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Too many smart folks that I've worked with, for some reason, just stop thinking critically when it comes to certain ideas. I was a product manager on a team of

Too many smart folks that I've worked with, for some reason, just stop thinking critically when it comes to certain ideas. I was a product manager on a team of really rockstar developers. They all earn at least $200k a year. Instead of demanding more ambitious projects, you could keep about 99% of them happy by just letting them use the new framework of the week to build their next web app. Their excitement when they were green-lighted to use react was mind-boggling. Building another dumb website with the new framework, yay. Mindlessly applying microservice architecture is the same issue at heart.

pythonaut_16 8y ago
Sounds like you really don't understand development if you think getting to use React isn't a big deal. React (and others like it, e.g. Vue) really is a huge win and solves a ton of pain points common to front end development. It still has its own pain points, but it's hard to overstate how much of an improvement it is over other older approaches like jQuery.
- basejumping 8y ago
  What does react have to do with jquery?
  - pythonaut_16 8y ago
    They're both tools used to build interactive websites. The parent didn't understand why developers would be happy that React got the greenlight. My response was that React (and Vue) really is a much better tool for building interactive websites than many older tools like jQuery.
- mockingbirdy 8y ago
  I think he doesn't have a problem with that. > Building another dumb website with the new framework, yay. He's just astonished how excited they are although what they build is "another dumb website" in his opinion. Many developers love the "how?" and don't care about the "why?". I don't judge it, but it can explain some of the excitement. Angular, React and Vue are great for development. But Ember, Backbone and others were also good back in their times. What he essentially says is "We use specific technology so they get excited although the problems we solve are boring af"
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The reality is that since the days of the social contract between employer and employee are long gone - i.e. I show a company loyalty and they will keep me at least at market rates and not lay me off to “increase shareholder value. Developers have to use the new and shiny to keep themselves marketable and be ready to jump ship at the first opportunity or out of necessity.
    - briandear 8y ago
      How frequently are developers being laid off? And why should companies just keep people around if they aren’t adding value? The lack of that “social contract” has resulted in much higher wages. Look at developer salaries in Paris compared to New York. Since there is more job security in France, the trade off is that “market rates” are dramatically lower.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I’m not saying that the lack of a social contract for developers is bad. I’m just saying it is a thing. But if you’re wondering why developers always want to do the new and shiny even if the underlying product is boring, they are probably doing resume driven development and looking at thier next opportunity. My salary has gone up by $45K - $50K in the last 4 years by changing jobs three times. I’m not complaining. But on the companys’ side, it was completely illogical not to pay me market rates. They still had to pay my replacement market rates and they loss institutional knowledge when I left. Why is it that HR will approve a req for a new developer at market rates but have strict limits on what they can pay current employees.
      - AdrianB1 8y ago
        There is different social contract there: in Paris the "fraternite, egalite" means you cannot pay developers more than the other people around and high taxes are a second way to ensure this will not happen. This makes Paris a prime choice not to do development and in the end gives dramatically lower "market" rates. Don't forget that "the best of the best" more to places like Silicon Valley where they earn top dollar, the ones that chose to stay in Paris are what is left behind and a few exceptions. At least this is what it looks from an European point of view.
- ergo14 8y ago
  Yes, because between jQuery and react there was nothing in between, and functional programming or singletons for state were unheard of. /S On other hand you still have things broken in react not to mention few years with uncertain patent situation. https://twitter.com/sveltejs/status/999704064937156611 https://twitter.com/sveltejs/status/999704064937156611 sums this up pretty well. Programming world is in a constant flux, now you have lit-html that gives you react in 5kb without vdom overhead. And in next few years there will be other interesting projects to look at.
  - ng12 8y ago
    > lit-html that gives you react in 5kb without vdom overhead Uh, lit-html seems like just another templating library. Marginally better than something like Soy. Calling it "React" is pretty reductive.
    - ergo14 8y ago
      With lit-element you get native elements that are similar to react elements. And only parts of the dom that changed actually do mutations - like with vdom. https://github.com/Polymer/lit-element#minimal-example https://github.com/Polymer/lit-element#minimal-example
golergka 8y ago
> Too many smart folks that I've worked with, for some reason, just stop thinking critically when it comes to certain ideas. Because doing something new is much more fun that doing something effective. And most software developers don't really get into this job out of doing things effectively - we're get into it out of the sheer fun of it, altough we would never admit it to our bosses and often even to ourselves.
- dualogy 8y ago
  > Because doing something new is much more fun that doing something effective Trouble is, "fun" for the enthusiast / self-perceived-non-workdrone does align with "productive". =)
  - rifung 8y ago
    Why do you say that? My initial reaction is that it should be the opposite: people who are enthusiasts would want to learn something new because they enjoy using and learning technology, whereas a "workdrone" would focus on being productive because they are focused on work. I'm not saying you're wrong or that there's anything wrong with either mentality, I just don't find your statement self explanatory. Please do elaborate =]
Reedx 8y ago
React/Vue + Hot Reload is a game changer. It's very productive and enjoyable to develop and iterate with these tools. Granted, it's absolutely true they're often used in places they probably shouldn't be and can easily result in JS bloat. When working on the frontend it's tempting to use them for everything because of how comparatively fast/easy development is. Ultimately the tradeoffs should be considered on a case by case basis.
- biktor_gj 8y ago
  I don't doubt any of that. But recently I had to choose a framework, and after evaluating all our choices, I ended up choosing plain ol' php, and as vanilla as we could get javascript. For a lot of reasons, but the most important ones were this: - Next year, the new kid on the block will be the most amazing thing ever created (tm) and everything else will be obsolete (knockoutjs, angular just to name a few) - If you pack everything now and leave the code untouched, in a couple of months there's a big chance half your tools will need upgrading (angular?) When you upgrade, half the things won't work and you will spend a ton of time fixing things that were perfectly working before, just to get the thing compiling again -If, down the line, someone else has to take the work where we left, not having the exact development machines set up, they're going to have it much harder to make simple fixes.For example, in six months of development, a simple datepicker javascript library changed the way where it declares the locale config, and we needed to change every declaration of that function to make it work everywhere again. When a framework deprecates a function that you use while you're in development, you fix it. If someone has to pick the project two years later, they are f* With "old" stuff this doesn't happen. Sure, if you pick php 3 code and try to run it in PHP 7 you'll find problems, but nothing like with webpack/yarn/whatever is doing the packing work this month Nowadays is all Vue and react, a couple years ago it was Ruby, next year will be something else. In the end, whatever works for you will be good enough, but if you have to think in advance and try to get some future proof code, half the things that are 'what needs to be used right now', will be unmanageable legacy code a year or two down the line (Just my two cents)
nickthemagicman 8y ago
It's highly possible that you..the project manager..were the one who was ill in-formed when it came to the technology aspect of why 200k per year developers were excited by React.
debt 8y ago
This speaks to the general boring middle that hits many successful software projects. There's a point where it's simply about iteratively improving it while keeping it running 99% of the time. It's unglamorous, monotonous and boring, but it's wildly important to the continued success of the project. Who can blame engineers for not being interested in trudging through the boring middle? Interestingly sometimes efforts to keep engineers from leaving, like splitting an application into 100's of micro services, can actually undermine the entire business. Kind of fascinating if you think about it. A person in charge may be so afraid to lose an employee they fail to see that the very efforts to keep them may derail the success of the business.
kolpa 8y ago
Why does a dumb website need a product manager?

