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This feels like a tangential point about JS dev culture or engineering skill level rather than a point about the technical merits of React vs Svelte or whatever
by notJim 5y ago
This feels like a tangential point about JS dev culture or engineering skill level rather than a point about the technical merits of React vs Svelte or whatever.
> As someone who has written fiddly DOM manipulation code, no its not my preference over React JSX, but having the level of understanding TO write surgical DOM manip code should be a basic floor of ability for any web developer using react or otherwise imo.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Basically, it requires a much higher degree of experience and skill to write DOM manip well. There aren't really great resources that I've seen, because it's all very context dependent and something you learn over time. We used to send people straight into the DOM when they wanted to make a simple app, and the result was a lot of huge unmaintainable messes, security nightmares, and poor performance.
The value of React is that you can just follow the docs on reactjs.org that will give you a mediocre default. If your needs go beyond that, you can get a more skilled person to come in and improve the critical parts. The world's need for web apps outstrips the supply of highly-skilled, highly-experienced developers, so it makes sense to have libraries that lower the bar.
- mumblemumble 5y agoFor my part, I actually wonder if there's also a certain gatekeeping element that also fuels the popularity of frameworks like React? Turning things into JavaScript-heavy single-page applications has, I would assume, an effect of shutting out people who are good at HTML+CSS, but less so at JavaScript. I don't know how likely a profile that is nowadays because I'm buried deep deep deep in backend-type work, but it used to be fairly common to have front-end people like that who were stronger on design than programming. Is this a form of unwitting rent-seeking behavior? Has the profession created an artificial supply-and-demand problem by convincing the managers of the world that they need expensive single-page applications built by Software Engineers™, when a (less expensive, I'm assuming) Wordpress site developed by a web designer would have sufficed? For context on where I'm coming from: I've mostly been a back-end developer for a couple decades. I've known HTML and CSS since the '90s, of course, I'm just now starting to learn Web development in earnest, mostly as a hobby. I'm finding React's learning curve to be just incredibly steep. For the stuff I've been doing, I've had a much easier time getting acceptable (to me) results out of a more oldschool-flavored tech stack, with server-side templating and a moderate sprinkle of vanilla JS. No, it's not fancy, but I'm not looking to flex; I'm just looking to whack together a website that looks nice.
- nobleach 5y agoI'm not sure I'd go down that road. I totally agree that for websites, Wordpress, SquareSpace, Gatsby, Hugo, and a host of other static sites work just fine. Where I find it hard to make the stretch is, these are not the type of sites your average JavaScript app developer wants to work on. They'd probably be just fine NOT touching that. I know the past few places I've worked, I've never touched the slick "brochure/marketing sites". I think that type of thing is better left to someone who has really honed their HTML/CSS skills. I don't see a whole lot of reason why anyone would want to turn that type of site into an SPA. I'm not saying developers don't have an attitude problem. We often do. I just think you might be assuming malice where there might be none.
- mumblemumble 5y agoDefinitely not trying to assume malice. I meant it when I said, "unwitting".