9 ms·

Not gonna lie, I've been waiting for that to start to seem like a good idea. :) React seems to have more staying power than previous trends, though. Off the

Not gonna lie, I've been waiting for that to start to seem like a good idea. :) React seems to have more staying power than previous trends, though. Off the top of my head, the frontend library supremacy* went something like: - 2008 to 2012: Jquery - 2012 to 2014: Backbone - 2014 to 2016: Angular - 2016 to present: React And although there are serious contenders, React still seems like it has a solid lead over all others. If it lasts another couple years, it's been the dominant tool for longer than most. * Based entirely on "what I was hearing the most about at that time," not on any rigorous methodology. There was still plenty of Jquery code being written last year and there are large, mature codebases out there in Backbone and Angular.

wwweston 6y ago
> there are large, mature codebases out there in Backbone and Angular. When it comes to large long-historied Angular codebases, I prefer the term "metastasized" over "mature," though now that we're in the 2020s we can almost use "legacy."
- jrumbut 6y ago
  You know what's funny? When I was finishing a Backbone.js job (circa 2014? I can't recall) I looked at Angular and React and my conclusion, based on thought and research, was that while React looked better in the moment Angular was conceptually superior and would be the future (or the future would be something like Angular but better). That was really a thing I thought, I posted it too and people were like "hmm yes good point." I know I've been wrong before and since but for whatever reason that one stuck with me as a humbling moment, I had it all backwards.
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    Hey I was certain that the iPad would be a flop too and that one year from the release nobody would talk about it ...
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      I've been wrong about every US Presidential election since 2000! That takes special talent.
      - jmnicolas 6y ago
        So next time tell us who you see win, then we'll know the opponent will win! :)
        JohnBooty 6y ago
        As an atheist I realize this makes absolutely zero sense, but I can't help but feel that "abusing" the power in such a way would somehow "jinx" it and cause it to backfire!
breck 6y ago
The core React design pattern is nice, and the community is great, but the noise in the code.
- kelchm 6y ago
  What do you mean by noise?
  - anonymouse008 6y ago
    Sh*t that sounds nice, but when stretched outside the simple documentation, has no purpose or meaning and ruins your life. I’m looking at you -> { blah && }
    - savanaly 6y ago
      What's the matter with that notation? I work in a code base many millions of lines large, see those every day, and think nothing of it.
  - ricardobeat 6y ago
    The noise is the code.
    - tclancy 6y ago
      Play the spaces between the notes.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      Old school Perl coder here - rolling my eyes... ;-)
      - chris_wot 6y ago
        The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. Talk to a sendmail v8 admin who had to hand edit sendmail.cf rewrite rules.
rektide 6y ago
I keep wondering what everyone is going to complain about when it becomes clear React and Vue & a couple other decade old offerings are what everyone in JS land is using. The jokes about new JS frameworks being invented daily have started to fall off already. Stagnancy & ossification are setting in. Although functional components in React have, fairly recently, re-simplified/re-writeen the DX again. Backbone was the first time there was framing at all. So long ago & so not that long ago!
- fishtoaster 6y ago
  The frontend world is maturing! I remember having similar complains in the smaller rails world about a decade ago: every 6-12 months there'd be a new community-favorite gem to accomplish X, where X is any number of common needs: file upload, auth, json serialization, background jobs, etc etc. It was damn frustrating. I had the early-rails equivalent of js framework fatigue! But after a while it quieted down. I wouldn't call it stagnancy and ossification - I'd call it maturity and stabilization. :)
  - jspash 6y ago
    I was in those same trenches and I have the same scars. However... IIRC the difference between JS fatigue and magpie development with Gems (ooh! Shiny!) is that switching to the latest and greatest gems was usually painless. If you were willing to learn yet another DSL. With JS you have to throw everything away and start over with each new thing. But maybe Im just wearing ruby-tinted glasses. I actually liked the energy of the ruby community back then. But with JS I feel like it’s the blind leading the blind with the confidence of a used car salesman.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      I like the term “magpie development”.
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  React has staying power this time, thank God. It's almost 8 years old and popularity is still increasing. Angular is dead to me though, which means big rewrites coming for me in the next few years...
hising 6y ago
Backbone never got really popular here (Sweden). I still see some legacy apps running Angular but React took over from jQuery quite fast in 2015 or so. What I have noticed thouhg is that people who like MVC-frameworks tend to like using libraries similar to Vue and those who have more of an application approach to web apps tend to like React. Personally I think I got a bad first impression from Vue and have had a hard time trying to get to like it (I know it is popular). I think libraries such as Svelte and dev environments similar to Snowpack will gain traction the coming years. Focus on Developer Experience and doing the heavy lifting in the dev environment.
eggie5 6y ago
you forgot prototype before jquery
- ivanche 6y ago
  And script.acoulo.us! What a duo they were. Actually I just checked and scrip.acoulou.us site is still alive, with last version from Dec 2010 :)
  - kjsthree 6y ago
    Oh my god, the flashbacks! Circa 2005 doing client work during summers off of uni in this newfangled “Ruby on Rails” (v0.8.x). I was new to all of it. Coming from Flash/Flex/AS and jumping both feet into Ruby, Rails, JS via Script.aculo.us! Great times!
  - mcdevilkiller 6y ago
    I use the browser extension Wappalyzer, which tries to detect the tech used in every site, and you would be surprised how many use the duo :)
- fishtoaster 6y ago
  Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about prototype! I also used Dojo heavily at one of my college internships. Ancient history in javascript-land. :)
  - no_wizard 6y ago
    Dojo[0] actually reinvented itself to be a full VDOM react-like framework, focused on enterprise [0]https://dojo.io/ https://dojo.io/
- tclancy 6y ago
  And yahoo!
- bigiain 6y ago
  Seems they also had the good luck to have missed out on jQueryMobile too... :shudder: (I did make a bunch of money with that one project that went live for about 8 days before the company we did it for sold out and the new owners shut it down immediately. _So_ glad I was never on the hook for production support on that...)
anthonysarkis 6y ago
2021 - *: Vue
smichel17 6y ago
You might be surprised how many sites are still using jquery..
rorykoehler 6y ago
Phoenix Live View pattern is where it's at now. So much better.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tannhaeuser 6y ago
That timeline is missing vue and vanilla.js. Also, while personally I'm not a fan, Angular seems to continue to do well in "enterprise" projects where the web app isn't the main deliverable, and having a separate Node.js stack is undesired next to the Java or .net main backend stack.

