You probably don't need a JavaScript framework • Hacker News Board

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#41

Post by vhiremath4 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

"Another example is the Fetch API"... That API has very limited cross-browser support. One of the largest reasons web frameworks exist is to bridge the gaps between browser incompatibilities/offering legacy support.

I don't know if this person has even really scaled and deployed a web application that must work across several browsers - especially older browser versions. I always wonder that whenever I see people bashing frameworks. Like the author said, start with asking why the framework was created. Just make sure you come up with the right answer to that question next time.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#42

Post by timr » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:20 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #34

timr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first paragraph wasn't uncivil. He said that he didn't read past the first few sentences of the article: "That the author kind of misses this point makes me pay less attention to the rest of the post." If they had read the rest of the post, they would have seen that their argument was addressed. You're being unfair here. The top-rated comment is from someone mischaracterizing the piece, saying he didn't read it..…

I don't see that. Actually the only bit that seems uncivil to me is just "You just didn't read past the sentence you quoted." You can't know that, and such statements are the internet comment equivalent of elbowing.

I was responding to the last line of his comment, coupled with the fact that the comment completely mischaracterized the article based on a single line, early in the piece.

I admit that the last line is unnecessary. I'll remove it.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#43

Post by edejong » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:20 AM UTC

I still remember doing a PoC for an end-to-end secure messaging app with web support, around 3 years back. It was written in plain JS with jquery and one or two libs for crypto bolted on. Simple, easy, but not very maintenance friendly written. Took around 2000 lines all in all. One of four clients (Android, iOS and a bot framework in Scala/Java).

Then the web-boys came in to rewrite my... well, contraption. In came Grunt, NPM, Angular, some CSS framework, unit testing. Much more, but I forgot the names of all of it, you know the drill. I have to admit, looking at each of these components independently, one could hardly argue with their usefulness, but together they buried a relatively simple and elegant messaging system in tons and tons of incoherent, unmaintained, inextensible and incompatible (with websockets at the time) stuff.

The line-count went up, of course, easily to 15000 lines. I couldn't understand my own designs anymore, since they got spread out over dozens different files. Refactoring became almost impossible. The web-boys however, didn't understand asynchronous messaging, cryptography and eventual consistency very well and we lost each other, making a babylonian tower, far away from our original goals.

The quality of your solution is not in your libraries, or your frameworks, instead it's in being fluent bottom-up before grabbing a library or two. You'll see you often don't even need them.

(edit: small typos, edit2: please explain down-votes, I'd like to know and be happy to answer any questions)

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#44

Post by Dr_tldr » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:20 AM UTC

sorpaas wrote: post #29

Greenspun's tenth rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. Now let's add Javascript to the list.

The good news is that with V8 and ES2015, we now have a formalized, (fairly) fast, and tolerably buggy implementation of Half of Common Lisp. Oh yeah, and it runs natively on devices owned by literally billions of people.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#45

Post by zxcvcxz » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:21 AM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #27

This! This times a million times!!~! Seriously. The javascript world is INSANE. All these frameworks and few truly need them... node.js package management is a mess... yet how many of these coders will take the time to learn real ES5? It really isn't that hard of a language. I feel like calling oneself a "javascript" expert practically requires knowledge of a framework or too. This is saddening, because Javascript it…

Where are all the job openings for people who don't know a single framework or library?

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#46

Post by lstamour » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

fizixer wrote: post #31

tomc1985 wrote: post #27

This! This times a million times!!~! Seriously. The javascript world is INSANE. All these frameworks and few truly need them... node.js package management is a mess... yet how many of these coders will take the time to learn real ES5? It really isn't that hard of a language. I feel like calling oneself a "javascript" expert practically requires knowledge of a framework or too. This is saddening, because Javascript it…

As a javascript-noob, not even jquery? I've heard jquery solved so many headaches.

It solved problems of cross-browser compatibility back when Netscape was still a thing, before Chrome existed, when major releases of browsers (IE) radically changed functionality between releases, and if I recall, we had Phoenix/Firefox as the most cutting-edge browser of the era. This is what browser market share looked like back then: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/02/8908/

When jQuery launched, it appeared on Del.icio.us and Digg, for context of its era: https://jquery.org/history/

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#47

Post by mortenjorck » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

philfreo wrote: post #25

CameronBanga wrote: post #23

Are Slack Files an official blog from Slack? For a second, I thought looking at the URL that this was just a URL for a Slack snippet or something similar.

No, if you look in the footer you'll see it says "Public file shared from Slack", which I think just means someone posted this document using Slack

Weird, so Slack effectively has a stealth Medium competitor now?

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#48

Post by intrasight » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

Back in the late 90s a bunch of us create an architecture we named AJAX. Now in 2016 a bunch of us are still using AJAX to build web apps that work just fine and are probably faster than these "frameworks".

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#49

Post by Walkman » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

openasocket wrote: post #39

Svenskunganka wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I have to disagree. The JavaScript Engine still have to parse and interpret the code. This can take a bit of time, especially on mobile devices.

Parse time shouldn't be very long at all, especially compared to network latency. How long does it take for large (~100-150kb minified) to be parsed and interpreted? I'd be surprised if it's more than 100ms

100ms is noticeable. It's already slow if you reach that.

Re: You probably don't need a JavaScript framework

#50

Post by educar » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:24 AM UTC

The main point of frameworks/libraries is to set coding guidelines for the team. It's fine to go off and invent your own framework but this causes maintenance issues for the people coming in next. Most likely, there are no docs or examples for the code you just wrote (especially the framework bits). When a framework which has a community is chosen, these boring things like docs/examples/references/blog posts get fixed over time. So it's best to pick one so that the code is easier to maintain in the long run. Besides, the focus should be on the app and not the framework/library and writing your own is just distraction.