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I would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface. People expect more, and

by jppope 8y ago

I would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface. People expect more, and we have to give it to them to survive. Addressing your specific question => have the backend languages/ frameworks changed? meh. sorta. They've made incremental changes, but the meat and potatoes look the same from 4-7 years ago for the opinionated frameworks. However, the massive backend change that is probably more relevant to your questions is the shift in how we do infrastructure. Cloud based Version control, Microservices, Containers, Kubernetes, Docker, IaaS, Serverless, CICD systems... all of these things are transformational changes to backend ecosystems- both in scale and in the way that we interact. It has also made it so we write less code which is actually an increase in velocity for what we can produce. thats my $0.02 anyway

alexpetralia 8y ago
Nice comment. I agree - I think innovation in backend development has really been subsumed by DevOps and data pipeline architectures, which have both really changed quite a bit.
- eitland 8y ago
  Java and .Net is steadily improving. But unlike the JS world things are mostly backwards compatible and there exists stable (some have argued too stable) dependable frameworks. We are starting to see this in the frontend world as well with Angular. After throwing everything away between 1 and 2 it is now mostly smooth (until Google decides to ditch it for something else).
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    JS is not backwards compatible? Where?
    - eitland 8y ago
      JS the language probably is AFAIK. I and many others in this thread are talking about the JS ecosystem.
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    > Java and .Net is steadily improving Don't know about that. Java is IMHO about to enter a serious downward spiral as lots of stuff is being deprecated going to Java 9 such as ancient jetty/tomcat versions, JAXB 1, JAX-RS (which people used in the 2000's and early 2010's to create "RESTful" apps/microservices), and being force-obsoleted with incompatible newer versions having features no-one asked for. The Java ecosystem might have worked well under the illusion of multiple implementations for standard core interfaces, and with projects requiring high attention such as Hibernate, Spring, freaking Maven, etc. as long as it was the cool shit (it wasn't really cool IMHO) and had some money behind, but as Java is becoming legacy technology, it increasingly sucks to maintain pom.xml (aka pron.xml) files pointing to obsolete packages on a barren place like mvnrepository/maven central. My experience with younger devs having to maintain Java code: they secretly look for Go and entirely other career choices to get tf away from Java and Maven, and I can't blame them.
    - eitland 8y ago
      Yep. And .Net had issues in the transition to Core. We are still talking about an order of magnitude or more (5-10 years of stability vs months.)
  - nullandvoid 8y ago
    I would say JavaScript backward compatability is one of its biggest sellers? Babel transforms almost any new language feature to be backward comparable with much older specifications
munk-a 8y ago
I agree that backend languages are stable and the new shiney ones are less frequent to emerge and more conservatively adopted but... within the languages themselves things are changing quite a bit, 7 years ago PHP was at version 5.2 and lacked any support for non-string defined functions (i.e. we had to do stuff like create_function('$a,$b', 'return "ln($a) + ln($b) = " . log($a * $b);'); since that point there is now actual support for anonymous functions, greater namespace support, typing... So over the past few years we have had a great improvement in the toolset we have to work with, but, to the other half of your point, we're mostly working with the same groups of tools, they're just better.
wreath 8y ago
> would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface Are those expectations met though? I have yet to see a fast and delightful user experience in a SPA.

by jppope 8y ago

alexpetralia 8y ago

Nice comment. I agree - I think innovation in backend development has really been subsumed by DevOps and data pipeline architectures, which have both really changed quite a bit.

eitland 8y ago
Java and .Net is steadily improving. But unlike the JS world things are mostly backwards compatible and there exists stable (some have argued too stable) dependable frameworks. We are starting to see this in the frontend world as well with Angular. After throwing everything away between 1 and 2 it is now mostly smooth (until Google decides to ditch it for something else).
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  JS is not backwards compatible? Where?
  - eitland 8y ago
    JS the language probably is AFAIK. I and many others in this thread are talking about the JS ecosystem.
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  > Java and .Net is steadily improving Don't know about that. Java is IMHO about to enter a serious downward spiral as lots of stuff is being deprecated going to Java 9 such as ancient jetty/tomcat versions, JAXB 1, JAX-RS (which people used in the 2000's and early 2010's to create "RESTful" apps/microservices), and being force-obsoleted with incompatible newer versions having features no-one asked for. The Java ecosystem might have worked well under the illusion of multiple implementations for standard core interfaces, and with projects requiring high attention such as Hibernate, Spring, freaking Maven, etc. as long as it was the cool shit (it wasn't really cool IMHO) and had some money behind, but as Java is becoming legacy technology, it increasingly sucks to maintain pom.xml (aka pron.xml) files pointing to obsolete packages on a barren place like mvnrepository/maven central. My experience with younger devs having to maintain Java code: they secretly look for Go and entirely other career choices to get tf away from Java and Maven, and I can't blame them.
  - eitland 8y ago
    Yep. And .Net had issues in the transition to Core. We are still talking about an order of magnitude or more (5-10 years of stability vs months.)
- nullandvoid 8y ago
  I would say JavaScript backward compatability is one of its biggest sellers? Babel transforms almost any new language feature to be backward comparable with much older specifications

munk-a 8y ago

I agree that backend languages are stable and the new shiney ones are less frequent to emerge and more conservatively adopted but... within the languages themselves things are changing quite a bit, 7 years ago PHP was at version 5.2 and lacked any support for non-string defined functions (i.e. we had to do stuff like create_function('$a,$b', 'return "ln($a) + ln($b) = " . log($a * $b);'); since that point there is now actual support for anonymous functions, greater namespace support, typing... So over the past few years we have had a great improvement in the toolset we have to work with, but, to the other half of your point, we're mostly working with the same groups of tools, they're just better.

wreath 8y ago

> would argue that the frontend js changes are mainly to do with user expectations for what constitutes a well designed user interface Are those expectations met though? I have yet to see a fast and delightful user experience in a SPA.