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While I agree in theory, for a long time there was no easy way to test frontend code across multiple browser. That effort was simply too high for anyone. Nowad

While I agree in theory, for a long time there was no easy way to test frontend code across multiple browser. That effort was simply too high for anyone. Nowadays front-end testing is doable but still far from being a pleasant experience. I did it at some jobs, in others we just didn't think the benefits were worth the hassle. Now that I'm building a small business my backend is very well tested while the front-end doesn't have tests. This is partly because of the setup cost and partly because the development experience is so bad that I see our small company just throwing everything out of the window, keeping the html structure and rebuilding the thin UI with some better technology along the way (current stack is react + next + tailwind, we've been doing react for 5+ years)

wpietri 5y ago
Interesting! Could you say a bit about what you think might come next? Or from a different angle, the pain points you have that make you think a rewrite in a new stack is preferable?
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  I don't think we're waiting for some new concept that is missing. I've been hoping for someone to maintain some popular js library implementing real functional reactive programming and arrows (like https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto), but I can live without it. I'm just waiting for something polished, with a small, simple, codebase (not React with fibers, yes to something like solidjs, preact) with widespread types support (not Typescript and the quest for implementing types for every dependency), ideally not creating huge bundles (I like solidjs / svelte), with a core solution to manage state (I like Elm), ideally supporting CSS encapsulation and semantic css (I like CSS modules, MaintainableCSS), mainstream enough that I can hire people to work with without having to become a teacher. I think Elm got 90% there, but it failed hard on the community side. I'm thinking of moving to a Rust framework (eg. seed-rs) next as soon as they get popular enough and after checking whether the wasm bundle size make sense.

wpietri 5y ago

Interesting! Could you say a bit about what you think might come next? Or from a different angle, the pain points you have that make you think a rewrite in a new stack is preferable?

jokethrowaway 5y ago
I don't think we're waiting for some new concept that is missing. I've been hoping for someone to maintain some popular js library implementing real functional reactive programming and arrows (like https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto https://hackage.haskell.org/package/auto), but I can live without it. I'm just waiting for something polished, with a small, simple, codebase (not React with fibers, yes to something like solidjs, preact) with widespread types support (not Typescript and the quest for implementing types for every dependency), ideally not creating huge bundles (I like solidjs / svelte), with a core solution to manage state (I like Elm), ideally supporting CSS encapsulation and semantic css (I like CSS modules, MaintainableCSS), mainstream enough that I can hire people to work with without having to become a teacher. I think Elm got 90% there, but it failed hard on the community side. I'm thinking of moving to a Rust framework (eg. seed-rs) next as soon as they get popular enough and after checking whether the wasm bundle size make sense.