The State of JavaScript – Survey results • Hacker News Board

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#61

Post by k__ » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #56

It's nice to see some love for Apollo here. It's leagues better than Relay and has definitely been the biggest boon to my development stack in a while. That being said, the article should make it clearer that Apollo is perfectly usable just as a frontend client—you don't have to adopt the backend at all. The Meteor team really deserves commendations for learning from some of the mistakes in building Meteor. Apollo sp…

I always thought relay was an alternative to redux

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#62

Post by Jizzle » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

anamoulous wrote: post #24

I apologize if the predictability of this comment, but I just want to say, I recently started a new gig at a company that has undergone a full on embrace of Javascript for tooling and server side projects and it boggles my mind how much productivity is wasted on this ecosystem. There is an interesting amount of energy put into making asynchronous code read synchronously in situations where asynchronous code provides…

I see a lot of beauty in the js ecosystem, but only insomuch as related technologies come together to produce platform-independent, user-facing components. Similarly, I find C# or Java and their related technologies to be more beautiful on the server. Of course, one downside to this opinion is the requirement for skill in multiple ecosystems--and perhaps your employer had sought to consolidate these skills with js across the board.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#63

Post by morgante » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #61

morgante wrote: post #56

It's nice to see some love for Apollo here. It's leagues better than Relay and has definitely been the biggest boon to my development stack in a while. That being said, the article should make it clearer that Apollo is perfectly usable just as a frontend client—you don't have to adopt the backend at all. The Meteor team really deserves commendations for learning from some of the mistakes in building Meteor. Apollo sp…

I always thought relay was an alternative to redux

Not really. Relay is mostly designed around querying a backend data store, not updating/managing client-side state.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#64

Post by vlunkr » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

For the life of me I can't understand why webpack has become the de facto build tool. It's so much more complex than anything else I've tried. I understand it's supposed to be faster, but still, I wouldn't bother with it until your build times actually start to become a nuisance.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#65

Post by mountaineer22 » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #9

grabcocque wrote: post #7

This seems to suggest the rate of framework churn has rather settled down. Are JS devs finally starting to be satisfied with their current tools and not needing to restart every 18 months?

I see this same, tired old meme in every thread about web technologies. It's funny to me that certain people are so disdainful of the churn in web development on a forum dedicated to "hackers". Web application development is hard, and the reason why there's so much churn is because smart, inventive people are constantly finding better ways to do things. Things aren't just resetting from scratch every 18 months. The w…

What is your current recommended or dream stack?

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#66

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

Macsenour wrote: post #4

FajitaNachos wrote: post #2

I like the stats on the home page. A 53% response rate seems really good.

Is it me, or is 89 questions a lot of questions? I wonder if the number of questions cuts down on the response rate. edit: I assume it does, but what is the tipping point?

I would think that next year, maybe staging into 3-4 different surveys may be a better idea... a month apart even... that way there isn't the drop off on a single survey.

I really do appreciate the format though.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#67

Post by easong » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

aidos wrote: post #52

I'd love to hear more from people that expressed certain viewpoints - specifically those who used a library but wouldn't use it again... Specifically mobx :) I've played with most popular js libs now and I've found that for my use case I wasn't totally happy for one reason or another. I've been dabbling in mobx for that last few weeks and the ease with which it has allowed me resolve issues in my codebase is really p…

I love mobx (definitely not one of the 58), but I would use redux on large apps (maybe, more than 15 pages?), especially if you don't care too much about performance. Redux has better debugging, forces more structure to the code, has a immutable data story, and there are more resources on the net if you need to bring developers up to speed. There are some configuration options for MobX that force the user to be more organized, but redux still feels more structured.

That being said, MobX is absolutely my go-to state management library now - it's probably the easiest free FPS you'll find anywhere, it's ridiculously easy to write, and it results in fewer LOC.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#68

Post by aquiles » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #9

grabcocque wrote: post #7

This seems to suggest the rate of framework churn has rather settled down. Are JS devs finally starting to be satisfied with their current tools and not needing to restart every 18 months?

I see this same, tired old meme in every thread about web technologies. It's funny to me that certain people are so disdainful of the churn in web development on a forum dedicated to "hackers". Web application development is hard, and the reason why there's so much churn is because smart, inventive people are constantly finding better ways to do things. Things aren't just resetting from scratch every 18 months. The w…

modular, composable, testable, and maintainable apps are great. but what's also great is having a healthy life where you don't spend every waking second trying to learn all the new cool tech.

what's the point in inventing better ways to do the same old thing if you're just going to be another stereotypical fat developer with poor posture

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#69

Post by BinaryIdiot » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

triangleman wrote: post #55

I wish to register my complaint with the term "ES6" which has always been unofficial and refers to the official standard "EMCAScript2015".

Same. ECMA changed to using dates a while ago and people are still saying "ES6" and "ES7". I've also seen people refer to all new syntax and features as "ES6" including things that in ECMAScript2017.

Honestly though I think ECMA has some of the blame for this. I don't think they do a very good job communicating changes and versioning.

Re: The State of JavaScript – Survey results

#70

Post by labrador » Mon, Oct 03, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

I would respect the JavaScript so much more if there wasn't so much faddishness - somehow JS devs have decided switch statements are bad, indenting with 2 spaces is the only way to go, semi-colons should be banished and "boilerplate" code should be hidden in libraries the magically wipe it away so your code looks "clean," if barely understandable without reading through a bunch of libs.

Edit: forgot to add that these are my initial impressions after diving into front end development with node and browserify. I ended up avoiding a lot of pain by just using TypeScript and a make file. Who has time to wade through umpteen million build systems?