4 ms·

in a strange way, this almost makes the behavior of hopping onto every new framework rational. The older and less relevant the framework, the more the owner's

in a strange way, this almost makes the behavior of hopping onto every new framework rational. The older and less relevant the framework, the more the owner's starry-eyed enthusiasm wears off. The hope that bigcorp will pay $X million for the work starts to fade. The tedium of bug fixes and maintenance wears on, the game theory takes it's toll. The only rational choice for library users is to jump ship once the number of commits and hype starts to fall -- that's when the owner is most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of Moloch.

chrisweekly 2y ago
Good point. What's often (and sometimes fairly) derided as "chasing the new shiny" has a lot of other benefits too: increased exposure to new (and at least sometimes demonstrably better) ways of doing things; ~inevitable refactoring along the way (otherwise much more likely neglected); use of generally faster, leaner, less dependency-bloated packages; and an increased real-world userbase for innovators. FWIW, my perspective is based on building and maintaining web-related software since 1998.
- wadadadad 2y ago
  Would you consider yourself as to have "chased the new shiny"? If you don't mind, how many changes (overhauls?) would you say you've made?
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  to be fair there is a whole spectrum between "chasing every new shiny that gets a blog post" vs. "I haven't changed my stack since 1998." there are certainly ways to get burned by adopting shiny new paradigms too quickly; one big example in web is the masonry layout that Pinterest made popular, which in practice is extremely complicated to the point where no browser has a full implementation of the CSS standard.
  - mb2100 2y ago
    CSS Masonry is not even standardized yet. There is a draft spec: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_grid_layout/Masonry_layout https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_grid_la... and ongoing discussion whether it should be part of CSS grid or a new `display` property.
trekz 2y ago
> in a strange way, this almost makes the behavior of hopping onto every new framework rational. Or maybe not doing that and just using native browser APIs? Many of these frameworks are overkill and having so many "new" ones just makes the situation worse.
- sofixa 2y ago
  Many of them predate those native browser APIs. Pollyfills, the topic at hand, were literally created to add modern APIs to all browsers equally (most notably old Safaris, Internet Explorers, etc.).
ricardobayes 2y ago
To be fair, when it comes to React, I don't think there is a realistic "new shiny" yet. NextJS is (was?) looking good, although I have heard it being mentioned a lot less lately.

chrisweekly 2y ago

Good point. What's often (and sometimes fairly) derided as "chasing the new shiny" has a lot of other benefits too: increased exposure to new (and at least sometimes demonstrably better) ways of doing things; ~inevitable refactoring along the way (otherwise much more likely neglected); use of generally faster, leaner, less dependency-bloated packages; and an increased real-world userbase for innovators. FWIW, my perspective is based on building and maintaining web-related software since 1998.

wadadadad 2y ago
Would you consider yourself as to have "chased the new shiny"? If you don't mind, how many changes (overhauls?) would you say you've made?
bobthepanda 2y ago
to be fair there is a whole spectrum between "chasing every new shiny that gets a blog post" vs. "I haven't changed my stack since 1998." there are certainly ways to get burned by adopting shiny new paradigms too quickly; one big example in web is the masonry layout that Pinterest made popular, which in practice is extremely complicated to the point where no browser has a full implementation of the CSS standard.
- mb2100 2y ago
  CSS Masonry is not even standardized yet. There is a draft spec: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_grid_layout/Masonry_layout https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_grid_la... and ongoing discussion whether it should be part of CSS grid or a new `display` property.

trekz 2y ago

> in a strange way, this almost makes the behavior of hopping onto every new framework rational. Or maybe not doing that and just using native browser APIs? Many of these frameworks are overkill and having so many "new" ones just makes the situation worse.

sofixa 2y ago
Many of them predate those native browser APIs. Pollyfills, the topic at hand, were literally created to add modern APIs to all browsers equally (most notably old Safaris, Internet Explorers, etc.).

ricardobayes 2y ago

To be fair, when it comes to React, I don't think there is a realistic "new shiny" yet. NextJS is (was?) looking good, although I have heard it being mentioned a lot less lately.