pythonaut_16 8y ago

Sounds like you really don't understand development if you think getting to use React isn't a big deal. React (and others like it, e.g. Vue) really is a huge win and solves a ton of pain points common to front end development. It still has its own pain points, but it's hard to overstate how much of an improvement it is over other older approaches like jQuery.

basejumping 8y ago
What does react have to do with jquery?
- pythonaut_16 8y ago
  They're both tools used to build interactive websites. The parent didn't understand why developers would be happy that React got the greenlight. My response was that React (and Vue) really is a much better tool for building interactive websites than many older tools like jQuery.
mockingbirdy 8y ago
I think he doesn't have a problem with that. > Building another dumb website with the new framework, yay. He's just astonished how excited they are although what they build is "another dumb website" in his opinion. Many developers love the "how?" and don't care about the "why?". I don't judge it, but it can explain some of the excitement. Angular, React and Vue are great for development. But Ember, Backbone and others were also good back in their times. What he essentially says is "We use specific technology so they get excited although the problems we solve are boring af"
- scarface74 8y ago
  The reality is that since the days of the social contract between employer and employee are long gone - i.e. I show a company loyalty and they will keep me at least at market rates and not lay me off to “increase shareholder value. Developers have to use the new and shiny to keep themselves marketable and be ready to jump ship at the first opportunity or out of necessity.
  - briandear 8y ago
    How frequently are developers being laid off? And why should companies just keep people around if they aren’t adding value? The lack of that “social contract” has resulted in much higher wages. Look at developer salaries in Paris compared to New York. Since there is more job security in France, the trade off is that “market rates” are dramatically lower.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I’m not saying that the lack of a social contract for developers is bad. I’m just saying it is a thing. But if you’re wondering why developers always want to do the new and shiny even if the underlying product is boring, they are probably doing resume driven development and looking at thier next opportunity. My salary has gone up by $45K - $50K in the last 4 years by changing jobs three times. I’m not complaining. But on the companys’ side, it was completely illogical not to pay me market rates. They still had to pay my replacement market rates and they loss institutional knowledge when I left. Why is it that HR will approve a req for a new developer at market rates but have strict limits on what they can pay current employees.
    - AdrianB1 8y ago
      There is different social contract there: in Paris the "fraternite, egalite" means you cannot pay developers more than the other people around and high taxes are a second way to ensure this will not happen. This makes Paris a prime choice not to do development and in the end gives dramatically lower "market" rates. Don't forget that "the best of the best" more to places like Silicon Valley where they earn top dollar, the ones that chose to stay in Paris are what is left behind and a few exceptions. At least this is what it looks from an European point of view.
ergo14 8y ago
Yes, because between jQuery and react there was nothing in between, and functional programming or singletons for state were unheard of. /S On other hand you still have things broken in react not to mention few years with uncertain patent situation. https://twitter.com/sveltejs/status/999704064937156611 https://twitter.com/sveltejs/status/999704064937156611 sums this up pretty well. Programming world is in a constant flux, now you have lit-html that gives you react in 5kb without vdom overhead. And in next few years there will be other interesting projects to look at.
- ng12 8y ago
  > lit-html that gives you react in 5kb without vdom overhead Uh, lit-html seems like just another templating library. Marginally better than something like Soy. Calling it "React" is pretty reductive.
  - ergo14 8y ago
    With lit-element you get native elements that are similar to react elements. And only parts of the dom that changed actually do mutations - like with vdom. https://github.com/Polymer/lit-element#minimal-example https://github.com/Polymer/lit-element#minimal-example