wwweston 6y ago

> there are large, mature codebases out there in Backbone and Angular. When it comes to large long-historied Angular codebases, I prefer the term "metastasized" over "mature," though now that we're in the 2020s we can almost use "legacy."

jrumbut 6y ago
You know what's funny? When I was finishing a Backbone.js job (circa 2014? I can't recall) I looked at Angular and React and my conclusion, based on thought and research, was that while React looked better in the moment Angular was conceptually superior and would be the future (or the future would be something like Angular but better). That was really a thing I thought, I posted it too and people were like "hmm yes good point." I know I've been wrong before and since but for whatever reason that one stuck with me as a humbling moment, I had it all backwards.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  Hey I was certain that the iPad would be a flop too and that one year from the release nobody would talk about it ...
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I've been wrong about every US Presidential election since 2000! That takes special talent.
    - jmnicolas 6y ago
      So next time tell us who you see win, then we'll know the opponent will win! :)
      - JohnBooty 6y ago
        As an atheist I realize this makes absolutely zero sense, but I can't help but feel that "abusing" the power in such a way would somehow "jinx" it and cause it to backfire!

breck 6y ago

The core React design pattern is nice, and the community is great, but the noise in the code.

kelchm 6y ago
What do you mean by noise?
- anonymouse008 6y ago
  Sh*t that sounds nice, but when stretched outside the simple documentation, has no purpose or meaning and ruins your life. I’m looking at you -> { blah && }
  - savanaly 6y ago
    What's the matter with that notation? I work in a code base many millions of lines large, see those every day, and think nothing of it.
- ricardobeat 6y ago
  The noise is the code.
  - tclancy 6y ago
    Play the spaces between the notes.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    Old school Perl coder here - rolling my eyes... ;-)
    - chris_wot 6y ago
      The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. Talk to a sendmail v8 admin who had to hand edit sendmail.cf rewrite rules.

