4 ms·

Let me ask every single web developer a straight-forward question. If huge tech companies like google, facebook, airbnb etc are unable to make fast websites...

Let me ask every single web developer a straight-forward question. If huge tech companies like google, facebook, airbnb etc are unable to make fast websites... then why should we use their frameworks and tools? I really feel like the emperor has no clothes here and it's insane for smaller companies to try and ape them.

iKevinShah 5y ago
> It's insane for smaller companies to try and ape them In my cynical view, When you think about engineers as people who want to stay up to date with 'latest and greatest' so that they are not left behind in the market, the use of their frameworks makes sense. Also, the frameworks do solve very key problems in their own ways (and also avoid re-inventing the wheel). So the truth lies somewhere between the 2 sentences there. There's nothing which we can not achieve without frameworks however managing that solution is a pain. More so if one is working on a bigger team.
- gnz11 5y ago
  Their frameworks and tools also generally come with extensive documentation...which is quite rare in projects that are proprietary balls of mud written by a single programmer who left the company several years ago.
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
> then why should we use their frameworks and tools? Because job postings demand X years experience in Y framework instead of looking for actual skills, and many investors look for hot things that are jumping on Z hip new tech buzzword and not all look at what they actually solve. Plus to a certain extent they can be used to get a project off the ground faster. Although at a certain point a good number of projects that are successfully taking off would benefit from a nice rewrite--but that's not as sexy and marketable as adding another new feature in that same time span.
rapind 5y ago
While I’m sure there’s some portion of developers who are ready to jump to google and Facebook tools right away, I doubt it’s a majority. There have been a lot of misses from these companies. Some big wins for sure, but it’s definitely not a perfect record. I do think there are a lot of smart people working on hard problems (user engagement… not cancer) with large teams at these companies though. Which means they are bound to come up with some percentage of good solutions. I’m glad they share them even when they flop.
nfRfqX5n 5y ago
Very naive to think these companies don’t care about speed/perf if it truly affected their revenue
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  AirBNB has a fantastic marketing team and can afford to have a dog slow website. Why should the rest of us give two fucks what their eslint config settings are? Merry Christmas.
wepple 5y ago
> If huge tech companies like google, facebook, airbnb etc are unable to make fast websites... then why should we use their frameworks and tools? You don’t have to at all. Lots of folks do because “fast websites” is one requirement out of many to consider. What about secure? Stable? Reliable? Maintainable? Reusable? I personally build excessively lightweight and simple web UIs for my personal projects, but I’m not managing infra that >1bn people use daily and is literally used to answer “does my internet work?” because of its expected reliability.

iKevinShah 5y ago

> It's insane for smaller companies to try and ape them In my cynical view, When you think about engineers as people who want to stay up to date with 'latest and greatest' so that they are not left behind in the market, the use of their frameworks makes sense. Also, the frameworks do solve very key problems in their own ways (and also avoid re-inventing the wheel). So the truth lies somewhere between the 2 sentences there. There's nothing which we can not achieve without frameworks however managing that solution is a pain. More so if one is working on a bigger team.

gnz11 5y ago
Their frameworks and tools also generally come with extensive documentation...which is quite rare in projects that are proprietary balls of mud written by a single programmer who left the company several years ago.

forgotmyoldname 5y ago

> then why should we use their frameworks and tools? Because job postings demand X years experience in Y framework instead of looking for actual skills, and many investors look for hot things that are jumping on Z hip new tech buzzword and not all look at what they actually solve. Plus to a certain extent they can be used to get a project off the ground faster. Although at a certain point a good number of projects that are successfully taking off would benefit from a nice rewrite--but that's not as sexy and marketable as adding another new feature in that same time span.

rapind 5y ago

While I’m sure there’s some portion of developers who are ready to jump to google and Facebook tools right away, I doubt it’s a majority. There have been a lot of misses from these companies. Some big wins for sure, but it’s definitely not a perfect record. I do think there are a lot of smart people working on hard problems (user engagement… not cancer) with large teams at these companies though. Which means they are bound to come up with some percentage of good solutions. I’m glad they share them even when they flop.

nfRfqX5n 5y ago

Very naive to think these companies don’t care about speed/perf if it truly affected their revenue

LAC-Tech 5y ago
AirBNB has a fantastic marketing team and can afford to have a dog slow website. Why should the rest of us give two fucks what their eslint config settings are? Merry Christmas.

wepple 5y ago

> If huge tech companies like google, facebook, airbnb etc are unable to make fast websites... then why should we use their frameworks and tools? You don’t have to at all. Lots of folks do because “fast websites” is one requirement out of many to consider. What about secure? Stable? Reliable? Maintainable? Reusable? I personally build excessively lightweight and simple web UIs for my personal projects, but I’m not managing infra that >1bn people use daily and is literally used to answer “does my internet work?” because of its expected reliability.