3 ms·
For those that are disappointed at the omissions in the timeline: > Disclaimer > We could have mentioned a lot of other projects: > [lines omitted] > ...but w
by hardwaresofton 6y ago
For those that are disappointed at the omissions in the timeline:
> Disclaimer
> We could have mentioned a lot of other projects:
> [lines omitted]
> ...but we had to make choices to keep this timeline compact.
> The 2 main constraints were:
> We wanted 20 projects because we are in 2020
> We wanted at least one project for every year between 2010 and 2020.
Reasoning kind of dumb, since this could have been a much more impactful post, but glad they laid out their reasoning. They missed some major precursors to the web we know to day -- Node Webkit existed before Electron IIRC, there's stuff like MooTools, Ember has been around basically forever (and SproutCore before that), Backbone isn't mentioned, KnockoutJS started the MVVM craze IIRC. In more recent time, they left out Parcel which is by far the easiest bundler I've ever used, JSPM & SystemJS were left out as well.
I wonder if there's a better timeline out there for the history of JS tooling.
Given the disclaimer at the end, they predicted people would be unsatisfied with the omissions... They were right
- swyx 6y agoi attempted a timeline too: https://www.swyx.io/writing/js-third-age/ https://www.swyx.io/writing/js-third-age/ but youre right that people are unhappy with whatever you eventually leave out
- emehrkay 6y agoYeah. Im surprised that both of these left out Prototype.js which, to me, seems to be the father of these client-side libs
- armandososa 6y agoYes! I think prototype was the first to use the dollar sign as a shorthand for dom methods.
- swyx 6y agoi'll cop to the fact that its mainly bc i wasnt around for that time so i'm just reconstructing things from how they look to me today
- armandososa 6y agoMaybe an old dude like me should make an attempt
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- armandososa 6y agoI think Backbone is a really big omission, specially because it credits Angular for the popularity of the SPA and in doing so practically erases Jeremy Ashkenas and his awesome contributions from Javascript history. I would argue you can trace modern JS to Backbone, Underscore and CoffeeScript.
- wwweston 6y agoNot to mention that Angular is listed twice essentially, and that in terms of quality/philosophy it did more damage to the industry than good.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> I would argue you can trace modern JS to Backbone, Underscore and CoffeeScript. Absolutely any list that omits these three technologies is fundamentally flawed. React was originally created to replace the "View" component of Backbone.
- switz 6y agoI had the exact same reaction. Sticking Angular in there with no mention of Backbone is revisionist history. Backbone was everywhere. ES6 doesn't coalesce without Coffeescript either. Firebug is another glaring omission. What about npm? Chromium? MDN? ECMA2015? querySelector/modern DOM APIs? As someone who has been writing javascript for over a decade, I find this list to be really disingenuous. Putting projects like Rome, Snowpack, and Deno alongside jQuery is almost laughable. They certainly have large potential upside, but they have yet to have any significant tangible impact on the Javascript community. I'm all for them and will continue to support their development, but why not mention the projects that had genuine historic impact. Does angular really belong here twice? I'm not sure it belongs even once. I suppose it shouldn't bug me this much.. it's just a list. But given everything the developers of these projects have given me, I'd like to see them get the credit they deserve.