rektide 6y ago

I keep wondering what everyone is going to complain about when it becomes clear React and Vue & a couple other decade old offerings are what everyone in JS land is using. The jokes about new JS frameworks being invented daily have started to fall off already. Stagnancy & ossification are setting in. Although functional components in React have, fairly recently, re-simplified/re-writeen the DX again. Backbone was the first time there was framing at all. So long ago & so not that long ago!

fishtoaster 6y ago
The frontend world is maturing! I remember having similar complains in the smaller rails world about a decade ago: every 6-12 months there'd be a new community-favorite gem to accomplish X, where X is any number of common needs: file upload, auth, json serialization, background jobs, etc etc. It was damn frustrating. I had the early-rails equivalent of js framework fatigue! But after a while it quieted down. I wouldn't call it stagnancy and ossification - I'd call it maturity and stabilization. :)
- jspash 6y ago
  I was in those same trenches and I have the same scars. However... IIRC the difference between JS fatigue and magpie development with Gems (ooh! Shiny!) is that switching to the latest and greatest gems was usually painless. If you were willing to learn yet another DSL. With JS you have to throw everything away and start over with each new thing. But maybe Im just wearing ruby-tinted glasses. I actually liked the energy of the ruby community back then. But with JS I feel like it’s the blind leading the blind with the confidence of a used car salesman.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    I like the term “magpie development”.
throwaway189262 6y ago
React has staying power this time, thank God. It's almost 8 years old and popularity is still increasing. Angular is dead to me though, which means big rewrites coming for me in the next few years...

hising 6y ago

Backbone never got really popular here (Sweden). I still see some legacy apps running Angular but React took over from jQuery quite fast in 2015 or so. What I have noticed thouhg is that people who like MVC-frameworks tend to like using libraries similar to Vue and those who have more of an application approach to web apps tend to like React. Personally I think I got a bad first impression from Vue and have had a hard time trying to get to like it (I know it is popular). I think libraries such as Svelte and dev environments similar to Snowpack will gain traction the coming years. Focus on Developer Experience and doing the heavy lifting in the dev environment.

eggie5 6y ago

you forgot prototype before jquery

ivanche 6y ago
And script.acoulo.us! What a duo they were. Actually I just checked and scrip.acoulou.us site is still alive, with last version from Dec 2010 :)
- kjsthree 6y ago
  Oh my god, the flashbacks! Circa 2005 doing client work during summers off of uni in this newfangled “Ruby on Rails” (v0.8.x). I was new to all of it. Coming from Flash/Flex/AS and jumping both feet into Ruby, Rails, JS via Script.aculo.us! Great times!
- mcdevilkiller 6y ago
  I use the browser extension Wappalyzer, which tries to detect the tech used in every site, and you would be surprised how many use the duo :)
fishtoaster 6y ago
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about prototype! I also used Dojo heavily at one of my college internships. Ancient history in javascript-land. :)
- no_wizard 6y ago
  Dojo[0] actually reinvented itself to be a full VDOM react-like framework, focused on enterprise [0]https://dojo.io/ https://dojo.io/
tclancy 6y ago
And yahoo!
bigiain 6y ago
Seems they also had the good luck to have missed out on jQueryMobile too... :shudder: (I did make a bunch of money with that one project that went live for about 8 days before the company we did it for sold out and the new owners shut it down immediately. _So_ glad I was never on the hook for production support on that...)

anthonysarkis 6y ago

2021 - *: Vue

smichel17 6y ago

You might be surprised how many sites are still using jquery..

rorykoehler 6y ago

Phoenix Live View pattern is where it's at now. So much better.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tannhaeuser 6y ago

That timeline is missing vue and vanilla.js. Also, while personally I'm not a fan, Angular seems to continue to do well in "enterprise" projects where the web app isn't the main deliverable, and having a separate Node.js stack is undesired next to the Java or .net main backend stack.