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The Frontend Treadmill

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Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#221

Post by tkcranny »

dekhn wrote: post #212

I've proposed an idea several times that I think might resolve this situation, but it's never received any real uptake and I can see some serious issues with the approach. Instead of building a "inner system" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect ) where the browser uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript to create interactive applications, or attempting to make a sandboxed and highly limited execution environ…

Reminds me of: https://xkcd.com/1367/

Webpages being rendered framebuffers would be terrible for consistency and accessibility. All the logic for layout computation, responsive design, font rendering, and literally thousands of other things browser have developed over the decades would go out the window.

But on the topic of multi-architecture, that’s really what web assembly is. I’d be surprised if it didn’t continue too become more important, it looks like it’s escaping the browser and into backend apps and server code too.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#222

Post by rcleveng »

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…

I'm still using npm and wasn't sure if I should use yarn or pnmp, is there a clear winner here on this one?

Is there an authoritative place to know which ways the winds of change are blowing on this? I ask since both of them (yarn and pnpm) have recent releases within the last days and weeks.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#223

Post by mlboss »

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…

Are you using the same version of React that you started 10 years ago? More importantly can you use the React version that was 10 years ago ? Can you even build a 10 year project ?

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#224

Post by endemic »

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…

It's not just React, but all the other rando packages that your co-workers installed.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#225

Post by LocalPCGuy »

porterehunley wrote: post #166

As a developer just starting to get into frontend, I'm wondering how learning core-web technologies has helped frontend developers vs just going all-in on on something like React.

As someone with 15+ years of experience, a lot of that FE specific, that is the advice I always give newer devs if asked. Learn the fundamentals of Javascript, HTML, CSS (it's like a 3 legged stool, even if the JS leg is oversized in the days of web apps). If you know how to program, and you know the fundamentals, you can work in whatever framework is thrown your way.

Now, practically speaking, that's actually probably better advice for someone with a job and 1-2 years in. To get an initial foothold in the industry, people often need to specialize in one specific thing (React at the moment most likely), in order to be able to demonstrate enough competence to get that initial job and so I understand how fundamentals can be backburnered initially. But I recommend devs don't let that initial success lock them into that framework - that's the time to get back and learn all the fundamentals, go wide, learn a couple other frameworks even so it's easy to compare and contrast the strengths/weaknesses of each.

And you will want to be well-versed in the framework you currently use day to day, knowing best practices, architecture patterns that work and those to avoid, etc. Knowing the fundamentals will help, but there will be framework specific things that will change from framework to framework, even code-base to code-base sometimes. So it's always going to be a bit of a balance. But long-term, IMO, being well-versed in the fundamentals affords you the most flexibility and employ-ability long-term.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#227

Post by toddwprice »

I also miss the web. When HTTP form posts were a thing. React and friends are desktop apps, delivered over HTTP, where the browser is the runtime. You know why we got so obsessed with JavaScript? Cause screen refreshes look janky. "Just use XMLHttpRequest to send the data ONLY over the wire! And get data ONLY as a response!" That's how we got into this mess. I'm not saying you don't need JavaScript, or there aren't reasons to use React. I'm saying there are easier solutions to jank. If good engineering is the ability to design the least complicated solution to a problem, we are far from good engineering.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#228

Post by pookha »

mablopoule wrote: post #146
mplanchard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree you can avoid it with care, but I do think it's a JavaScript problem, at least moreso than in other languages. The culture is one of acceptance of churn. It seems like everything from minor libraries to major frameworks is much more likely to introduce a breaking change in JS than in Rust, C++, or even python. I've never written any emacs lisp that I had to change when upgrading emacs, and the third-party lib…

I don't think it's a Javascript problem in the sense that it's due to intrinsics properties of Front-end developpement, or of NPM, but I do agree that's in a cultural problem in the Javascript ecosystem, especially around React. My theory is that there was a perfect storm around 2015 where everyone and their dog was encouraged to learn to code, especially by going through a coding bootcamp where they were mainly taug…

LOL 2015 was a banner year for the trendy web-dev influencers...I can remember junior developers tripping over themselves trying to implement "flux" to handle some form input. Needlessly complex bullshit libraries got forced down everyone's throat because AngularJS was passe and React was "very mindful, very demure". Eventually flux became "redux", which I gather was a "state management" framework that ripped off a post graduate students custom niche language. And I want to say the redux kid's background was literally microsoft powerpoint scripting. Very surreal time in development.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#229

Post by molteanu »

ninininino wrote: post #208
Aurornis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm only recently getting into some of the dev influencer stuff (and enjoying watching some!), I've discovered Primeagen and Theo but that's about it. Are you willing to name some names? I am trying to still form my mental model about these people and what I should pay attention to and what I should ignore.

I agree with the other comment. Ignore them all, go with the fundamentals. Heck, ask chatgpt what do they think are the fundamental ideas in computer science and go from there. Look for classic books written on those subjects. There have been plenty of smart people around the sw field who took years of their lives to write succint and valuable technical books! Use them! Ignore the poison-mixers who probably didn't write a single line of code in their whole life!

Go for a decent text editor, learn how to type! It's incredible how we use ai tools to write code for us but some don't know how to actually write themselves! Again, look it up, there are plenty of resources out there. If in doubt, search for said resources here on hn. If still in doubt, ask chatgpt what does the hn community recommend for x or y.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#230

Post by tshaddox »

fragmede wrote: post #33
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…

Wait, we're supposed to use pnpm now? What happened to yarn? What's wrong with npm? I stop paying attention for six months and even the installer has changed. What's an npx?

With respect, you almost certainly stopped paying attention for much longer than six months. yarn v2 was a significant rewrite that was released five years ago and a lot of Yarn projects either never upgraded or just switched back to npm (because npm eventually addressed most of the major reasons that yarn was better than npm).
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