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JS is ruthless. It has no issue discarding an ENTIRE generation of programmer and 1000s of man-hour to move itself forward. It does not sleep, like a eternal b

JS is ruthless. It has no issue discarding an ENTIRE generation of programmer and 1000s of man-hour to move itself forward. It does not sleep, like a eternal blackhole it eats young men and spits out their heat at the other end. JS is chaotic. Just like nature, it is not uncomfortable in telling you the complexity that is reality. Fighting it only results in broken dreams and tears. The best hope is to find your small place and hope that the chaos doesn't someday destroy you. JS is War. Created in the crucible of the young internet, it had to fight for its survival as soon as the umbilical cord was cut. It existed in slumber while the nations of python, ruby, PHP were destroying each other apart to get a piece of land - in what is humanity's most empowering invention ever since the printing press. JS was not part of the racket, it was too weak to participate - only a nation of lesser mind. The lesser minds however represented large segment of the hungered masses - students, artists. Like the white walkers they came and waged a great war, the size of which so vast that the soldier's fighting it are unaware like a - fish is unaware of water.

bartread 10y ago
This is poetic, and somewhat funny, but also kind of nonsense. The article pretty much nails it when it talks about choice of tools, frameworks, and libraries being dictated by the kind of problem you want to solve. For me, if I'm going to add another library or tool into the mix, it has to be because it's adding some clear value to what I'm doing. If not, it stays out. Classic example: I have a games site I'm working on that uses lodash, and only lodash (actually only a subset), because a key factor for me is keeping that page weight down so people accessing the site via mobile on a capped data plan and a laggy connection don't have to wait an age for the game to load because I'm downloading 1MB of minified JavaScript libraries. That means that some things I need to do are more work than they otherwise might be for me, but that's OK because it's helping me hit my objectives. All of that being said, whether you like it or not, "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016," makes some valid points, and certainly captures that feeling of being completely overwhelmed that I hadn't experienced with other languages and ecosystems. You can substitute 2013 for 2016 and it exactly resonates with the way I felt back then, when I returned to JavaScript after a 10+ year absence. The maligned "snark" just goes with the territory. As far as I can see the JavaScript community seems to thrive on upheaval and butthurt; it feels professionally immature and full of easily bruised egos who want to be right and don't give two hoots about the consequences of the willy-nilly reification of their opinions. Just a couple of examples: https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-9045c06be67c#.jg5p30l6u https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320833 (sadly the commentary has gone from the original post on this one) And the level of opinionation is extreme. People love to talk about the "right" way of doing things. And, "Oh you're still using X? You should be using Y instead now." is a line I've been on the receiving end of quite a few times now. It gets boring. I'm fed up of "opinionated" frameworks and libraries and the people involved in them talking about the "right" way of doing things as if it came down from on high carved on stone tablets and isn't in fact just a bunch of stuff they made up themselves. What I need are things that plug together easily to deliver value and help solve a problem, with less of the sass(1). For me the interesting thing to be doing is building working software that people will find valuable and actually use and, hopefully, enjoy doing so. Languages, frameworks, and libraries are nothing more than a means to an end. (1) Sorry, it just popped out.

bartread 10y ago

This is poetic, and somewhat funny, but also kind of nonsense. The article pretty much nails it when it talks about choice of tools, frameworks, and libraries being dictated by the kind of problem you want to solve. For me, if I'm going to add another library or tool into the mix, it has to be because it's adding some clear value to what I'm doing. If not, it stays out. Classic example: I have a games site I'm working on that uses lodash, and only lodash (actually only a subset), because a key factor for me is keeping that page weight down so people accessing the site via mobile on a capped data plan and a laggy connection don't have to wait an age for the game to load because I'm downloading 1MB of minified JavaScript libraries. That means that some things I need to do are more work than they otherwise might be for me, but that's OK because it's helping me hit my objectives. All of that being said, whether you like it or not, "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016," makes some valid points, and certainly captures that feeling of being completely overwhelmed that I hadn't experienced with other languages and ecosystems. You can substitute 2013 for 2016 and it exactly resonates with the way I felt back then, when I returned to JavaScript after a 10+ year absence. The maligned "snark" just goes with the territory. As far as I can see the JavaScript community seems to thrive on upheaval and butthurt; it feels professionally immature and full of easily bruised egos who want to be right and don't give two hoots about the consequences of the willy-nilly reification of their opinions. Just a couple of examples: https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-9045c06be67c#.jg5p30l6u https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7320833 (sadly the commentary has gone from the original post on this one) And the level of opinionation is extreme. People love to talk about the "right" way of doing things. And, "Oh you're still using X? You should be using Y instead now." is a line I've been on the receiving end of quite a few times now. It gets boring. I'm fed up of "opinionated" frameworks and libraries and the people involved in them talking about the "right" way of doing things as if it came down from on high carved on stone tablets and isn't in fact just a bunch of stuff they made up themselves. What I need are things that plug together easily to deliver value and help solve a problem, with less of the sass(1). For me the interesting thing to be doing is building working software that people will find valuable and actually use and, hopefully, enjoy doing so. Languages, frameworks, and libraries are nothing more than a means to an end. (1) Sorry, it just popped out.