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I prefer frameworks that focus on pure javascript because the ones that don't tend to allow you too use javascript but have sparse documentation on how to use i

by zxcvcxz 10y ago

I prefer frameworks that focus on pure javascript because the ones that don't tend to allow you too use javascript but have sparse documentation on how to use it effectively, instead focusing on typescript. When I first tried Angular 2 their javascript "hello world" example wouldn't even work, it was some bug in their site. I already need to use all sorts of other tools and abstraction layers when building websites/apps, typescript feels like just another abstraction layer (which it is), that means another vim plugin for typescript (or a bloated IDE), another npm dev dependency, another layer to the build process, so I try to avoid it for these reasons.

bdcravens 10y ago
I don't really work in the Javascript ecosystem, so when learning Angular 2 recently, I found all the other tools to carry far more cognitive load than Typescript.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  > I found all the other tools to carry far more cognitive load What tools are you talking about?
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    System.js, Rx.js, decorators, ng2's DI - there's a lot of new concepts thrown in for the unfamiliar
    - oblio 10y ago
      Agreed. Angular 1 was alien from a lot of points, already, Angular 2 starting with Observables and Rx.js makes things even fuzzier as a newbie.
- robwormald 10y ago
  The great irony of this (and fwiw, I completely agree, and I work on the angular core team...) is that by embracing platform features in ng2 we've opened up a mess of other issues to learn. A good example of this is modules. Angular 1 had its own module syntax (partly because modules weren't really a thing when it started). You could write scripts, concat them together and go. In angular2 we embraced ES6 modules, which means a developer has to deal with loading and bundling etc. One nice side effect here though is we can leverage more tooling from the rest of the JS community (eg, the great work of webpack) rather than having angular-specific solutions.
Tx3 10y ago
3rd party libraries / frameworks written with non-JavaScript languages is worth another blog post and discussion. I agree completely with you that libraries / -most- frameworks should be written in plain old JS. The reason is simple, contributing and reading the project source code should not start by learning a programming language. It is a different scenario when a team in a company has decided to learn and write their project with TypeScript/CoffeeScript/etc. language. About tooling, I think writing modern JavaScript (ES2015, ES2016) is beneficial and therefore, you need a tool like Babel. When you go to that path, why not use TypeScript instead and get ES2015/ES2016 + type system + great compiler?
- ionwake 10y ago
  ES2016 is already mostly compatible with major browsers - is it not?
- shados 10y ago
  (this won't be quite true after TS 2.0, but..) TypeScript doesn't support everything ES6 or even everything Babel does, and some of the stuff it does support are not matching the standard, in subtle ways. Then you're missing out on the Babel plugin ecosystem. You can use TS and Babel together for SOME of that (but not all of it, syntax parser and all). It may still be a slam dunk to you, but it's not as "obvious" an answer as you make it sound.

by zxcvcxz 10y ago

bdcravens 10y ago

I don't really work in the Javascript ecosystem, so when learning Angular 2 recently, I found all the other tools to carry far more cognitive load than Typescript.

spriggan3 10y ago
> I found all the other tools to carry far more cognitive load What tools are you talking about?
- Bahamut 10y ago
  System.js, Rx.js, decorators, ng2's DI - there's a lot of new concepts thrown in for the unfamiliar
  - oblio 10y ago
    Agreed. Angular 1 was alien from a lot of points, already, Angular 2 starting with Observables and Rx.js makes things even fuzzier as a newbie.
robwormald 10y ago
The great irony of this (and fwiw, I completely agree, and I work on the angular core team...) is that by embracing platform features in ng2 we've opened up a mess of other issues to learn. A good example of this is modules. Angular 1 had its own module syntax (partly because modules weren't really a thing when it started). You could write scripts, concat them together and go. In angular2 we embraced ES6 modules, which means a developer has to deal with loading and bundling etc. One nice side effect here though is we can leverage more tooling from the rest of the JS community (eg, the great work of webpack) rather than having angular-specific solutions.

Tx3 10y ago

3rd party libraries / frameworks written with non-JavaScript languages is worth another blog post and discussion. I agree completely with you that libraries / -most- frameworks should be written in plain old JS. The reason is simple, contributing and reading the project source code should not start by learning a programming language. It is a different scenario when a team in a company has decided to learn and write their project with TypeScript/CoffeeScript/etc. language. About tooling, I think writing modern JavaScript (ES2015, ES2016) is beneficial and therefore, you need a tool like Babel. When you go to that path, why not use TypeScript instead and get ES2015/ES2016 + type system + great compiler?

ionwake 10y ago
ES2016 is already mostly compatible with major browsers - is it not?
shados 10y ago
(this won't be quite true after TS 2.0, but..) TypeScript doesn't support everything ES6 or even everything Babel does, and some of the stuff it does support are not matching the standard, in subtle ways. Then you're missing out on the Babel plugin ecosystem. You can use TS and Babel together for SOME of that (but not all of it, syntax parser and all). It may still be a slam dunk to you, but it's not as "obvious" an answer as you make it sound.