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A lot of people don't want to set up a whole new environment just to run some javascript in their front end. I know you can put react and angular code in plain

A lot of people don't want to set up a whole new environment just to run some javascript in their front end. I know you can put react and angular code in plain js files and serve those files directly, but if you hire a typical frontend guy chances are he will need to add a whole slew of dependencies and steps to deploy your solution. Take a simple site like HN, there is no need to make maintenance many times more expensive by doing all of those things when a hundred lines of javascript will do the trick while still being simple enough that any programmer could read it and understand how it works.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Then again, HN doesn't need a Javascript developer to maintain their 2kb of JS, either. I mean, by virtue of being a client-side Javascript developer, you're surely going to be working on client-side applications large enough to demand a client-side Javascript developer. Frankly, avoiding jobs that use frameworks seems like you're choosing for nothing more than legacy spaghetti-code messes, not some sort of back-to-basics enlightenment. But I'm not here to judge what somewhat likes. :P
- username90 7y ago
  I looked up his post, seems like he codes complicated systems in Javascript rather than being a typical UI developer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589013 I can see a lot of companies being willing to hire a person who can do that even if he doesn't want to use a specific UI framework. Just write down the javascript and you can integrate it in whatever codebase you have, so he is a lot easier to work with than your average JS dev.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  From my experience the modern framework-based project are spaghetti messes with thousands of unaudited (and unauditable, due to their quantity) dependencies. To me it doesn't look much better than the old-style "spaghetti mess". At least the old-style one is usually self-contained and will keep working, where as the new one will randomly break once someone pulls a package or a repo is temporarily unavailable. Maybe there's just something I don't get and clearly frontend developers somehow manage to make all of this work, but to an old-school backend guy like me the modern JS ecosystem seems horrifying, needlessly complicated, over-engineered and brittle.

hombre_fatal 7y ago

Then again, HN doesn't need a Javascript developer to maintain their 2kb of JS, either. I mean, by virtue of being a client-side Javascript developer, you're surely going to be working on client-side applications large enough to demand a client-side Javascript developer. Frankly, avoiding jobs that use frameworks seems like you're choosing for nothing more than legacy spaghetti-code messes, not some sort of back-to-basics enlightenment. But I'm not here to judge what somewhat likes. :P

username90 7y ago
I looked up his post, seems like he codes complicated systems in Javascript rather than being a typical UI developer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20589013 I can see a lot of companies being willing to hire a person who can do that even if he doesn't want to use a specific UI framework. Just write down the javascript and you can integrate it in whatever codebase you have, so he is a lot easier to work with than your average JS dev.
Nextgrid 7y ago
From my experience the modern framework-based project are spaghetti messes with thousands of unaudited (and unauditable, due to their quantity) dependencies. To me it doesn't look much better than the old-style "spaghetti mess". At least the old-style one is usually self-contained and will keep working, where as the new one will randomly break once someone pulls a package or a repo is temporarily unavailable. Maybe there's just something I don't get and clearly frontend developers somehow manage to make all of this work, but to an old-school backend guy like me the modern JS ecosystem seems horrifying, needlessly complicated, over-engineered and brittle.