4 ms·

The golden age of web app development was 2012-2013. The state of the art in the browser was jQuery and ES5. CoffeeScript was mature and stable. The Express fr

by pdog 6y ago

The golden age of web app development was 2012-2013. The state of the art in the browser was jQuery and ES5. CoffeeScript was mature and stable. The Express framework and Node.js 0.8 were perfect for server-side JavaScript. It was blazing fast, unopinionated, and minimal. It's too bad it didn't last.

freehunter 6y ago
The reason it didn’t last is because of blog-driven development. How does Udemy make money if everyone is using Rails with CoffeeScript and JQuery? How does Medium drive new articles and new authors? They can’t. So new authors have to drive new trends, which their audience grabs onto and forces into the mainstream. Recently I had a discussion on here about React vs PHP. The conclusion seemed to be that PHP died for no reason and on second thought it’s more popular now than it’s ever been. That might be a mainstream opinion today but five years ago? How dare you speak against the React/Node hegemony. Hopefully people come around to the idea that newer is not always better and older tech is sometimes only considered outdated because the trendy blogs don’t talk about those languages/frameworks anymore. JavaScript everywhere isn’t the answer and server side languages/frameworks are often better. Phoenix LiveView might not win but it’s certainly going to define what the web looks like over the next few years.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  Do you really believe there's some conspiracy between Udemy, Medium and the like to drive JS development such that they could get more engagement? It seems that's a reversal of cause and effect, people like to make new stuff which Udemy and Medium were then able to capitalize on, nothing more.
  - ptcampbell 6y ago
    I believe the author is theorising a phenomenon not a conspiracy.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    As ptcampbell stated, I do not believe there is any collusion. It's just natural... people will get tired of reading about the same thing and stop visiting your site. So you hype up something else and see a ton of new visitors. After a while people get tired of reading about that so you come up with something new to write about which drives more hits. Eventually a pattern becomes clear, you either need to constantly write about new things or your site will be forgotten. The changes are not being driven by any need for a new language or framework, just the hype cycle of technology. And when your business depends on that hype cycle, it is in your best interest to keep that spinning as fast as possible. No collusion or conspiracy needed.
srle 6y ago
And it was an absolute fucking nightmare to maintain and work on. You either never did serious front end dev at the time or you just have an extreme case of rose tinted glasses.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Compared to now?! Or you mean it was already terrible by then, bring back HTML, CSS, and Flash?
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    I agree with GP, that stack described above was a fucking nightmare. Typescript and react are a joy to work with. I miss them every day I do only python, which has been my bread and butter for 16 years. The framework landscape for SSR is not as good but it's getting there definitely. Nextjs is promising nowadays.
ng12 6y ago
> The golden age of web app development was 2012-2013. I have the opposite feeling. 2010ish was when companies really started leaning in to building desktop experiences on the web and 2012/2013 was when it was clear the tools were coming up short. I don't know about you but I don't look back on Backbone fondly. It's not a coincidence that React, Vue, and Angular2 all came out around 2013/2014.
cercatrova 6y ago
Golden age? ES6 changed everything in JS land, and killed jQuery effectively. I can't call anything before ES6 a golden age.
newsbinator 6y ago
I'd say the golden age of web app development is now. Most people who want a web app can have one. And it can do most of what they want it to do. And it doesn't take months or years to get it there.

by pdog 6y ago

freehunter 6y ago

The reason it didn’t last is because of blog-driven development. How does Udemy make money if everyone is using Rails with CoffeeScript and JQuery? How does Medium drive new articles and new authors? They can’t. So new authors have to drive new trends, which their audience grabs onto and forces into the mainstream. Recently I had a discussion on here about React vs PHP. The conclusion seemed to be that PHP died for no reason and on second thought it’s more popular now than it’s ever been. That might be a mainstream opinion today but five years ago? How dare you speak against the React/Node hegemony. Hopefully people come around to the idea that newer is not always better and older tech is sometimes only considered outdated because the trendy blogs don’t talk about those languages/frameworks anymore. JavaScript everywhere isn’t the answer and server side languages/frameworks are often better. Phoenix LiveView might not win but it’s certainly going to define what the web looks like over the next few years.

cercatrova 6y ago
Do you really believe there's some conspiracy between Udemy, Medium and the like to drive JS development such that they could get more engagement? It seems that's a reversal of cause and effect, people like to make new stuff which Udemy and Medium were then able to capitalize on, nothing more.
- ptcampbell 6y ago
  I believe the author is theorising a phenomenon not a conspiracy.
- freehunter 6y ago
  As ptcampbell stated, I do not believe there is any collusion. It's just natural... people will get tired of reading about the same thing and stop visiting your site. So you hype up something else and see a ton of new visitors. After a while people get tired of reading about that so you come up with something new to write about which drives more hits. Eventually a pattern becomes clear, you either need to constantly write about new things or your site will be forgotten. The changes are not being driven by any need for a new language or framework, just the hype cycle of technology. And when your business depends on that hype cycle, it is in your best interest to keep that spinning as fast as possible. No collusion or conspiracy needed.

srle 6y ago

And it was an absolute fucking nightmare to maintain and work on. You either never did serious front end dev at the time or you just have an extreme case of rose tinted glasses.

OJFord 6y ago
Compared to now?! Or you mean it was already terrible by then, bring back HTML, CSS, and Flash?
- scrollaway 6y ago
  I agree with GP, that stack described above was a fucking nightmare. Typescript and react are a joy to work with. I miss them every day I do only python, which has been my bread and butter for 16 years. The framework landscape for SSR is not as good but it's getting there definitely. Nextjs is promising nowadays.

ng12 6y ago

> The golden age of web app development was 2012-2013. I have the opposite feeling. 2010ish was when companies really started leaning in to building desktop experiences on the web and 2012/2013 was when it was clear the tools were coming up short. I don't know about you but I don't look back on Backbone fondly. It's not a coincidence that React, Vue, and Angular2 all came out around 2013/2014.

cercatrova 6y ago

Golden age? ES6 changed everything in JS land, and killed jQuery effectively. I can't call anything before ES6 a golden age.

newsbinator 6y ago

I'd say the golden age of web app development is now. Most people who want a web app can have one. And it can do most of what they want it to do. And it doesn't take months or years to get it there.