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The Frontend Treadmill

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Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#681

Post by incrudible »

kerkeslager wrote: post #479
incrudible wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To their credit, I think the React code itself has maintained reverse compatibility pretty well (it's not React's fault), but the build systems I was using 5 years ago have all changed and broken reverse compatibility. That's a problem with your build system then, not React. There is (or was) indeed a lot of churn in build systems, but you wouldn't have been spared unless you had chosen to not use a build system -…

I just had a thought and decided to look it up. This side conversation started as an objection to the comment, "Whatever framework you choose will be obsolete in 5 years." The first release of esbuild was November 2020, i.e. it didn't exist 5 years ago. And that release fixed... conditional statements in TypeScript--a pretty basic feature to be broken. Does that sound like something you want to use in production? So…

You are extrapolating from the past into the future, but a lot has consolidated in the last five years. You used to need babel to use crucial language features that are now supported across the board, at the same time the avalanche of new language features has subsided.

Conditional types (not statements) are not a basic feature.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#682

Post by bob1029 »

rpmisms wrote: post #670
klysm wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just compiling and caching right?

No, this is hand-writing HTML into SQL database rows for conditional rendering. I think it stems from a culture of remarkable IP protectiveness. Take your guesses at which company I am referencing.

I am struggling with why the practice of storing HTML partials in SQL is necessarily bad.

If anything, this is arguably one of the more structured ways you could go about attacking the problem of a complex web product.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#683

Post by rpmisms »

bob1029 wrote: post #682
rpmisms wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is hand-writing HTML into SQL database rows for conditional rendering. I think it stems from a culture of remarkable IP protectiveness. Take your guesses at which company I am referencing.

I am struggling with why the practice of storing HTML partials in SQL is necessarily bad. If anything, this is arguably one of the more structured ways you could go about attacking the problem of a complex web product.

Because you shouldn't repeat yourself. If you're going to store your content that way, it should be as agnostic as possible, so that when the inevitable redesign comes around, you're not stuck rewriting every single line of that database, like I was.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#684

Post by derekzhouzhen »

The frontend world gave you many fancy toys; but they all come with hidden cost. It is your choice: do you want to stay on or get off this treadmill? My need is modest, so I got off. I rewrote my simple SPA from Svelte to SolidJS to no framework at all. Now I have ~1000 LOC javascript, ~500 LOC CSS, all written by myself. No framework, no package, no build step. If you want to see it in action:

https://airss.roastidio.us

It is a fully functional RSS reader. You are welcome to poke under the hood. The key insight is that I don't need reactivity, if re-rendering everything at every event is fast enough.

I believe this style of barebone SPA programming can scale up to at least 10,000 LOC javascript.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#685

Post by sodapopcan »

nullpoint420 wrote: post #672
sodapopcan wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that unique. The one enterprise app I worked on (that was started with Rails 1) had all of: Prototype, jQuery, Backbone, Angular, React, Handlebars AND mustache, vanilla CSS, SASS, CSS in JS (or whatever it's called). I wouldn't be surprised if they've introduced Tailwind at this point.

This is also a project started w/ Rails 1, so I feel our experiences may be similar. To be fair to both code bases - it's very impressive that they're still running, right?

Definitely!

It actually wasn't even THAT bad considering how huge it is. People still complained (admittedly myself included), but it had been TDD'd from the start so had very good test coverage, at least. Also, some people who had worked on really massive Java applications called it "really good!" so it's all about perspective, I suppose :)

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#686

Post by wyclif »

josephg wrote: post #480
jongjong wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, the barrier to becoming a tech influencer are very low now and yet it's harder than ever. This suggests that dumb luck plays an increasing role. Current tech influencers are generally smart and qualified but they aren't experts in anything specific and they aren't innovative in any way. They are chosen by algorithms out of a large pool of possible candidates.

> This suggests that dumb luck plays an increasing role. Nah. It’s not luck. It’s charisma. And skill at performance & in many cases clowning. Some people just have that certain something that makes people enjoy listening to them. It can be learned, but like programming it takes a lifetime to master. And like programming, some people are naturals at it. I know because I’ve been training in improv theatre and clowning…

There's no doubt the Primeagen has a popular channel (459K subs at last count), but his videos are super annoying to me. Many of them are just him reading a blog post and adding some light clowning to it. To me it feels like a waste of time...I can just read the article myself a lot faster and the clowning doesn't add any value to me.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#687

Post by owebmaster »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #675
owebmaster wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your 3 steps can be summarized in just one? Step 1 - don't grow

Yep. That’s basically Basecamp’s philosophy and it’s worked pretty damn well for them. Considering there’s a near-zero chance you won’t be starting the next Facebook or Stripe, “Don’t grow” is a great philosophy. If you do happen to hit that 0.1%, congratulations you’ve got money to tear everything down and rewrite it in the JavaScript framework du jour.

> Considering there’s a near-zero chance you won’t be starting the next Facebook or Stripe

This is like gym beginners worrying they'll get too bulky overnight. You don't want to start with a don't grow philosophy. That's a thing to think when you are big enough.

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#688

Post by koakuma-chan »

azemetre wrote: post #486
koakuma-chan wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's wrong with that? It works good if you're building an SPA in React.

You asked if react-router team sold courses, they sold consulting services. Seems like a conflict of interest to sell consulting on a tool you built while introducing breaking changes (but hey if you need quick help throw us a few dozen grand). I guess that's fine for you but it's very smarmy IMO.

They also post (free) documentation how to migrate from the previous major version

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#689

Post by lelandfe »

cube00 wrote: post #679
lolinder wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still works fine for end users, just not for the compliance department.

Depends on your SecOps. Ours shuts down apps with critical vulnerabilities if they're not patched within 48 hours.

The power of unreported vulns: uninterrupted use

Re: The Frontend Treadmill

#690

Post by wyclif »

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #490
whstl wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an influencer but: Casey Muratori is great. He's actually the opposite of the "trendsetter" kind that is being criticized here, and is more of an educator with lots of experience in both education and business.

I agree. He's by far my favorite "very YouTube famous" programmer and it isn't even very close.

Yeah, I dig what Casey is doing. Subscribe to him instead of these other clowns. I like how his stuff isn't glossy or overproduced—he just gets down to the content.
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