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Frontend JS frameworks have been a meme for a while now. I think it's a combination of the front-end needing more boilerplate than back-end, and developers str

Frontend JS frameworks have been a meme for a while now. I think it's a combination of the front-end needing more boilerplate than back-end, and developers struggling with accounting. Maybe your cool new framework will save you 10% dev time, but you'll lose that 10% ten times over with the learning and error-bashing you and your teammates and future team members will have to go through. My policy is that you can use pure JS where a framework is overkill (I'll also accept jQuery), and React otherwise. React has emerged as the winner, and trying other things isn't worth the cost if you're paying (which employee developers are not). I recently built a small app using pure JS, just to remind myself how it used to be. It's definitely too verbose to avoid frustration. But HotNewFrameworkX vs React is never going to be big enough a benefit to be justified.

alpinelogic 4y ago
I'll just leave this here for the ones who have convinced themselves that react is the winner (whatever that means): https://andy-bell.co.uk/the-extremely-loud-minority/ https://andy-bell.co.uk/the-extremely-loud-minority/
- psygn89 4y ago
  I feel like comparing Wordpress to React/Vue is strange. Do people build web apps using Wordpress these days? I know you can make Wordpress do more via extensions (site builder, e-commerce), but it seems weird creating something original with Wordpress to me, but I genuinely don't know what Wordpress is capable of these days. In the sense of what Wordpress was made for and the extensions available for it, it checks out to me that it would dominate the web landscape. As far as not blindly following the advice of web advocates, I agree - they live on the bleeding edge. Unfortunately these are the people the new and impressionable devs come across on social media and hold their words like gospel because look how many followers they have and look at who they worked for, they must be right! Web tech moves fast, especially the shiny frontend stuff, and that generates discussion and leads people to believe that everything else is obsolete when in reality it's not.
- jalapenos 4y ago
  The winner means I can easily hire people who can develop on it from the get go, I can sell it without resistance, it's effective enough, and the business is aligned with productive output rather than technical oneupmanship.
whstl 4y ago
It's not the frameworks. React and Vue for example have been super stable for almost 10 years, and they don't really need anything other than one or two packages to work. CDN + alternative syntax is enough to make React as boilerplate-free as jQuery. Add another package (htm) if you want the good syntax back. The problem has always been the ancillary stuff: JSX, Vue SFCs, wanting to use "import from" in the browser, IE11 compatibility, testing, linting, converting CSS, removing typescript types. For those things we need tools like Webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc. And those just aren't "as good" as React, Vue, or even Typescript. Some of them break compatibility constantly, need a lot of boilerplate, need pulling several packages to do the most basic things, are the source of frustration for a lot of people and the source of the overkill you mention. IMHO think part of the issue is that a lot of those ancillary projects are optimizing for cases that aren't significant in practice.
_fat_santa 4y ago
As someone whose been in this space for a while, there are always new frameworks, new ways of doing things, new libraries and tools, most of it is just noise. Sometimes a new tool comes out (like Vite) that is a seismic shift, but for the most part that new framework or state management library really isn't all that much better than what we currently have. My best suggestion to those developing JS apps is to not get carried away with the noise, pick a solid framework (React, Vue, Svelte, etc), pick some solid libraries, stay away from the experimental stuff, and just run with the tools you've got. There will always be a new tool around the corner that claims to be better than the existing tool, forget about it and stick with what you got, then revisit that tool if you hear alot of noise around it.
- tmountain 4y ago
  What’s special about Vite?
  - quechimba 4y ago
    I used Webpack before Vite and always ended up with super complicated scripts for generating configurations. With Vite everything just basically works out of the box with no or very little configuration. And it's pretty fast. And it works with Rollup plugins, which are easy to write.

alpinelogic 4y ago

I'll just leave this here for the ones who have convinced themselves that react is the winner (whatever that means): https://andy-bell.co.uk/the-extremely-loud-minority/ https://andy-bell.co.uk/the-extremely-loud-minority/

psygn89 4y ago
I feel like comparing Wordpress to React/Vue is strange. Do people build web apps using Wordpress these days? I know you can make Wordpress do more via extensions (site builder, e-commerce), but it seems weird creating something original with Wordpress to me, but I genuinely don't know what Wordpress is capable of these days. In the sense of what Wordpress was made for and the extensions available for it, it checks out to me that it would dominate the web landscape. As far as not blindly following the advice of web advocates, I agree - they live on the bleeding edge. Unfortunately these are the people the new and impressionable devs come across on social media and hold their words like gospel because look how many followers they have and look at who they worked for, they must be right! Web tech moves fast, especially the shiny frontend stuff, and that generates discussion and leads people to believe that everything else is obsolete when in reality it's not.
jalapenos 4y ago
The winner means I can easily hire people who can develop on it from the get go, I can sell it without resistance, it's effective enough, and the business is aligned with productive output rather than technical oneupmanship.

whstl 4y ago

It's not the frameworks. React and Vue for example have been super stable for almost 10 years, and they don't really need anything other than one or two packages to work. CDN + alternative syntax is enough to make React as boilerplate-free as jQuery. Add another package (htm) if you want the good syntax back. The problem has always been the ancillary stuff: JSX, Vue SFCs, wanting to use "import from" in the browser, IE11 compatibility, testing, linting, converting CSS, removing typescript types. For those things we need tools like Webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc. And those just aren't "as good" as React, Vue, or even Typescript. Some of them break compatibility constantly, need a lot of boilerplate, need pulling several packages to do the most basic things, are the source of frustration for a lot of people and the source of the overkill you mention. IMHO think part of the issue is that a lot of those ancillary projects are optimizing for cases that aren't significant in practice.

_fat_santa 4y ago

As someone whose been in this space for a while, there are always new frameworks, new ways of doing things, new libraries and tools, most of it is just noise. Sometimes a new tool comes out (like Vite) that is a seismic shift, but for the most part that new framework or state management library really isn't all that much better than what we currently have. My best suggestion to those developing JS apps is to not get carried away with the noise, pick a solid framework (React, Vue, Svelte, etc), pick some solid libraries, stay away from the experimental stuff, and just run with the tools you've got. There will always be a new tool around the corner that claims to be better than the existing tool, forget about it and stick with what you got, then revisit that tool if you hear alot of noise around it.

tmountain 4y ago
What’s special about Vite?
- quechimba 4y ago
  I used Webpack before Vite and always ended up with super complicated scripts for generating configurations. With Vite everything just basically works out of the box with no or very little configuration. And it's pretty fast. And it works with Rollup plugins, which are easy to write.