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Unfortunately yes. In all my four decades in tech, code bitrots in the the web front-end environment faster than any other I've yet seen. The Javascript lang
by inopinatus 6y ago
Unfortunately yes. In all my four decades in tech, code bitrots in the the web front-end environment faster than any other I've yet seen. The Javascript language in particular (and its ecosystem) remains a baroque Gormenghast of curiosities built on an ancient sewer where nightmare beasts still roam, and everyone's holed up in the throne room hoping a few trusted paladins will somehow decontaminate the rest.
> How do we get out of this?
Personally, I try to use as little JS as possible. CSS is in better shape and handles a ton of page-level behaviours, HTTP/2 has done wonders for round-trip responsiveness, such that server-rendered HTML still holds the productivity crown for building out MVPs and SaaS application interfaces and the like.
When I absolutely must write JS, I'll tend towards typescript these days, and minimise dependencies to the point where I hopefully have no node_modules/ or bundler at all.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI am struggling with this. I have made an Amazon storefront in React JS + npm package manager after watching this tutorial. I must have deleted the node_modules folder a dozen or more times and if you npm install again, it works! This is the kind of stuff that makes me wonder, how can I make a production worthy app without the fear of not being able to fix the dependencies!? Took me 2 hours to just to find out that some module wasn't compatible with Node version 15.
- cozuya 6y agoWhy would you default to using the non long term support version? Would you do that for, say, ubuntu?
- inopinatus 6y agoIt’s an easy blind alley to blunder down on some platforms. If one’s package manager defaults to edge versions and you’re just getting standard with a new language/framework via a tutorial, for example, this is how you learn there’s an LTS release the hard way. Homebrew users on Mac are common victims, but similarly Arch Linux or FreeBSD may trap the unwary (and for more besides than merely Node)
- inopinatus 6y agos/standard/started/
- moron4hire 6y agoWhy are there "not-LTS" versions are all?
- inopinatus 6y agoSo we can develop for them. A new version of, say, a programming language needs the ecosystem to come along with it.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI had no idea there was LTS and non-LTS versions of node.
- moron4hire 6y agoC# doesn't have non-LTS versions. Java doesn't. C, C++, Haskell, OCaml don't. In OSes, Windows and Mac OS don't. I'm actually struggling to think of anything outside of Linux and Node that has this concept of "here's a major version that is marked LTS and here is a beta, but we're not going to call it beta, we're just going to call it an odd-numbered major version".
- esperent 6y agoWindows does do LTS. So do Java, Django, Unity, and many others. That said, node versioning has caused me a lot of stress over the last few years. Not sure if that's to do with the use of LTS specifically though.
- moron4hire 6y agoWhen Microsoft calls a version of Windows "LTS", it means "this is an old version of Windows for which we're going to keep releasing security updates for the next 10 years", not "all more recent versions of Windows should be considered beta quality software". I forgot about Unity. Yes, Unity is another offender here. One of the many reasons I quit working with it.
- hmsimha 6y agoBecause you'll just as easily stumble on other packages which are "bleeding edge", highly regarded, and require Node 15 features to run