5 ms·

Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues

Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. As shitty as Android support matrix can be - it doesn't compare to IE6 web days (at least in terms of UI development, stuff like OS services is entirely next level - but you can't even start doing that in JS so it's not really a fair comparison) - and we're still paying for the technical decisions made in that era (how many people are polyfiling all the way back to stone age and including hundreds of KB of useless shit ?).

jhgb 4y ago
> Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. But of course JS needs neither a build system (runs from source files) nor a package manager (runs from URLs) and recently even plugged the "no modules" hole.
- irrational 4y ago
  > recently even plugged the "no modules" hole I haven’t heard about this. Do you have a link so I can read more?
  - jhgb 4y ago
    Well, they added modules some time ago and now they're widely supported. Not quite sure what more there is to say about that. Aside from botched variable scoping, that was probably my biggest grip with JS (but `let` fixed scoping many years ago as well).
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Majority of people using JS with these frameworks are using package management and bundling - and suffering because the ecosystem has such shitty tools for dealing with it. If you're linking jquery from your favorite CDN and writing your code inside of <script> tags you're not dealing with the issues this article is describing.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    Right. But that's their choice. I actually really like what Mithril.js did, regarding decisions on size, complexity, distribution as a single file, etc. Pretty much the only thing I'd like more would be if some similar library targeted both HTML5 web and Sciter (since Sciter does some things in its own -- and very efficient -- way and it would be interesting if something filled in the details in the web platform that web omits but Sciter does not to come up with something Mithil.js-like but also usable on desktop).
  - contingencies 4y ago
    This. Use what works and is stable. I strongly dislike JS (PTSD, perhaps) but when it comes to minimal code to get the job done, jQuery is where it's at: the perl of JS frameworks.
chrisco255 4y ago
Very few websites/frameworks/libraries support IE nowadays. And Edge being Chromium-based, means most of the polyfill issues have been resolved. You can reach 99+% of browsers by writing in modern web standards (HTML5/CSS3) without having to worry much. Web dev is probably nicer than it's ever been.
woojoo666 4y ago
As somebody who followed both Android and web dev, Android UI development was much clunkier. A lot of the patterns in use today (like React's declarative patterns) started in web dev before being adopted by Android. Not to mention, Java's package system was much more annoying to work with than NPM.

jhgb 4y ago

> Pretty much anything after C/C++ era comes with a usable build system, modules and a package manager. JS is really stuck dealing with insanely low level issues in shit ways for various historic reasons. But of course JS needs neither a build system (runs from source files) nor a package manager (runs from URLs) and recently even plugged the "no modules" hole.

irrational 4y ago
> recently even plugged the "no modules" hole I haven’t heard about this. Do you have a link so I can read more?
- jhgb 4y ago
  Well, they added modules some time ago and now they're widely supported. Not quite sure what more there is to say about that. Aside from botched variable scoping, that was probably my biggest grip with JS (but `let` fixed scoping many years ago as well).
moonchrome 4y ago
Majority of people using JS with these frameworks are using package management and bundling - and suffering because the ecosystem has such shitty tools for dealing with it. If you're linking jquery from your favorite CDN and writing your code inside of <script> tags you're not dealing with the issues this article is describing.
- jhgb 4y ago
  Right. But that's their choice. I actually really like what Mithril.js did, regarding decisions on size, complexity, distribution as a single file, etc. Pretty much the only thing I'd like more would be if some similar library targeted both HTML5 web and Sciter (since Sciter does some things in its own -- and very efficient -- way and it would be interesting if something filled in the details in the web platform that web omits but Sciter does not to come up with something Mithil.js-like but also usable on desktop).
- contingencies 4y ago
  This. Use what works and is stable. I strongly dislike JS (PTSD, perhaps) but when it comes to minimal code to get the job done, jQuery is where it's at: the perl of JS frameworks.

chrisco255 4y ago

Very few websites/frameworks/libraries support IE nowadays. And Edge being Chromium-based, means most of the polyfill issues have been resolved. You can reach 99+% of browsers by writing in modern web standards (HTML5/CSS3) without having to worry much. Web dev is probably nicer than it's ever been.

woojoo666 4y ago

As somebody who followed both Android and web dev, Android UI development was much clunkier. A lot of the patterns in use today (like React's declarative patterns) started in web dev before being adopted by Android. Not to mention, Java's package system was much more annoying to work with than NPM.