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>also they frequently have good documentation and “getting started” tutorials. I tried making a TypeScript react app around Christmas, I found a tutorial, the

>also they frequently have good documentation and “getting started” tutorials. I tried making a TypeScript react app around Christmas, I found a tutorial, the commands did not work, I do not remember the details but it was using some bundler and probably the tutorial was a bit old and packages updated in npm. I found a different tutorial, to use create_react_app, I seen it uses npx(not sure when this tool appeared) it also used tons of dependencies, in the end I created my app from scratch using only the TS compiler package and the react client library, no extra tools, magic, 1 month old tutorials that are outdated already, no install latest tool of the month etc.

gedy 8y ago
npx create-react-app my-ts-app --typescript takes about 30 seconds from command to running app. Maybe the issue people have is there is no 'js-lang.org' with one tutorial site and getting started. It's a huge community, so of course random blog posts will be a mixed bag of quality.
- simion314 8y ago
  There are more issues 1 the right tutorial, instruction may not be on top on my search engine, a few months old instructions are too old 2 the create app thing uses tons of "magic", it encourage people not to understand how things work, all is fine until something breaks... here is an issue we hit at work We have a project that uses gulp(the project is old, I did not started it so don't blame me if gulp is not the state of the art today). One dev added an uglify step to gulp and now the gulp watch t process entered in an infinite loop, I as the one with the most experience I worked on figuring it out, since the uglify step causes the issue I investigate this(I discover that some gulp modules the project uses are obsoleted because a cooler/better one was created but I did not started on upgrading the tools), I read on uglify, it's dependencies, I read on watch it's dependencies, read how it is implemented under the hood and in the end I realize that uhe uglify hstep had the side effect of making the process longer (I suspected that some temp files would be created or other things) but this extra seconds triggered an existing issue in our configuration file, the watch task was watching the output min files but it never triggered before because of a timeout it has(or something similar). In the end I ended up looking under the hood of this magic tools because a dev setup a .json config file wrong but the issue did not manifest until years later. Conclusion is that magic tools work fine until they do not , then you have to look under the hood or try the reboot,update,change the tool and maybe it is fixed For tomorrow I need to investigate why npm install package fails to install a package dependencies on a CentOS server, I read that there were some bugs and probably the fixes were not backported and I will have to mess around and understand what is the problem and fix it somehow.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  It takes about 30 seconds since last week 'till the end of the next month. If you read older tutorials, you won't figure it out. By March, current tutorials will probably be out of date. That's my issue (one of many) with the JS ecosystem. Things move so fast that just keeping up feels like a full-time job. I remember giving up on my first approach to React after I followed Swizec's tutorials and quickly hit into some issue with Babel (of all things) that was a week old and transitively screwed up a few months old React/D3 guide. And, as 'simion314 said, there's way too much magic. create-react-app is a useful spell that (most of the time) makes you a working React app, but I'm not fond of a culture that encourages casting it instead of understanding what's going on and how to actually set up a React project.
  - enobrev 8y ago
    This is why I refuse to use create-react-app. I can appreciate the convenience and have learned a few things from reading its source, but I need to understand the entire application I'm building from the ground up.
mr_toad 8y ago
> I found a tutorial, the commands did not work That’s hardly unique to Javascript. Back before the internet even existed I’d seen out of date make files which did nothing but spit out linker errors due to API changes in libraries.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  But it is way more common in JS. It got to the point that I do not trust tutorials that are not “official”.
  - lostapathy 8y ago
    Honestly, this is even a problem in "official" tutorials. I set out to learn some basic node a while back. The official docs then were out of date enough to not work to install node (nor were they off a trivial amount). I finally figured it out and PR'd a doc fix, but you shouldn't have to do that to try out a platform.
- int_19h 8y ago
  JS has a lot more churn than pretty much any other mainstream language or ecosystem.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  What's unique to JS is how short the shelf life of documentation is compared to the past. 15 years ago if you found a tutorial and it didn't work, it meant it was either many years old or you could install one java (etc) version prior and it'd work again. It seems like a lot of JS docs go obsolete within months if not weeks.

gedy 8y ago

npx create-react-app my-ts-app --typescript takes about 30 seconds from command to running app. Maybe the issue people have is there is no 'js-lang.org' with one tutorial site and getting started. It's a huge community, so of course random blog posts will be a mixed bag of quality.

simion314 8y ago
There are more issues 1 the right tutorial, instruction may not be on top on my search engine, a few months old instructions are too old 2 the create app thing uses tons of "magic", it encourage people not to understand how things work, all is fine until something breaks... here is an issue we hit at work We have a project that uses gulp(the project is old, I did not started it so don't blame me if gulp is not the state of the art today). One dev added an uglify step to gulp and now the gulp watch t process entered in an infinite loop, I as the one with the most experience I worked on figuring it out, since the uglify step causes the issue I investigate this(I discover that some gulp modules the project uses are obsoleted because a cooler/better one was created but I did not started on upgrading the tools), I read on uglify, it's dependencies, I read on watch it's dependencies, read how it is implemented under the hood and in the end I realize that uhe uglify hstep had the side effect of making the process longer (I suspected that some temp files would be created or other things) but this extra seconds triggered an existing issue in our configuration file, the watch task was watching the output min files but it never triggered before because of a timeout it has(or something similar). In the end I ended up looking under the hood of this magic tools because a dev setup a .json config file wrong but the issue did not manifest until years later. Conclusion is that magic tools work fine until they do not , then you have to look under the hood or try the reboot,update,change the tool and maybe it is fixed For tomorrow I need to investigate why npm install package fails to install a package dependencies on a CentOS server, I read that there were some bugs and probably the fixes were not backported and I will have to mess around and understand what is the problem and fix it somehow.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
It takes about 30 seconds since last week 'till the end of the next month. If you read older tutorials, you won't figure it out. By March, current tutorials will probably be out of date. That's my issue (one of many) with the JS ecosystem. Things move so fast that just keeping up feels like a full-time job. I remember giving up on my first approach to React after I followed Swizec's tutorials and quickly hit into some issue with Babel (of all things) that was a week old and transitively screwed up a few months old React/D3 guide. And, as 'simion314 said, there's way too much magic. create-react-app is a useful spell that (most of the time) makes you a working React app, but I'm not fond of a culture that encourages casting it instead of understanding what's going on and how to actually set up a React project.
- enobrev 8y ago
  This is why I refuse to use create-react-app. I can appreciate the convenience and have learned a few things from reading its source, but I need to understand the entire application I'm building from the ground up.

mr_toad 8y ago

> I found a tutorial, the commands did not work That’s hardly unique to Javascript. Back before the internet even existed I’d seen out of date make files which did nothing but spit out linker errors due to API changes in libraries.

EduardoBautista 8y ago
But it is way more common in JS. It got to the point that I do not trust tutorials that are not “official”.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  Honestly, this is even a problem in "official" tutorials. I set out to learn some basic node a while back. The official docs then were out of date enough to not work to install node (nor were they off a trivial amount). I finally figured it out and PR'd a doc fix, but you shouldn't have to do that to try out a platform.
int_19h 8y ago
JS has a lot more churn than pretty much any other mainstream language or ecosystem.
lostapathy 8y ago
What's unique to JS is how short the shelf life of documentation is compared to the past. 15 years ago if you found a tutorial and it didn't work, it meant it was either many years old or you could install one java (etc) version prior and it'd work again. It seems like a lot of JS docs go obsolete within months if not weeks.