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You are clearly not a JavaScript developer. It really feels like everybody has just given up and thrown in the towel. There are no good developers, let some gia

You are clearly not a JavaScript developer. It really feels like everybody has just given up and thrown in the towel. There are no good developers, let some giant monster framework make all your decisions, and frequently chase shiny shit. Of course this means starting over, from scratch, in small sections of the product every couple of years. > The industry constantly mints senior engineers who have been bitten by complexity, but doesn't want to hire them, or listen to them. Again, in JavaScript land that is not what it sounds like. The industry has minted a bazillion expert beginners who have never moved out of their parent’s basement and had to live on their own (in a technology sense). They are fanatically invented here fearing original code more than job termination and now they have somehow risen to make architectural decisions about the future health of your software and business. I guess they failed to understand that choosing boring software is different than depending on a package manager to write all your software.

monsieurbanana 6y ago
I'm not used to see that amount of hate directed to fellow programmers in a hn comment.
- collyw 6y ago
  There is no hate in that comment, just criticism.
  - sdfsfsf3kjdf 6y ago
    Extremely shallow criticism based off of little more than personal anecdotes.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      Most comments, on any subject, that aren't praise fit that description.
- austincheney 6y ago
  There was no hate intended in my comment, but I can understand how you came to that conclusion. My experience posting on r/javascript of Reddit has taught me some developers are insecure, extreme conspiracy-theory paranoid insecure, about working without their favorite framework.
  - spion 6y ago
    How much experience do you have working with JS?
    - austincheney 6y ago
      I have been writing it full time about 13 years. I love writing in this language, and TypeScript even more. I am just frustrated by what appears to be some combination of insecurity, false expertise, and a vehement lack of passion in the work force. If I want to be happy I should move on to a different technology stack, but I really enjoy making products in this language.
      - BigJono 6y ago
        It's funny, I have about 13 years experience, have been senior in both enterprise, start-ups and everything in-between, and have basically the exact same view about front end dev as your original post. Except I fucking hate using Typescript, and totally wasn't expecting to see you mention you like it, given all the other stuff. IME all the same people that overengineer everything with god awful dependencies are the same ones pushing super hard for typescript on every project I'm on. When they get their way (as always, since everything is decided democratically and everyone is dragged down to the level of the worst dev on the team), they write the worst typescript ever. On my last project, one of the people championing typescript defined some constant strings containing css breakpoints as the type 'string | int'. Rather than getting knocked back as one of the dumbest lines of code in the history of front-end, this somehow generated 3 pages of discussion in code review then got left in. I'd give the person a pass, assuming they'd never used a typed language before, except (a) they were senior and (b) they're the one that wanted types. These "seniors" lack even the most basic understanding of the shit they're using, but feel the need to impose their opinions about libraries, tooling and languages constantly. I don't feel like I'd mind using TS at all on my personal projects, but on work projects with average devs it just adds another entire layer of complexity that they spend hours and days and weeks and months wrangling with instead of writing any code that might be remotely useful, by say, maybe implementing a business requirement, or doing anything that makes the company money instead of pissing away millions in salaries playing npm lego. Plus, although I'm not familiar with any of it since I'm never the one pushing for TS, and so never the one setting it up, I've seen people spend absolutely ludicrous amounts of time tinkering with webpack and fussing over TS integration with 3rd party libraries and whatnot. I'm surprised you haven't run into more of these people that just seem to use TS as a complexity multiplier for every bad engineering decision they make. Like spending 6 months setting up Gatsby or Next isn't costly enough for them, so they decide to tack on 3 months of TS integration and 'upskilling' for 3000 combo points, when they already (more or less, usually less) know how to write Javascript.
mro_name 6y ago
I always wonder how package managers go along with software engineering maturity level > 1 requiring repeatability.

monsieurbanana 6y ago

I'm not used to see that amount of hate directed to fellow programmers in a hn comment.

collyw 6y ago
There is no hate in that comment, just criticism.
- sdfsfsf3kjdf 6y ago
  Extremely shallow criticism based off of little more than personal anecdotes.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Most comments, on any subject, that aren't praise fit that description.
austincheney 6y ago
There was no hate intended in my comment, but I can understand how you came to that conclusion. My experience posting on r/javascript of Reddit has taught me some developers are insecure, extreme conspiracy-theory paranoid insecure, about working without their favorite framework.
- spion 6y ago
  How much experience do you have working with JS?
  - austincheney 6y ago
    I have been writing it full time about 13 years. I love writing in this language, and TypeScript even more. I am just frustrated by what appears to be some combination of insecurity, false expertise, and a vehement lack of passion in the work force. If I want to be happy I should move on to a different technology stack, but I really enjoy making products in this language.
    - BigJono 6y ago
      It's funny, I have about 13 years experience, have been senior in both enterprise, start-ups and everything in-between, and have basically the exact same view about front end dev as your original post. Except I fucking hate using Typescript, and totally wasn't expecting to see you mention you like it, given all the other stuff. IME all the same people that overengineer everything with god awful dependencies are the same ones pushing super hard for typescript on every project I'm on. When they get their way (as always, since everything is decided democratically and everyone is dragged down to the level of the worst dev on the team), they write the worst typescript ever. On my last project, one of the people championing typescript defined some constant strings containing css breakpoints as the type 'string | int'. Rather than getting knocked back as one of the dumbest lines of code in the history of front-end, this somehow generated 3 pages of discussion in code review then got left in. I'd give the person a pass, assuming they'd never used a typed language before, except (a) they were senior and (b) they're the one that wanted types. These "seniors" lack even the most basic understanding of the shit they're using, but feel the need to impose their opinions about libraries, tooling and languages constantly. I don't feel like I'd mind using TS at all on my personal projects, but on work projects with average devs it just adds another entire layer of complexity that they spend hours and days and weeks and months wrangling with instead of writing any code that might be remotely useful, by say, maybe implementing a business requirement, or doing anything that makes the company money instead of pissing away millions in salaries playing npm lego. Plus, although I'm not familiar with any of it since I'm never the one pushing for TS, and so never the one setting it up, I've seen people spend absolutely ludicrous amounts of time tinkering with webpack and fussing over TS integration with 3rd party libraries and whatnot. I'm surprised you haven't run into more of these people that just seem to use TS as a complexity multiplier for every bad engineering decision they make. Like spending 6 months setting up Gatsby or Next isn't costly enough for them, so they decide to tack on 3 months of TS integration and 'upskilling' for 3000 combo points, when they already (more or less, usually less) know how to write Javascript.

mro_name 6y ago

I always wonder how package managers go along with software engineering maturity level > 1 requiring repeatability.