7 ms·
JavaScript still can be easy if you ignore the rest of the ecosystem. Thing is, sooner or later, at the very least you find yourself wanting something like lod
by bartread 8y ago
JavaScript still can be easy if you ignore the rest of the ecosystem.
Thing is, sooner or later, at the very least you find yourself wanting something like lodash or jQuery[1]. Ironically, the latter also came into existence to make programming across different browsers simpler back in the bad old days (of not that long ago), and did an admirable job of that.
Unfortunately jQuery, and similar libraries of the mid-noughties era, provided the breach in the dam that's seen us swamped in a torrent of new, sometimes baffling, and on occasion arguably unnecessary platforms, libraries, and tools, which have made the process of developing for the client a much more intimidating process for those starting out.
[1] Although these days you'd be surprised by how much of what jQuery offered is now built into the browser APIs and works consistently across them.
- mediumdeviation 8y agoIt's Jevon's Paradox [1] applied to the browser, where increasing the efficiency in which the browser can be scripted paradoxically causes websites to become slower and harder to build. Not because JavaScript itself (or any of the libraries built on top it) got worse, but because by allowing developers the ability to script more and more complex applications, sites became slower, and developer tools became heavier to support these more complex demands. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- sephware 8y agoThat sounds similar to Wirth’s Law. In general the more efficient a computer’s hardware is, the more bloated its software will be, so the slower the whole system will run.
- vanderZwan 8y agoWhile certainly related, I think GP was suggesting more that the same idea also applies to ease of development rather than raw hardware power.
- MrEldritch 8y agoI think that the raw-hardware-power aspect is actually a special case of ease of development - in that case, it's the ease of not having to think about low-level consequences of your abstractions or spend effort on optimizing your code!
- vanderZwan 8y agoFair point!
- MrEfficiency 8y agoConfirming. Javascript is really cool when you learn it. However, the moment you dip into libraries you are dependent on someone else's work. Then you run into a problem because Native doesnt let you use a specific library, and googling your issue recommends that specific library. You use something else, it works alright. Months later you re-write everything anyway.
- rounce 8y ago> However, the moment you dip into libraries you are dependent on someone else's work. Like every other programming language? > Then you run into a problem because Native doesnt let you use a specific library You are confusing runtime and language.
- dave84 8y ago>> However, the moment you dip into libraries you are dependent on someone else's work. >Like every other programming language? The lack of a standard library means you'll be dipping in a lot sooner.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- maemilius 8y agoI don't really get this. How is any language's stdlib _not_ someone else's work? The language itself is "someone else's work". The only difference, in my mind, between a "standard library" and a "third-party library" is the level of trust. If a third-party library is widely used by a community and known to be built by trustworthy people, I don't see how it's functionally different from a "standard" library. EDIT: To clarify, I'm only trying to make a general statement about libraries, not the trustworthiness of any particular language's library landscape.
- pmarreck 8y ago> Like every other programming language? There are languages which do a much better job of reducing or eliminating possible "blast radius" of a bug in a dependent library. Functional/immutable languages such as Elixir come to mind (for example, you can literally reduce the scope of a library to an individual function). This is not one of those languages.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mikepurvis 8y agoA helpful resource: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/ http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/