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> I get the feeling that a lot of the web development community has trouble understanding the difference between different and better I think you're confusing

by ng12 8y ago

> I get the feeling that a lot of the web development community has trouble understanding the difference between different and better I think you're confusing the HN community with the web dev community :) Everything I picked I picked because it was better for a specific reason. React solved the problems I was having with writing reusable code. Webpack takes all the grunt-work out of Grunt. TypeScript purely for the ease of refactoring. > I've heard of numerous (and participated in two) projects which migrated from an existing framework (such as Angular, Ember, or Knockout) to React, solely because React was newer. You can do this with any project The reason these choices exist is because lots of very smart people are thinking very hard about ways to do things better -- it's naive to think there's no merit to them because some people you happen to know are making poorly informed decisions.

quanticle 8y ago
>The reason these choices exist is because lots of very smart people are thinking very hard about ways to do things better Well, that's one way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about is that it's a lot easier to gain recognition and mindshare for releasing a new framework than there is in refactoring or implementing improvements upon an existing framework. This incentive structure applies at both the corporate and individual level. I've found, from my experience working at large tech companies, that many frameworks get started because a senior engineer wants a demonstrable project to demonstrate their leadership and technical skills in order to get a raise or a promotion. A new framework is definitely a high-impact project with a very clear deliverable and a well-defined set of requirements. So they make a new framework and then market the absolute daylights out of it, since one of their goals isn't just to create a new framework, but also to demonstrate some level of adoption for it. So the framework is pitched as the next big thing, which makes all existing frameworks obsolete. Scale this motivation and approach up to the level of corporations rather than individuals, and you have the modern web development ecosystems. Corporations want goodwill and mindshare, and they know that one of the ways to get that is to release a framework that everyone uses.
- ng12 8y ago
  That's a nice theory but I think it's wrong. Can you provide an example of a framework that should have been an incremental improvement (or not written at all?). The only possible example I can think of is React vs. Vue, but even then there's a pretty fundamental differentiating factor which is that Vue is lightweight (e.g. easier to drop in to an existing non-Vue project).
  - quanticle 8y ago
    React. Vue. Angular 2. Meteor. Vulcan. Do any of these frameworks actually solve problems that weren't being solved before? Did rewriting Angular 1 in Typescript really improve things for the user?
    - ng12 8y ago
      > Do any of these frameworks actually solve problems that weren't being solved before? Yes. React solved two big problems in the front-end space: building re-usable components as a first order concern and moving away from the imperative DOM. As mentioned, Vue is arguably pretty similar except with some concretely different goals. Angular 1 -> 2 was not about just Typescript, it was a large-scale refactoring to move away from some of the more imperative aspects towards a more component-based architecture which incorporates some of the advances made since Angular 1 was introduced. Vulcan's a framework which uses React and Meteor is it's own separate thing so I'm not sure what you're trying to identify here.

by ng12 8y ago

quanticle 8y ago

>The reason these choices exist is because lots of very smart people are thinking very hard about ways to do things better Well, that's one way of thinking about it. Another way of thinking about is that it's a lot easier to gain recognition and mindshare for releasing a new framework than there is in refactoring or implementing improvements upon an existing framework. This incentive structure applies at both the corporate and individual level. I've found, from my experience working at large tech companies, that many frameworks get started because a senior engineer wants a demonstrable project to demonstrate their leadership and technical skills in order to get a raise or a promotion. A new framework is definitely a high-impact project with a very clear deliverable and a well-defined set of requirements. So they make a new framework and then market the absolute daylights out of it, since one of their goals isn't just to create a new framework, but also to demonstrate some level of adoption for it. So the framework is pitched as the next big thing, which makes all existing frameworks obsolete. Scale this motivation and approach up to the level of corporations rather than individuals, and you have the modern web development ecosystems. Corporations want goodwill and mindshare, and they know that one of the ways to get that is to release a framework that everyone uses.

ng12 8y ago
That's a nice theory but I think it's wrong. Can you provide an example of a framework that should have been an incremental improvement (or not written at all?). The only possible example I can think of is React vs. Vue, but even then there's a pretty fundamental differentiating factor which is that Vue is lightweight (e.g. easier to drop in to an existing non-Vue project).
- quanticle 8y ago
  React. Vue. Angular 2. Meteor. Vulcan. Do any of these frameworks actually solve problems that weren't being solved before? Did rewriting Angular 1 in Typescript really improve things for the user?
  - ng12 8y ago
    > Do any of these frameworks actually solve problems that weren't being solved before? Yes. React solved two big problems in the front-end space: building re-usable components as a first order concern and moving away from the imperative DOM. As mentioned, Vue is arguably pretty similar except with some concretely different goals. Angular 1 -> 2 was not about just Typescript, it was a large-scale refactoring to move away from some of the more imperative aspects towards a more component-based architecture which incorporates some of the advances made since Angular 1 was introduced. Vulcan's a framework which uses React and Meteor is it's own separate thing so I'm not sure what you're trying to identify here.