How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016 • Hacker News Board

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#211

Post by lloyd-christmas » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 7:00 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #206

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. Are you saying _I_ demonstrate why the article isn't exaggerating, or that some of the people I've interviewed are?

I am saying that you demonstrate why the article wasnt exaggerating. Cloverich stated that using jQuery was fine and the article was exaggerating how far it has fallen out of favor, but you have stated that anyone using jQuery is out the door when interviewing with you. Therefore theres at least a group of people that article is accurately describing

> Cloverich stated that using jQuery was fine and the article was exaggerating how far it has fallen out of favor, but you have stated that anyone using jQuery is out the door when interviewing with you

That isn't what I said in the slightest. My criticism had nothing to do with jQuery. Go back and replace jQuery with underscore, lodash, ramda... I'm not saying that I would turn away a jQuery developer when interviewing for an angular position. I said that a negative defaulting to a framework/library to solve a vanilla problem is a problem in and of itself. "One of these things is not like the other" is the native Array.prototype.forEach(). It's literally built into the language, and the person added a script tag to include an 85kb file just to run a loop over 3 elements. THAT'S the problem.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#212

Post by AtheistOfFail » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #193

AtheistOfFail wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Rails 5 implements an API mode so you can spin up a new app with only API-level conventions that runs on less memory and just serves JSON. You can add on the standard Postgres DB and Boom! "You just made Rails great again"

Right, that's what I linked to ;)

Oh, I didn't click that... Derp!

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#213

Post by talmand » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

mountaineer22 wrote: post #207

talmand wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was informed of it, I responded with "they are wrong". We'll see how it goes.

Is your intent for Section 508 compliance? If the table cells have specific individual widths and heights, and contain a .gif or .jpg of equal size within them, then that is an inappropriate use of tables today.

This "no table for layout" thing is so strong that people keep insisting that I am saying table elements for layout. I am literally saying "using table elements for a table" and not "layout with a table". It is a table with tabular data in it, just plain text. It is a styled table, but a table nonetheless.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#214

Post by justinsaccount » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

frigo_1337 wrote: post #203

justinsaccount wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need to "JavaScript in 2016" (as a beginner) is a config file and one or two commands And 3 months from now in 2017 those 2 commands will be deprecated because no one uses those programs anymore.

As far as beginners are concerned, that shouldn't really matter. Hide all that complexity in a `./build.sh` or `make` and hand them a config and a README. The author of the article is a web designer with a slightly technical problem to solve. He didn't even need to know about gulp, or grunt, or webpack or babel. Those tools are (should be) as relevant to his domain as the tools used to manufacture the circuits that r…

Not everyone is a beginner web designer. Some people are trying to build things from scratch using JS.

"Just use this magic build.sh!" sounds a lot like "Just use this magic starter kit!" or "Just use yeoman!"

Who is supposed to write this 'build.sh' in this scenario of yours?

Without fail, every single magic build system or magic starter project I have ever used is now deprecated and abandoned.

  Makefiles? No one uses those anymore, use Grunt!
  Grunt?  No one uses that anymore, use Gulp!
  Gulp?  No one uses that anymore, use webpack!

I have a react app that I built on top of a starter kit that I now need to rebuild using create-react-app because the build process broke when I tried updating something.

Meanwhile, I can pick up a python project I worked on 10 years ago, or a go project I started 4 years ago and everything works exactly the same.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#215

Post by moosey » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

cloverich wrote: post #189

moosey wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official react tutorial uses jquery for $.ajax[1]. I'm really not well versed in any of these technologies (but came up with a fun personal project that might end up using them) so I'm assuming that using both together is tame, and that the venn diagram for the two projects doesn't overlap too much. [1]: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tutorial.html

Effectively React replaces (in many cases, simplifying) the base DOM manipulation aspects of jQuery -- but of course it does not replace the other useful utilities jQuery provides, nor the many DOM manipulation plugins in the jQuery community. When I first started with React I was able to use those libraries without issue -- you do have to learn how (when) React allows you to access the DOM and when it expects you to…

After a local tech demo with some CSS3 stuff included, I was amazed by how much could be left out of javascript entirely. My goal with my next project is to learn when to use React vs. jQuery vs. CSS3 for various events that will occur on screen.

I'm excited about it, and I appreciate your explanation. I've never been a front end guy (all devops/scripts and some crud type stuff), so this helps me greatly.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#216

Post by mathgeek » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #134

mathgeek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to more than one interview where I defaulted to jQuery and was immediately disqualified, based on the looks on the interviewers' faces. As a ruby developer, it certainly feels like keeping up-to-date on JS takes more work than the other 90% of languages that I'm familiar with.

