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Time and again it has been proven that the number one metric for success of a language or framework is developer experience. Javascript was a meme language, bu

Time and again it has been proven that the number one metric for success of a language or framework is developer experience. Javascript was a meme language, but it was easy to use and highly accessible. Now its everywhere, in everything, including places it has no business being. React has become that for frontend development. React is easier to use than Svelte. I got excited when I first learned of it, but its awkward to use at times and far more quirky than React. As others have pointed out, that bleeding edge performance is only as great as what you are building. If you don't need to update the DOM multiple times a second, then it barely matters.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> Javascript was a meme language, but it was easy to use and highly accessible. Now its everywhere, in everything, including places it has no business being. JavaScript is the wrong example. It didn't succeed on merit, but because it was the sole language available for the web platform for the entire history of the web until recently and even now it enjoys significant "unfair" advantages (browsers only expose DOM APIs to JavaScript, the JS standard library is baked into the browser while other languages must ship their own over the network, etc).
- SquareWheel 5y ago
  While never widely adopted, VBScript was able to be ran in script tags in Internet Explorer.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I fully believe that JS is better than VBScript, but it's also possible that many other factors contributed to JS's triumph over VBScript. In whichever case, this is pretty weak evidence for the claim "JS won its popularity relative to other languages by merit" (presumably you weren't intending it to be strong evidence).
    - SquareWheel 5y ago
      I was only commenting on the claim that JavaScript was the "sole language available for the web platform".
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        Fair enough, thanks for clarifying. :)
ehnto 5y ago
I think it's ubiquitousness, not developer experience, but perhaps that's what you meant. Both PHP and Javascript are examples of that. PHP wasn't nicer to use than other languages, it was just available to everyone. They're also both unencumbered by the aspirations of software engineering. The language doesn't care that you're writing untyped, procedural spaghetti code, they're very forgiving and so are the community and ecosystem.
FractalHQ 5y ago
That’s surprising, because the overwhelming consensus among anyone I’ve spoken to with significant experience in both seems to emphasize the vastly improved DX of Svelte over its predecessors. State management is trivial, and the amount of code needed to accomplish anything is significantly less in Svelte. I’m curious- how much experience do you have with Svelte and what in particular do you find it makes more difficult or convoluted than React?
mvolfik 5y ago
Where do you find React easier to use than Svelte? I did mostly backend and simple pure-JS frontends before and never picked up react because of how long the tutorial was and how messy the tooling felt. Svelte was a breeze in both of this and I didn't experience larger issues yet, so I'm curious what I'm missing out on?
- madacol 5y ago
  I'd argue that Svelte is easier for beginners or simple stuffs, the tutorial is miles better than react's. But of course, for complex stuffs, react's bigger community becomes to the rescue with many edge-cases solutions
ar_lan 5y ago
> but it was easy to use I disagree. I've found Javascript to be quite complicated. However, I agree with your takes that: 1. It's highly accessible - yes, you can learn a single language and get away with only knowing that language for a good chunk of your career nowadays. 2. It does involve fairly immediate feedback (somewhat akin to Python in that regard), because it's interpreted. Given that it's also visual, and a strong majority of people equate the internet to solely what you see in a browser, it's a pretty gratifying experience (even if, later in your career, you avoid it like the plague).

throwaway894345 5y ago

> Javascript was a meme language, but it was easy to use and highly accessible. Now its everywhere, in everything, including places it has no business being. JavaScript is the wrong example. It didn't succeed on merit, but because it was the sole language available for the web platform for the entire history of the web until recently and even now it enjoys significant "unfair" advantages (browsers only expose DOM APIs to JavaScript, the JS standard library is baked into the browser while other languages must ship their own over the network, etc).

SquareWheel 5y ago
While never widely adopted, VBScript was able to be ran in script tags in Internet Explorer.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I fully believe that JS is better than VBScript, but it's also possible that many other factors contributed to JS's triumph over VBScript. In whichever case, this is pretty weak evidence for the claim "JS won its popularity relative to other languages by merit" (presumably you weren't intending it to be strong evidence).
  - SquareWheel 5y ago
    I was only commenting on the claim that JavaScript was the "sole language available for the web platform".
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Fair enough, thanks for clarifying. :)

ehnto 5y ago

I think it's ubiquitousness, not developer experience, but perhaps that's what you meant. Both PHP and Javascript are examples of that. PHP wasn't nicer to use than other languages, it was just available to everyone. They're also both unencumbered by the aspirations of software engineering. The language doesn't care that you're writing untyped, procedural spaghetti code, they're very forgiving and so are the community and ecosystem.

FractalHQ 5y ago

That’s surprising, because the overwhelming consensus among anyone I’ve spoken to with significant experience in both seems to emphasize the vastly improved DX of Svelte over its predecessors. State management is trivial, and the amount of code needed to accomplish anything is significantly less in Svelte. I’m curious- how much experience do you have with Svelte and what in particular do you find it makes more difficult or convoluted than React?

mvolfik 5y ago

Where do you find React easier to use than Svelte? I did mostly backend and simple pure-JS frontends before and never picked up react because of how long the tutorial was and how messy the tooling felt. Svelte was a breeze in both of this and I didn't experience larger issues yet, so I'm curious what I'm missing out on?

madacol 5y ago
I'd argue that Svelte is easier for beginners or simple stuffs, the tutorial is miles better than react's. But of course, for complex stuffs, react's bigger community becomes to the rescue with many edge-cases solutions

ar_lan 5y ago

> but it was easy to use I disagree. I've found Javascript to be quite complicated. However, I agree with your takes that: 1. It's highly accessible - yes, you can learn a single language and get away with only knowing that language for a good chunk of your career nowadays. 2. It does involve fairly immediate feedback (somewhat akin to Python in that regard), because it's interpreted. Given that it's also visual, and a strong majority of people equate the internet to solely what you see in a browser, it's a pretty gratifying experience (even if, later in your career, you avoid it like the plague).