golergka 8y ago

> Too many smart folks that I've worked with, for some reason, just stop thinking critically when it comes to certain ideas. Because doing something new is much more fun that doing something effective. And most software developers don't really get into this job out of doing things effectively - we're get into it out of the sheer fun of it, altough we would never admit it to our bosses and often even to ourselves.

dualogy 8y ago
> Because doing something new is much more fun that doing something effective Trouble is, "fun" for the enthusiast / self-perceived-non-workdrone does align with "productive". =)
- rifung 8y ago
  Why do you say that? My initial reaction is that it should be the opposite: people who are enthusiasts would want to learn something new because they enjoy using and learning technology, whereas a "workdrone" would focus on being productive because they are focused on work. I'm not saying you're wrong or that there's anything wrong with either mentality, I just don't find your statement self explanatory. Please do elaborate =]

Reedx 8y ago

React/Vue + Hot Reload is a game changer. It's very productive and enjoyable to develop and iterate with these tools. Granted, it's absolutely true they're often used in places they probably shouldn't be and can easily result in JS bloat. When working on the frontend it's tempting to use them for everything because of how comparatively fast/easy development is. Ultimately the tradeoffs should be considered on a case by case basis.

biktor_gj 8y ago
I don't doubt any of that. But recently I had to choose a framework, and after evaluating all our choices, I ended up choosing plain ol' php, and as vanilla as we could get javascript. For a lot of reasons, but the most important ones were this: - Next year, the new kid on the block will be the most amazing thing ever created (tm) and everything else will be obsolete (knockoutjs, angular just to name a few) - If you pack everything now and leave the code untouched, in a couple of months there's a big chance half your tools will need upgrading (angular?) When you upgrade, half the things won't work and you will spend a ton of time fixing things that were perfectly working before, just to get the thing compiling again -If, down the line, someone else has to take the work where we left, not having the exact development machines set up, they're going to have it much harder to make simple fixes.For example, in six months of development, a simple datepicker javascript library changed the way where it declares the locale config, and we needed to change every declaration of that function to make it work everywhere again. When a framework deprecates a function that you use while you're in development, you fix it. If someone has to pick the project two years later, they are f* With "old" stuff this doesn't happen. Sure, if you pick php 3 code and try to run it in PHP 7 you'll find problems, but nothing like with webpack/yarn/whatever is doing the packing work this month Nowadays is all Vue and react, a couple years ago it was Ruby, next year will be something else. In the end, whatever works for you will be good enough, but if you have to think in advance and try to get some future proof code, half the things that are 'what needs to be used right now', will be unmanageable legacy code a year or two down the line (Just my two cents)

nickthemagicman 8y ago

It's highly possible that you..the project manager..were the one who was ill in-formed when it came to the technology aspect of why 200k per year developers were excited by React.

debt 8y ago

This speaks to the general boring middle that hits many successful software projects. There's a point where it's simply about iteratively improving it while keeping it running 99% of the time. It's unglamorous, monotonous and boring, but it's wildly important to the continued success of the project. Who can blame engineers for not being interested in trudging through the boring middle? Interestingly sometimes efforts to keep engineers from leaving, like splitting an application into 100's of micro services, can actually undermine the entire business. Kind of fascinating if you think about it. A person in charge may be so afraid to lose an employee they fail to see that the very efforts to keep them may derail the success of the business.

kolpa 8y ago

Why does a dumb website need a product manager?