> I've been to more than one interview where I defaulted to jQuery and was immediately disqualified Was the role more biased to front end development? Speaking as someone who has been on the other side of the interviewing table, you won't believe the number of people who can use jQuery but are otherwise unfamiliar with vanilla Javascript. I suspect the question itself could have been solved by via plain JS, and you d…

> Was the role more biased to front end development?

These were Rails positions, which in my experience almost always equates to the same skillset expectations as a front-end engineer.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#217

Post by pauljaworski » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #195

pauljaworski wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer his question. What stack do you prefer to use?

Purposefully, as it's utterly irrelevant to the discussion on whether a stack is complex or not.

It is absolutely relevant, since you're criticising his stack. Even if it wasn't, you could still reply, but for some reason you won't. Hmm...

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#218

Post by FrancoDiaz » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

Ambroos wrote: post #187

Kequc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that you are marginalising the amount of complexity you are adding to projects which might not need it. There are multiple routes toward completing the same task in development. My concerns surrounding additional complexity I feel are well founded, there are costs associated with such a thing. If all you are doing is DOM manipulation, without doing a huge amount of it, that isn't such a complex task that it sh…

That's just it. If all your developers are familiar with at least the basics of React and Webpack, you aren't adding any complexity. Once you know how things work, a simple Webpack configuration with Babel and 2 presets isn't complex anymore. What would be complex, however, is introducing DOM logic in yet another way. We're all used how you just define the desired state in React and letting it figure out the transiti…

React in itself is simple, but familiar with and comfortable with the complexity of Webpack is another story ;)

Ok, I guess Webpack isn't too complex, but its weird syntax (the whole right to left chaining) and poor documentation can be a barrier.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#219

Post by morsmodr » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

mathgeek wrote: post #101

cloverich wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where the OP falls off is with stuff like "OMG don't use jQuery" or "no one uses HTML anymore". There's nothing wrong with using those -- and frankly using plain old javascript and HTML is fine. Remember we reached for jQuery in the first place because the browser lacked features we wanted, and because it handled cross browser stuff for us. That is, it simplified things we were already doing manually . So the trap is…

I've been to more than one interview where I defaulted to jQuery and was immediately disqualified, based on the looks on the interviewers' faces. As a ruby developer, it certainly feels like keeping up-to-date on JS takes more work than the other 90% of languages that I'm familiar with.

As was said earlier, finding the right tool is essential. jQuery can still be used if the problem you are solving is limited and confined in scope. We had a website where angular is almost everywhere, we created a new page where there is just a list of check boxes, and another dev did that with Backend code. I just added a small jQuery event listener as the page needed nothing more than to disable a certain set of buttons when one from a set is selected. I could have re-written the entire stuff making angular get the model from server and then using angular in the view. But no, it was just not worth it. If you see that your jQuery component is building up (adding more functionality) then it gets messy/spaghetti etc. But if the interviewer straight away dismissed you at the sound of jQuery you are better off not working there.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#220

Post by cloverich » Tue, Oct 04, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #211

lovich wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that you demonstrate why the article wasnt exaggerating. Cloverich stated that using jQuery was fine and the article was exaggerating how far it has fallen out of favor, but you have stated that anyone using jQuery is out the door when interviewing with you. Therefore theres at least a group of people that article is accurately describing

> Cloverich stated that using jQuery was fine and the article was exaggerating how far it has fallen out of favor, but you have stated that anyone using jQuery is out the door when interviewing with you That isn't what I said in the slightest. My criticism had nothing to do with jQuery. Go back and replace jQuery with underscore, lodash, ramda... I'm not saying that I would turn away a jQuery developer when interview…

> Go back and replace jQuery with underscore, lodash, ramda... It's literally built into the language, and the person added a script tag to include an 85kb file just to run a loop over 3 elements. THAT'S the problem.

Well, jQuery in particular is somewhat of an exception. It achieved such a high level of ubiquity, and solved such a vast array of cross browser issues, it was not unreasonable for a front-end dev to add jQuery as the first step in any project. Similarly, while its "literally built into the language" that's only true in cases where you can drop IE8 support. I would personally be very surprised if there weren't still more quality developers who knew the jQuery or underscore api's better than the native javascript ones.

I think the more general sentiment here is: If you use map / reduce / forEach / etc with jQuery / underscore very well, you can very easily transition into dropping or changing those libraries. But your comment made it sound like you were less interested in how well they could code and more interested in which API's they knew (and knocking them for defaulting to the most widely known ones).