7 ms·

I love these type of showcases. It‘s been a wonderful time when simply upload files via SFTP and had a running application. No need of webpack bundles, vendor

by hilti 7y ago

I love these type of showcases. It‘s been a wonderful time when simply upload files via SFTP and had a running application. No need of webpack bundles, vendor libraries to achieve a simple functionality that could be solved in a few lines of code ... I really do hope this kind of developer attitude (writing pure VanillaJS) is coming back.

t0astbread 7y ago
Until we rediscover that manually keeping the DOM up-to-date is tedious and error prone for almost any project and switch to a good middle ground such as Preact or React without a build step
- olavgg 7y ago
  There are design patterns that mitigate this, take a look on how you can use the observer pattern to update dom elements or html fragments.
- oftenwrong 7y ago
  I prefer to just refresh the page. Throw away the DOM and render a new one from scratch server-side.
  - t0astbread 7y ago
    For simple CRUD apps yes, but this doesn't hold up for more interactive experiences. Also, not everyone wants to maintain a server for everything. Static file serving is just way easier sometimes.
- austincheney 7y ago
  It’s not that tedious. Learning to do it properly takes less effort than learning a major framework. You would actually have to do it and learn it for this to make any sense though.
  - t0astbread 7y ago
    I tried both approaches on a recent project and in my experience it gets tedious once my application (and with it, its rendering logic) got more complicated. Manually juggling around listeners and mutable state all over the place just leaves a lot of room for error. (As opposed to leaving all that to some DOM reconciler that I don't have to, essentially, implement myself for every problem.) Initially learning a new paradigm (declarative over imperative in this case) is hard, of course, but it can be worthwhile. Whatever works for you though.
applecrazy 7y ago
There's a reason why a lot of those libraries and tools are used though. Webpack bundles are used to strip down multiple JS files and libraries into a single bundle that contains only what is needed to run a particular application. Libraries like React serve a purpose too, particularly when you're building large applications that need to be maintained by many people all at once, or when you need insane compatibility (e.g. IE 11, the old Edge, etc.) Is there a need for these tools all the time? No. But are there valid use cases? Absolutely yes.
- rimliu 7y ago
  Alas, the reason #1 these tools are used is cargo-culting.
- efdee 7y ago
  IE11 is "insane compatibility" now? rants about having to support IE6
  - applecrazy 7y ago
    Well, I don’t write JS for a living, so I haven’t really needed to support anything other than relatively modern browsers.
- 6510 7y ago
  Right, its so funny! This is why I cant/wont/refuse to find a job of this type. I can write JS just fine. In employment I would have to glue bloated libraries (which takes me forever!) and then wait for tools to purge the unwanted garbage from the creation. The end result is slow and I feel clueless what is actually going on. Of course this also means I'm impossible to work with which only adds to the joke. I do have a sense of humor about it. https://jsfiddle.net/gaby_de_wilde/c8bhcatj/ https://jsfiddle.net/gaby_de_wilde/c8bhcatj/
  - austincheney 7y ago
    Yeah it’s really frustrating. My metric of the moment is total NPM package count that comprises a project. Since Angular, out of the box, is greater than 1100 packages I ignore all job postings that mention Angular. I am extremely hesitant whenever I see things like Webpack or Babel.
brlewis 7y ago
> I really do hope this kind of developer attitude (writing pure VanillaJS) is coming back. If it's coming, it's coming for the first time. Way back in the first decade of this century, when JavaScript was first transitioning from a language you wanted to learn as little of as possible to a language you might actually want to learn, jQuery sprang up as a way to deal with browser incompatibilities. I went to a jQuery conference where people were advised to really learn JavaScript and use it where possible, not always relying on jQuery. I don't think that advice was widely heeded. React took over from jQuery and has the same problem. People learn the library first and slowly pick up the language, hopefully, as time goes on.
austincheney 7y ago
I hope so too, but it’s not. In all my observations things are moving in the opposite direction at all possible speed. It appears (personal opinion) that this has nothing to do with technology. It’s more about perceptions and behaviors.
buboard 7y ago
Why sftp? If you can ssh you can also vim :)
ozim 7y ago
I hope not, convincing people to adhere to coding standard where I can tell "this is angular way, please do so" or "google does that" is so much easier than actually convincing herd of cats to "here we have modules, please put your code in a module, not inline because that is the way we do here". I do not care about standard it could be any other framework, just have it consistent, please.

