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The article starts off with an outdated take on the space: "We all know the meme: by the time you’ve learned one front-end technology, another three have just

The article starts off with an outdated take on the space: "We all know the meme: by the time you’ve learned one front-end technology, another three have just been released. Also, that one you just learned? It’s deprecated." Maybe it's because the article is 4 years old. I just don't think it's true anymore. Ok there's React and Vue and others, but that's fine. It's basically the same tech, but they have DX/cosmetic differences. It's not like we're still arguing whether or not VDOM is a good thing. That said, the "Imagine being a junior developer" section sounds spot on still. Maybe it's because those articles that use dogmatic arguments to recommend inferior technologies are still on the internet, and they are not going anywhere.

croes 4y ago
I thought VDom is old school since Svelte and such? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19950253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19950253
- lopatin 4y ago
  I was waiting for someone to mention Svelte :) I think it's is very possible that it's the next evolution of innovation in the space. It might actually be a Backbone -> React style quantum leap in terms of tech and adoption. The thing is, that won't happen for another 10 years, if it does at all. It could very well turn out to be a niche technology for most people, with minimal real-life benefits compared to the drawbacks of moving off the mainstream. Every space has new innovative technologies that risk upsetting the status quo. I'm not saying things are completely boring now. Just that, unlike in the mid 2010s, they are actually stable enough.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    As far as I know most native web components use direct DOM manipulations over a virtual DOM. So I think the jury is pretty much out on VDOM and we are witnessing it transition to a relic of legacy frameworks. As far as other innovations Svelte has brought, Vue with the <script setup> sugar looks quite similar to Svelte, as well as compiling to a render function (just like Svelte). I’m not super familiar with the intrinsics of Vue but the VDOM is starting to feel like a thin MIR of the framework which could be swapped out in a future major release, rather then something essential to it. I honestly think that 10 years is a very conservative prediction.
Matumio 4y ago
Ah, the irony. An article arguing about how fast web-dev is moving is itself considered outdated just four years later.
zero_shift 4y ago
I'm the author and I agree. Things have slowed down and matured. The "JS moves too fast" meme is well out of date, and in fact I wrote a comment here a few hours ago bemoaning it
- escape_goat 4y ago
  I don't know what it's like these days but I recall especially the pernicious 'evangelism'. People on a literal salary promoting frameworks like they were from marketing. As a bargain basement, self-taught, late web 1.0 dev more comfortable on the server side I remember rake-stepping the undiscussed limitations of Backbone JS, and then studying the ridiculous complexities of Angular 1 while reading post after post of Angular doctrine, and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong." By the time I was done I genuinely had no interest left in me for another new framework, package manager, or library.
  - Frotag 4y ago
    > and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong. I wasn't in webdev-land when the migration happened, but as someone who maintains both AngularJS and Angular2 code, they don't seem all that different. Especially considering the later versions of ng1 tossed out all the globals (components with isolate scope by default) and moved to class-based directives. And then ng2 came along and rewrote everything into a prettier API (typescript with decorators and shit). But otherwise they both seem to have the same design when it comes to change detection, dependency injection, controllers / views, etc.
  - mgkimsal 4y ago
    > and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong." By the time I was done I genuinely had no interest left in me for another new framework, package manager, or library.... I've seen this more than a few times over the years, and it makes me a lot more skeptical of praise for anything new. Almost always the praise is about technical aspects of a new tech/stack, and the value is almost always in the larger ecosystem. I'm fine - happy, often - with using something slightly out of date if it means there's a community of people who can help support it, answer questions, publish mods, etc. There's a balance somewhere to be found, but I've been burned too many times picking a tool, investing in it, then having much be thrown away for the 'v2' version which is often not backwards compatible (for good reasons, usually, but still problematic). Marks of maturity of a project - acknowledging upgrade requirements, publishing upgrade guides, supporting previous versions for a publicly stated time range, etc.

croes 4y ago

I thought VDom is old school since Svelte and such? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19950253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19950253

lopatin 4y ago
I was waiting for someone to mention Svelte :) I think it's is very possible that it's the next evolution of innovation in the space. It might actually be a Backbone -> React style quantum leap in terms of tech and adoption. The thing is, that won't happen for another 10 years, if it does at all. It could very well turn out to be a niche technology for most people, with minimal real-life benefits compared to the drawbacks of moving off the mainstream. Every space has new innovative technologies that risk upsetting the status quo. I'm not saying things are completely boring now. Just that, unlike in the mid 2010s, they are actually stable enough.
- runarberg 4y ago
  As far as I know most native web components use direct DOM manipulations over a virtual DOM. So I think the jury is pretty much out on VDOM and we are witnessing it transition to a relic of legacy frameworks. As far as other innovations Svelte has brought, Vue with the <script setup> sugar looks quite similar to Svelte, as well as compiling to a render function (just like Svelte). I’m not super familiar with the intrinsics of Vue but the VDOM is starting to feel like a thin MIR of the framework which could be swapped out in a future major release, rather then something essential to it. I honestly think that 10 years is a very conservative prediction.

Matumio 4y ago

Ah, the irony. An article arguing about how fast web-dev is moving is itself considered outdated just four years later.

zero_shift 4y ago

I'm the author and I agree. Things have slowed down and matured. The "JS moves too fast" meme is well out of date, and in fact I wrote a comment here a few hours ago bemoaning it

escape_goat 4y ago
I don't know what it's like these days but I recall especially the pernicious 'evangelism'. People on a literal salary promoting frameworks like they were from marketing. As a bargain basement, self-taught, late web 1.0 dev more comfortable on the server side I remember rake-stepping the undiscussed limitations of Backbone JS, and then studying the ridiculous complexities of Angular 1 while reading post after post of Angular doctrine, and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong." By the time I was done I genuinely had no interest left in me for another new framework, package manager, or library.
- Frotag 4y ago
  > and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong. I wasn't in webdev-land when the migration happened, but as someone who maintains both AngularJS and Angular2 code, they don't seem all that different. Especially considering the later versions of ng1 tossed out all the globals (components with isolate scope by default) and moved to class-based directives. And then ng2 came along and rewrote everything into a prettier API (typescript with decorators and shit). But otherwise they both seem to have the same design when it comes to change detection, dependency injection, controllers / views, etc.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  > and then learning that the great leap forward for Angular 2 was "yeah we're going to throw all that bullshit out we were wrong." By the time I was done I genuinely had no interest left in me for another new framework, package manager, or library.... I've seen this more than a few times over the years, and it makes me a lot more skeptical of praise for anything new. Almost always the praise is about technical aspects of a new tech/stack, and the value is almost always in the larger ecosystem. I'm fine - happy, often - with using something slightly out of date if it means there's a community of people who can help support it, answer questions, publish mods, etc. There's a balance somewhere to be found, but I've been burned too many times picking a tool, investing in it, then having much be thrown away for the 'v2' version which is often not backwards compatible (for good reasons, usually, but still problematic). Marks of maturity of a project - acknowledging upgrade requirements, publishing upgrade guides, supporting previous versions for a publicly stated time range, etc.