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> but I’m certain that they will be able to find another position in a company where their jQuery skills will be very valuable. However, I don’t expect that the

> but I’m certain that they will be able to find another position in a company where their jQuery skills will be very valuable. However, I don’t expect that they’ll learn anything new in that place, and in 3 years or so, if they will be looking for a new job, they will be in the same exact same place. As opposed to React or any other modern web stuff. Those skills will last a lifetime.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
noirbot 8y ago
I mean, if you're at a company that's working in React, it's a decent sign they're at least keeping up with trends in development, and may be more likely to let you study and work on the next one when it comes along. If you're still on jQuery at this point, with no effort to move off it, it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize.
- the_narrator 8y ago
  Fair point, but "modernize" in the front-end development world means swapping out your framework every year.
  - noirbot 8y ago
    Not necessarily. It can just mean using one that came out this decade instead of last. It's clearly silly to re-architect every year, but it's not absurd to do an update/reconsideration once every 4-5 years, especially at a smaller company. On the other side, there's plenty of new tech that my company isn't using yet, but will let me study or send me to conferences to learn about. Just because you work somewhere that's still built on old tech doesn't mean you can become proficient with newer ones. Especially if you're planning to look for a new job at a company who likely does.
- lsjafdlj 8y ago
  > it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize. I disagree. JQuery and React are just tools. Using one or the other doesn't mean one has more tech debt or its a small project. You should use the one that gets the job done. By saying JQuery is 'bad' and React is 'good', the programmer fails to understand the purpose of the tool. The question the programmer should ask is whether choosing one over the other has any advantage in that particular project. I program frontend reluctantly when needed because I am a backend programmer. But I would choose either tool depending on what is needed.
  - noirbot 8y ago
    I would argue my assumptions (and I recognize that they're not always going to be true) are based specifically off of the nature of the tools in question. If you're a React shop, and you've recently and competently decided that it's the best tool for you, that's likely because you're building a large and modular app that includes data handling of the type that React is good at. Unless jQuery has added a lot of features I'm not familiar with, it's not comparatively well-suited to larger and more modular projects like that. These days, it would mostly be used in projects that are small enough to not need the extra features from React, are bound to an architecture that makes implementing it hard, or has management/senior developers who prefer to stay with older tech. It's not that one is bad and one is good. It's that they're specifically good at different things that tend to point to different styles of development and project scope.
    - acdha 8y ago
      I agree with your last point but have seen so much fad chasing that I wouldn’t be so sure about the assertion that people using React have done that nuanced analysis. An awful lot of these comparisons come down to what whoever is leading the project wants on their resume, and I’ve seen a ton of small sites using huge frameworks because that person didn’t want to learn a few bits of standard JS or CSS.
      - meesterdude 8y ago
- sebazzz 8y ago
  > If you're still on jQuery at this point, with no effort to move off it, it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize. That is a bold statement. Not all of us are working on throw-away websites which need to last for a year at most and can always use the latest tech. Some of us, probably many of us, work on applications which need to last for years to come. Applications for which ye olde multi-page application model works fine. That doesn't mean those application are trash, but it does mean you cannot switch to a popular frameworks every few years because those applications are huge. One application I'm working on is nearing an age of 15 years, in which it is continuously but slowly modernizing. It does use JQuery, but for some of the newer parts, where suitable, libraries like Knockout for adding some interactivity.
coldtea 8y ago
/s missing?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

noirbot 8y ago

I mean, if you're at a company that's working in React, it's a decent sign they're at least keeping up with trends in development, and may be more likely to let you study and work on the next one when it comes along. If you're still on jQuery at this point, with no effort to move off it, it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize.

the_narrator 8y ago
Fair point, but "modernize" in the front-end development world means swapping out your framework every year.
- noirbot 8y ago
  Not necessarily. It can just mean using one that came out this decade instead of last. It's clearly silly to re-architect every year, but it's not absurd to do an update/reconsideration once every 4-5 years, especially at a smaller company. On the other side, there's plenty of new tech that my company isn't using yet, but will let me study or send me to conferences to learn about. Just because you work somewhere that's still built on old tech doesn't mean you can become proficient with newer ones. Especially if you're planning to look for a new job at a company who likely does.
lsjafdlj 8y ago
> it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize. I disagree. JQuery and React are just tools. Using one or the other doesn't mean one has more tech debt or its a small project. You should use the one that gets the job done. By saying JQuery is 'bad' and React is 'good', the programmer fails to understand the purpose of the tool. The question the programmer should ask is whether choosing one over the other has any advantage in that particular project. I program frontend reluctantly when needed because I am a backend programmer. But I would choose either tool depending on what is needed.
- noirbot 8y ago
  I would argue my assumptions (and I recognize that they're not always going to be true) are based specifically off of the nature of the tools in question. If you're a React shop, and you've recently and competently decided that it's the best tool for you, that's likely because you're building a large and modular app that includes data handling of the type that React is good at. Unless jQuery has added a lot of features I'm not familiar with, it's not comparatively well-suited to larger and more modular projects like that. These days, it would mostly be used in projects that are small enough to not need the extra features from React, are bound to an architecture that makes implementing it hard, or has management/senior developers who prefer to stay with older tech. It's not that one is bad and one is good. It's that they're specifically good at different things that tend to point to different styles of development and project scope.
  - acdha 8y ago
    I agree with your last point but have seen so much fad chasing that I wouldn’t be so sure about the assertion that people using React have done that nuanced analysis. An awful lot of these comparisons come down to what whoever is leading the project wants on their resume, and I’ve seen a ton of small sites using huge frameworks because that person didn’t want to learn a few bits of standard JS or CSS.
    - meesterdude 8y ago
sebazzz 8y ago
> If you're still on jQuery at this point, with no effort to move off it, it's likely either a small project, or one with excessive tech debt, or one with no desire to modernize. That is a bold statement. Not all of us are working on throw-away websites which need to last for a year at most and can always use the latest tech. Some of us, probably many of us, work on applications which need to last for years to come. Applications for which ye olde multi-page application model works fine. That doesn't mean those application are trash, but it does mean you cannot switch to a popular frameworks every few years because those applications are huge. One application I'm working on is nearing an age of 15 years, in which it is continuously but slowly modernizing. It does use JQuery, but for some of the newer parts, where suitable, libraries like Knockout for adding some interactivity.

coldtea 8y ago

/s missing?