by hilti 7y ago

t0astbread 7y ago

Until we rediscover that manually keeping the DOM up-to-date is tedious and error prone for almost any project and switch to a good middle ground such as Preact or React without a build step

olavgg 7y ago
There are design patterns that mitigate this, take a look on how you can use the observer pattern to update dom elements or html fragments.
oftenwrong 7y ago
I prefer to just refresh the page. Throw away the DOM and render a new one from scratch server-side.
- t0astbread 7y ago
  For simple CRUD apps yes, but this doesn't hold up for more interactive experiences. Also, not everyone wants to maintain a server for everything. Static file serving is just way easier sometimes.
austincheney 7y ago
It’s not that tedious. Learning to do it properly takes less effort than learning a major framework. You would actually have to do it and learn it for this to make any sense though.
- t0astbread 7y ago
  I tried both approaches on a recent project and in my experience it gets tedious once my application (and with it, its rendering logic) got more complicated. Manually juggling around listeners and mutable state all over the place just leaves a lot of room for error. (As opposed to leaving all that to some DOM reconciler that I don't have to, essentially, implement myself for every problem.) Initially learning a new paradigm (declarative over imperative in this case) is hard, of course, but it can be worthwhile. Whatever works for you though.

applecrazy 7y ago

There's a reason why a lot of those libraries and tools are used though. Webpack bundles are used to strip down multiple JS files and libraries into a single bundle that contains only what is needed to run a particular application. Libraries like React serve a purpose too, particularly when you're building large applications that need to be maintained by many people all at once, or when you need insane compatibility (e.g. IE 11, the old Edge, etc.) Is there a need for these tools all the time? No. But are there valid use cases? Absolutely yes.

rimliu 7y ago
Alas, the reason #1 these tools are used is cargo-culting.
efdee 7y ago
IE11 is "insane compatibility" now? rants about having to support IE6
- applecrazy 7y ago
  Well, I don’t write JS for a living, so I haven’t really needed to support anything other than relatively modern browsers.
6510 7y ago
Right, its so funny! This is why I cant/wont/refuse to find a job of this type. I can write JS just fine. In employment I would have to glue bloated libraries (which takes me forever!) and then wait for tools to purge the unwanted garbage from the creation. The end result is slow and I feel clueless what is actually going on. Of course this also means I'm impossible to work with which only adds to the joke. I do have a sense of humor about it. https://jsfiddle.net/gaby_de_wilde/c8bhcatj/ https://jsfiddle.net/gaby_de_wilde/c8bhcatj/
- austincheney 7y ago
  Yeah it’s really frustrating. My metric of the moment is total NPM package count that comprises a project. Since Angular, out of the box, is greater than 1100 packages I ignore all job postings that mention Angular. I am extremely hesitant whenever I see things like Webpack or Babel.

brlewis 7y ago

> I really do hope this kind of developer attitude (writing pure VanillaJS) is coming back. If it's coming, it's coming for the first time. Way back in the first decade of this century, when JavaScript was first transitioning from a language you wanted to learn as little of as possible to a language you might actually want to learn, jQuery sprang up as a way to deal with browser incompatibilities. I went to a jQuery conference where people were advised to really learn JavaScript and use it where possible, not always relying on jQuery. I don't think that advice was widely heeded. React took over from jQuery and has the same problem. People learn the library first and slowly pick up the language, hopefully, as time goes on.

austincheney 7y ago

I hope so too, but it’s not. In all my observations things are moving in the opposite direction at all possible speed. It appears (personal opinion) that this has nothing to do with technology. It’s more about perceptions and behaviors.

buboard 7y ago

Why sftp? If you can ssh you can also vim :)

ozim 7y ago

I hope not, convincing people to adhere to coding standard where I can tell "this is angular way, please do so" or "google does that" is so much easier than actually convincing herd of cats to "here we have modules, please put your code in a module, not inline because that is the way we do here". I do not care about standard it could be any other framework, just have it consistent, please.