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This comment appears in every HN thread about web development. Always coming from someone who clearly doesn’t understand the web deeply. If you did you would r

This comment appears in every HN thread about web development. Always coming from someone who clearly doesn’t understand the web deeply. If you did you would realize things haven’t changed that drastically in 5+ years now. The new libraries and frameworks are small iterations that take a weekend to check out and pick up. Once you have the deep knowledge you’re set in this field. The problem most people have is that it can be less straightforward and much wider surface area, especially if you’re doing stuff like React then React Native, and also trying to understand native libraries while also bundling code for both platforms.

dntrkv 5y ago
My theory is that most of these comments are coming from backend devs who rarely do frontend and then complain that the space has evolved since MooTools was hot shit. React is going on 9 years people.
simion314 5y ago
>If you did you would realize things haven’t changed that drastically in 5+ years now. The new libraries and frameworks are small iterations that take a weekend to check out and pick up. I think the issue is the fact that the browser has no native rich and efficient components like desktop tookits have. So you implement some coold grid view to showcase all the user projects but later some user created many projects and because angular performance is garbage you need to solve it now, You can do a shit solution and implement pagination or waster your time and implement a DataGridView similar like in desktop toolkits that is actually smart and efficient or maybe you do the shittiest thing and install some random stuff that might give you what you need. Same problem would not exist on desktop and probably mobile tookits. Repeat same issues for all possible widgets that exist in a mature toolkit. On the web you always spend a lot of time on shittiest things instead of the cool part. A designer wants say a horizontal scrollbar that would work only with the mouse(no Ctrl to press) =? install a library, a designer wants a dropdown with some extra styling -> install a library (or create a inferior dropdown - see YT autocomplete one that gets stuck on all the time) , modals -> create your own system. The only widget that is not handicapped in the browser is the text input one. People will say how in the past on desktop you can drag and drop widgets and make the app , the reason it works is because those widgets where powerful and efficient. Probably mobile devs can understand this point, you don't have to hunt for a framework or library to get a smart and efficient table widget.
KronisLV 5y ago
> The new libraries and frameworks are small iterations that take a weekend to check out and pick up. If this is the case, then i congratulate you on being a pretty productive and capable front end developer! However, that's definitely not the case for me and many other people: i'd say that you need at least a week to get comfortable with both using technologies, ways of misusing them, their footguns and to get a deeper understanding of what you're actually doing. I've seen sites fail to work correctly because people attempted to use React hooks with overlapping dependency arrays, where one of the hook bodies calls a state mutation, which ends up in an endless loop and breaks the entire page. If hooks indeed were such a small feature that could be reasonably understood in a few days, then we wouldn't see cases like that, nor would it be difficult to write your own hooks. You can say the same about the Context API, as well as the migration from class based components to the functional ones. If that's the only set of technologies, then good. But i work in a company that does consulting and occasionally i have to unravel messes in everything from React, to Angular, to Vue, even jQuery and AngularJS. If i want the lifestyle where i spend long evenings and weekends of my own time working on learning these technologies, then sure, but the company has neither the resources nor the patience to wait for days to weeks until i become productive in a project. Is that a social issue rather than a technical one? Perhaps, but at the same time these kinds of factors cannot be ignored. Sure, the churn isn't too bad and hopefully has good outcomes in the end, but at the same time it definitely is there and sometimes it definitely is detrimental from the point of view of just getting things done (e.g. AngularJS needing to be abandoned for Angular or something else - it should be better in the end, but as someone who has a rewrite of an app that has had thousands of hours sunk into it looming over me, i'm not overjoyed).
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Once you have the deep knowledge you’re set in this field. Examples of this deep knowledge?
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
>someone who clearly doesn’t understand the web deeply Maybe this is the root of the problem. Should you need that deep knowledge in order to be proficient? I mean, the point of so many libraries and frameworks was to remove the need for a deep understanding of the underlying technology. Perhaps the need to understand it deeply indicates that they've largely failed?

dntrkv 5y ago

My theory is that most of these comments are coming from backend devs who rarely do frontend and then complain that the space has evolved since MooTools was hot shit. React is going on 9 years people.

simion314 5y ago

>If you did you would realize things haven’t changed that drastically in 5+ years now. The new libraries and frameworks are small iterations that take a weekend to check out and pick up. I think the issue is the fact that the browser has no native rich and efficient components like desktop tookits have. So you implement some coold grid view to showcase all the user projects but later some user created many projects and because angular performance is garbage you need to solve it now, You can do a shit solution and implement pagination or waster your time and implement a DataGridView similar like in desktop toolkits that is actually smart and efficient or maybe you do the shittiest thing and install some random stuff that might give you what you need. Same problem would not exist on desktop and probably mobile tookits. Repeat same issues for all possible widgets that exist in a mature toolkit. On the web you always spend a lot of time on shittiest things instead of the cool part. A designer wants say a horizontal scrollbar that would work only with the mouse(no Ctrl to press) =? install a library, a designer wants a dropdown with some extra styling -> install a library (or create a inferior dropdown - see YT autocomplete one that gets stuck on all the time) , modals -> create your own system. The only widget that is not handicapped in the browser is the text input one. People will say how in the past on desktop you can drag and drop widgets and make the app , the reason it works is because those widgets where powerful and efficient. Probably mobile devs can understand this point, you don't have to hunt for a framework or library to get a smart and efficient table widget.

KronisLV 5y ago

> The new libraries and frameworks are small iterations that take a weekend to check out and pick up. If this is the case, then i congratulate you on being a pretty productive and capable front end developer! However, that's definitely not the case for me and many other people: i'd say that you need at least a week to get comfortable with both using technologies, ways of misusing them, their footguns and to get a deeper understanding of what you're actually doing. I've seen sites fail to work correctly because people attempted to use React hooks with overlapping dependency arrays, where one of the hook bodies calls a state mutation, which ends up in an endless loop and breaks the entire page. If hooks indeed were such a small feature that could be reasonably understood in a few days, then we wouldn't see cases like that, nor would it be difficult to write your own hooks. You can say the same about the Context API, as well as the migration from class based components to the functional ones. If that's the only set of technologies, then good. But i work in a company that does consulting and occasionally i have to unravel messes in everything from React, to Angular, to Vue, even jQuery and AngularJS. If i want the lifestyle where i spend long evenings and weekends of my own time working on learning these technologies, then sure, but the company has neither the resources nor the patience to wait for days to weeks until i become productive in a project. Is that a social issue rather than a technical one? Perhaps, but at the same time these kinds of factors cannot be ignored. Sure, the churn isn't too bad and hopefully has good outcomes in the end, but at the same time it definitely is there and sometimes it definitely is detrimental from the point of view of just getting things done (e.g. AngularJS needing to be abandoned for Angular or something else - it should be better in the end, but as someone who has a rewrite of an app that has had thousands of hours sunk into it looming over me, i'm not overjoyed).

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Once you have the deep knowledge you’re set in this field. Examples of this deep knowledge?

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

>someone who clearly doesn’t understand the web deeply Maybe this is the root of the problem. Should you need that deep knowledge in order to be proficient? I mean, the point of so many libraries and frameworks was to remove the need for a deep understanding of the underlying technology. Perhaps the need to understand it deeply indicates that they've largely failed?