The Frontend Treadmill • Hacker News Board

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#31

Post by 1GZ0 » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

This really strikes cord with me. I chose early on in my carrier not to use frontend frameworks, precisely because of the added abstraction and inherent complexity they tend to bring to your codebase. Its been tough and limited my prospects significantly as a junior dev. But these days, I'm happy that I chose to steer clear of frameworks. As it really does give you a much more broad understanding of how the web platform works.

Tl;Dr for the juniors out there, learn React if you want a job. Learn javascript if you want a good job.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#32

Post by michpoch » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #5

> Whatever framework you choose will be obsolete in 5 years. I've been writing React professionally for over a decade at this point. I don't know what this guy's on about.

How's your Create React App support in 2025? Are you still keeping your app on React 15?

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#33

Post by fragmede » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

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?

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#34

Post by crab_galaxy » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:03 PM UTC

olliepop wrote: post #8

ng12 wrote: post #5

> Whatever framework you choose will be obsolete in 5 years. I've been writing React professionally for over a decade at this point. I don't know what this guy's on about.

Component lifecycle methods to hooks and HOCs, does that ring a bell?

Class components and HOCs aren’t deprecated though.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#35

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #15

Speaking of front end frameworks, whatever happened to Angular(JS)? It seemed to be required on every other job posting, but now things seem to only ask for React or React Native.

If anonymous posters on HN are to be believed, the guy spearheading Angular as a major frontend framework got his mansion on a hill and he left. And before that the Angular developers burned down their community by breaking compatibility in the transition between 1.X and 2.0.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#36

Post by michpoch » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #12

olliepop wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Component lifecycle methods to hooks and HOCs, does that ring a bell?

Yeah, and I'm not anywhere near as distressed about it as this article implies I should be.

Most likely because you work on apps in active development. Wait till someone asks you to add some feature in app that was deployed a few years ago and need something new.

Maybe fixing security issues by updating the dependencies? How likely will that happen without you having to rewrite the code of the app?

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#37

Post by 8s2ngy » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:04 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #15

Speaking of front end frameworks, whatever happened to Angular(JS)? It seemed to be required on every other job posting, but now things seem to only ask for React or React Native.

I still see many job postings for Angular, mainly from government institutions and non-tech companies. In my region, Angular for the frontend and Java with Spring Boot for the backend still account for a healthy number of job postings.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#38

Post by metadat » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

pelagicAustral wrote: post #16

figassis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't React deprecate itself entirely circa 2018?

They just keep stirring his slop and he keeps eating it, that's all I'm reading here

"That was some good slop, sir. Can I come back here for lunch every day for the next 10 years?"

Hilarious, and accurate.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#39

Post by gtsop » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:05 PM UTC

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…

This is exactly why I am a huge fan of ember.js

Unfortunatelly it fell behind in popularity mostly due to some unimportant reasons (eg not being able to render 1M rows faster than react) and some important ones (load times), but boy did they build a stable ecosystem! I haven't seen such a commitment to stability and guardrail upgrades to this day on any other piece of front end library.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#40

Post by Raed667 » Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 1:06 PM UTC

ForTheKidz wrote: post #19

Why does FE development have such churn? Desktop toolkits from 30 years ago work just as performantly today; what is so difficult about the browser that demands constant framework updates?

Because web apps you see today were not feasible even 10 years ago

(and I'm not talking about simple static websites)