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I feel a little mixed about projects like this. It's fantastic to see people share their knowledge, and turn theory into practice. It's very easy to spout on a
by jbreckmckye 9y ago
I feel a little mixed about projects like this.
It's fantastic to see people share their knowledge, and turn theory into practice. It's very easy to spout on about best practices and good ideas without demonstrating how they can be implemented in the real world. And this application does demonstrate some good ideas.
...But some bad ideas also. I think one problem we have in the frontend world is that developers of very small, very simple sites are pulling in solutions entirely unsuited to their scale of problems. They think they are being careful and investing in an insurance against rapid expansion, but what they're actually doing is overspending on the wrong investments, making things expensive that don't need to be expensive, and betting against agility. This seems like a mistake.
I encounter too many teams who are building web applications by bunding a cornucopia of technologies they don't understand and allow "best practice" examples on GitHub and Medium to do their decision-making for them. They disengage critically from their technology choices, which has the short term benefit of getting them moving faster, but the long term cost of never developing their research and evaluation skills.
This is not your fault, of course. People always want a silver bullet, a framework prefabricated and ready for drop-in domain code. And to be fair, most websites are very like each other. I just wish software developers chose their tech a little more critically.
- techaddict009 9y agoThis is exactly what I feel. I get heavy request to build projects in React where their use case is pretty simple even wordpress can suffice.
- SirHound 9y agoUnless you're using a pre-made template I don't see how a WordPress installation is any simpler than an SSR React site.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoWorks out of the box, install or get a WP site and you're done. SSR React site implies doing development and hosting yourself.
- user5994461 9y agoWordpress is free, takes unlimited traffic and comes with a lot of amazon templates ready to use in one click.
- ErikBjare 9y agoEven WordPress is often overkill when a simple static site generator would suffice and be easier to maintain. But I guess WordPress is easier to work with if you're a non-technical person who won't be doing much else than adding new posts from time to time.
- madeofpalk 9y agoI think people who are going to avoid the critical thinking of technology choices aren't going to be impacted by examples like this.
- arjie 9y agoThat's just how we learn to apply things correctly. If the first time you use a tool is to build a scale-appropriate project, you will stumble and likely fail. Imagine you want to sail across the Atlantic and, to acclimate to the necessary tasks, you started small: sailing down the Thames, then sailing to Calais, then sailing farther and into the deeper ocean, before you decide to take the big trip. Now imagine you posted a blog post about this, and the first thing someone pointed out is that you can take the ferry to Calais. That's what you've done.
- jbreckmckye 9y ago> That's just how we learn to apply things correctly. That's fine when we're writing personal projects, but don't professional gigs require a greater standard of care? Imagine you need to need to transport water to your home. You start by consulting best practices and blogs and conclude that the only way to take water somewhere is using a helitanker. This is a dual rotor helicopter with an enormous hold. You consult a building planner to construct a helipad on your roof. You seek an expert helicopter pilot. You spend several weeks poring over different models of helicopter. You can do a lot of iteration and eventually reach the right result, but that still won't stop your house burning down in this analogy.
- arjie 9y agoHahaha, I must admit to laughing out loud reading that. I was referring to projects like the one linked, which are quite clearly either technology demonstrations or practice stuff.
- Dowwie 9y agoIt's easier to espouse the virtues of code simplicity than it is to actually practice it. However, it doesn't help that "Less is more" isn't one of the core tenets of Javascript programming. Be that as it may, praise the author for creating a fully-functioning case study from which audiences could learn and discuss.
- mmcnl 9y agoFor me, the technology used in projects like these is far more interesting than the end result itself (I'll probably never actually run it, but I took a good look at the source code).
- ccalvert 9y agoAs a teacher, I appreciate projects like this. The folks in my classes are "amateurs" learning to code. I can, and do, teach them quick ways to build websites, but that won't help them get jobs in the industry. Many people can build sites with those tools. Companies that hire developers are looking for more advanced skills, and examples like this help (hard working) students learn how to use them. It takes my students at least two quarters to get productive with a tool like React, but once they know it, they have a valuable skill and have hopefully learned some important lessons about the proper way to create a robust architecture.
- btbuildem 9y agoI think part of it is that the newer generation of developers seem to think in terms of frameworks etc as building blocks. Most of the time the solution is orders of magnitude simpler.