU-yy6WY7SiNJ9QR...

I'm much much more comfortable with backbone myself. If I didn't specifically set out to build a couch-app, i would not have been able to justify using angular.

interestingly, i realized i like backbone for the opposite reason i like angular. I don't actively expect it to get more complex over time. It just feels like each new release 'tightens up' the formula.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#26

Post by AdrianRossouw »

EricDeb wrote: post #21
Encosia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could give this comment a million upvotes. From my perspective as someone who has developed on the MS stack for 15+ years, frameworks like angular and ember strike me as (retroactively) following right in the footsteps of Silverlight and ASP.NET WebForms. To be clear, I don't think that's a good thing.

I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. It takes so much more mind-energy for someone to implement/refactor/add-to/test complex code written by someone else as opposed to simple/verbose code.

yeah man.

when i subtitled my blog sensible complexity, I didn't realize that it was actually something I cared so deeply about.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#27

Post by AdrianRossouw »

Bahamut wrote: post #24

I'm a huge fan of dependency injection, it makes life infinitely better when designing your code & testability. That said, I'm somewhat sympathetic to this complaint - it turns me off towards Backbone. However, I argue that it isn't nearly as bad as views with Backbone. In addition, this is changing in 2.0 with a much cleaner injection mechanism.

dependency injection is fine. just the magic argument detection wasn't a good idea.

Backbone views has nothing to do with this, imo.

The thing I miss the most when using backbone, and I use it a _LOT_, is observables. Binding and unbinding model events can get really tedious.

Marionette really does help for that, but this stuff can still get out of hand.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#28

Post by frou_dh »

EricDeb wrote: post #21
Encosia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could give this comment a million upvotes. From my perspective as someone who has developed on the MS stack for 15+ years, frameworks like angular and ember strike me as (retroactively) following right in the footsteps of Silverlight and ASP.NET WebForms. To be clear, I don't think that's a good thing.

I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. It takes so much more mind-energy for someone to implement/refactor/add-to/test complex code written by someone else as opposed to simple/verbose code.

> I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general.

I imagine every programmer will claim to value simplicity. Trouble is, they're all talking past each other because their working definition is "the way I personally do things".

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#29

Post by AdrianRossouw »

batoure wrote: post #23
AdrianRossouw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you met my friend [1] browserify? I'm probably not the audience for require.js, because I've never had a situation where I was forced to not have a build step. Once you just accept that there's always a build step, life becomes so much easier. [1] http://daemon.co.za/2014/03/subtly-meta-introduction-to-brow...

>Once you just accept that there's always a build step, life becomes so much easier. Sigh... but I don't want there to be a build step... :(

I feel for you man. I really recommend you just try to build something, even if it's a little demo of some sort, with the assumption that you are going to have a build step.

I just found that the result of that assumption ends up with something that is a lot easier to work with and reason about, than trying to rail against it by using something like r.js.

Re: Complexity Creeps: Why I'm Concerned for the Future of Angular.js

#30

Post by AdrianRossouw »

frou_dh wrote: post #28
EricDeb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. It takes so much more mind-energy for someone to implement/refactor/add-to/test complex code written by someone else as opposed to simple/verbose code.

> I think simplicity is undervalued in the programmer world in general. I imagine every programmer will claim to value simplicity. Trouble is, they're all talking past each other because their working definition is "the way I personally do things".

maybe, except that I try to improve how I do things on every iteration.

i've been finding that it helps me to think about these things in a more concrete manner, so that i can vocalize to myself what I didn't enjoy in the recent experiences.

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