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I'm the author of this piece. I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. I think there are a lot of _vendors_ trying to usher in

I'm the author of this piece. I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. I think there are a lot of _vendors_ trying to usher in a revolution around their particular products - there's a lot of VC funding in JavaScript tooling nowadays - but that's a different problem.

dgb23 4y ago
Some of the vendor backed libraries are among the best. But generally I would agree that marketing, especially certain types, generates a ton of noise, like you beautifully illustrated in your article. I think navigating the web with a BS filter on is an important skill to have.
pljung 4y ago
I enjoyed reading your article, thanks for writing it. I think your recommendation to new devs to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. > I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. Do you mind elaborating why you believe this is the case?
- dylan604 4y ago
  >to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. now that it is 2022, what's the new flavor that would be prescient? I don't ask to actually know, but to reiterate the problem of nothing being solid in this world.
  - vosper 4y ago
    NextJS is still looking pretty good if you're in React land. There's new competition, like Remix, Astro, etc... but I don't see any of them putting NextJS to bed. I'm starting a new application, and I'm still choosing NextJS. (Now what you couple with NextJS for data access is an interesting question - this is where there's a lot of innovation. Personally, I'm going with tRPC. I would look at Edge DB, but in this application I'll need a recursive CTE and Edge can't do it.) Edit: I do think Astro might replace NextJS for purely-static sites, or ones where the "islands of interactivity" pattern is compelling.
  - markhesketh 4y ago
    I'm not in the JS space, but if my twitter feed is anything to go by it'll be https://remix.run/ https://remix.run/
  - Jenk 4y ago
    Still next.js, probably. Keep an eye on Svelte.
  - nextaccountic 4y ago
    I think sveltekit will gain a lot of momentum
ricardobeat 4y ago
You covered the frameworks, but a lot of the feeling comes from the tooling and library ecosystem. For example, a recap of the last 10 years: - grunt / broccoli / gulp / browserify / webpack / metro / esbuild / parcel / swc / turborepo / bun - flummox / redux / unstated / mobx / mobx-state-tree / xstate / apollo / apollo-link-state / swr / react-query / zustand / recoil / jotai And this is just within React, and off the top of my head. Then you add all the ECMAScript versions, browser feature churn, node.js, npm/yarn, immutability, classes, functional components, hooks, fiber, the list goes on and on.
- nawgz 4y ago
  Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 Competing state libraries is to be expected but picking redux or mobx has let you use the same ones since 2017 JS itself has improved but hasn’t really ever deprecated anything, it just grows and adds terse methods to the language Npm and yarn are among the best package managers React hooks were the only major change you’ve touched on but even they didn’t deprecate class based react or change library semantics very significantly
  - abraxas 4y ago
    > Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 lol and that's why we saw the emergence of rollup and parcel and snowpack and whatever the hell else came along since then?
    - nawgz 4y ago
      I’ve never seen a situation where someone hasn’t tried to rebuild something that’s already working (in a big community like JS land). Some people wanted more performance from their build systems, some people like other languages to do the transpilation, some people thought the configuration options were too heavy and opaque. That’s why we saw ESBuild and rollup. But CRA is still on webpack, and CRA is still the de facto default way to make a new react app. I don’t really see the fact that alternatives exist as implying churn when the same option has been the longest living and most popular.

dgb23 4y ago

Some of the vendor backed libraries are among the best. But generally I would agree that marketing, especially certain types, generates a ton of noise, like you beautifully illustrated in your article. I think navigating the web with a BS filter on is an important skill to have.

pljung 4y ago

I enjoyed reading your article, thanks for writing it. I think your recommendation to new devs to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. > I no longer think front-end suffers the instability people accuse it of. Do you mind elaborating why you believe this is the case?

dylan604 4y ago
>to focus on Next.js in 2018 (!) was prescient. now that it is 2022, what's the new flavor that would be prescient? I don't ask to actually know, but to reiterate the problem of nothing being solid in this world.
- vosper 4y ago
  NextJS is still looking pretty good if you're in React land. There's new competition, like Remix, Astro, etc... but I don't see any of them putting NextJS to bed. I'm starting a new application, and I'm still choosing NextJS. (Now what you couple with NextJS for data access is an interesting question - this is where there's a lot of innovation. Personally, I'm going with tRPC. I would look at Edge DB, but in this application I'll need a recursive CTE and Edge can't do it.) Edit: I do think Astro might replace NextJS for purely-static sites, or ones where the "islands of interactivity" pattern is compelling.
- markhesketh 4y ago
  I'm not in the JS space, but if my twitter feed is anything to go by it'll be https://remix.run/ https://remix.run/
- Jenk 4y ago
  Still next.js, probably. Keep an eye on Svelte.
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  I think sveltekit will gain a lot of momentum

ricardobeat 4y ago

You covered the frameworks, but a lot of the feeling comes from the tooling and library ecosystem. For example, a recap of the last 10 years: - grunt / broccoli / gulp / browserify / webpack / metro / esbuild / parcel / swc / turborepo / bun - flummox / redux / unstated / mobx / mobx-state-tree / xstate / apollo / apollo-link-state / swr / react-query / zustand / recoil / jotai And this is just within React, and off the top of my head. Then you add all the ECMAScript versions, browser feature churn, node.js, npm/yarn, immutability, classes, functional components, hooks, fiber, the list goes on and on.

nawgz 4y ago
Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 Competing state libraries is to be expected but picking redux or mobx has let you use the same ones since 2017 JS itself has improved but hasn’t really ever deprecated anything, it just grows and adds terse methods to the language Npm and yarn are among the best package managers React hooks were the only major change you’ve touched on but even they didn’t deprecate class based react or change library semantics very significantly
- abraxas 4y ago
  > Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 lol and that's why we saw the emergence of rollup and parcel and snowpack and whatever the hell else came along since then?
  - nawgz 4y ago
    I’ve never seen a situation where someone hasn’t tried to rebuild something that’s already working (in a big community like JS land). Some people wanted more performance from their build systems, some people like other languages to do the transpilation, some people thought the configuration options were too heavy and opaque. That’s why we saw ESBuild and rollup. But CRA is still on webpack, and CRA is still the de facto default way to make a new react app. I don’t really see the fact that alternatives exist as implying churn when the same option has been the longest living and most popular.