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> I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks And once you reach sufficient project complexity, you will end up with just an

> I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks And once you reach sufficient project complexity, you will end up with just another homegrown framework, with all the lessons learned by mature frameworks, left to be fixed over the next 5 years.

baobabKoodaa 2y ago
Oh yeah? And when will that happen? Because people have been throwing this argument at me since at least 2014. I still haven't slipped on a banana peel and accidentally fallen on a homegrown framework. You don't just create a framework by accident.
- dariusj18 2y ago
  I don't have any context, but I do have trouble imagining that any of your projects have scale/complexity above brochure-ware if you haven't run into this.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    If you have trouble imagining, here's one such project: https://github.com/baobabKoodaa/ouija https://github.com/baobabKoodaa/ouija
    - quantadev 2y ago
      Even if you know of massive projects in JS, the problem isn't that they cannot exist, it's that maintaining them takes 100x the manpower it would in TypeScript.
    - philipwhiuk 2y ago
      Jesus Christ, a 1300 line single file codebase.
      - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        Not a single file codebase
        quantadev 2y ago
        > Not a single file codebase. Yes it is. App.js is all the code there is. You can't count the two other files with 10 lines each. lol. Let's be honest here. And yeah for a tiny toy project like this you can get away with having zero design, zero architecture, zero object models, zero classes, and sure since everything is zero, we can throw in "Zero TypeScript" and "Zero Frameworks". Looks like some high-schooler's first ever coding project.
        baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        > App.js is all the code there is No, it's not. Chatbot.js is 3400 LOC. There's literally only 4 JS files in the whole repo and you couldn't be bothered to check how much code they have? Even after I told the other guy who made the same false claim "no, it's not a single file codebase"? Jesus you people are insufferable. So obnoxiously confident while being wrong about easily verifiable facts. > tiny toy project Huh? 99% of web development is about rendering text and images. This project is moving your mouse inside a web browser & provides a plausible chat experience without a language model. That's more ambitious than just about any actual work project I've seen.
        em-bee 2y ago
        the expletive is unnecesary.
        baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        Point taken. Edited.
        quantadev 2y ago
        Even considering chatbot.js, it's still a small enough toy project to just barely get by without type safety. I don't consider a project "large" until it's in the 30K to 50K LOC at least, where it becomes impossible to literally remember where each use of any given variable is. Type Safety catches most typos at build time, and also allows ease of refactoring. Only these small projects can get by without type safety, but EVEN the small projects DO benefit from catching errors at build time. It's just a self-foot-shoot to find bugs at runtime instead of build time.
    - floydnoel 2y ago
      I have a lot of "framework free" single-developer projects as well (such as https://bongo.to https://bongo.to ), but that isn't really what I think we are talking about here. Single developer projects can do whatever they want, it isn't a problem. The problem comes when you have to work with distributed teams, juniors, etc. One way or another a large team still has to come to agreements about how to do things, and without an external reference it will have to be made up in an ad-hoc manner instead. This often leads to issues, many of us have noticed.
      - quantadev 2y ago
        I absoluetly agree with your sentiment, and furthermore in projects as large and mature as mine, with 500K LOC (about maybe 30% in TypeScript) lots of times I simply cannot remember enough about my code to effectively refactor it from memory without type safety (to check me) and IDE refactoring to DO the refactoring. I mean if I need to change a variable name in a class or something, unless it's a perfectly unique name (easily searchable), it would take me hours to do in JS what I can do in 4 seconds with TypeScript.
      - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        The goalposts just keep moving... The claim upthread was that you couldn't make a web app at all without a framework ("or it would just be a document"). I said yes you can and the goalposts shifted to: sure, but only "brochure-ware" (referring to simple unambitious projects). I show an ambitious interactive project made without a framework and now the goalposts are moving to: sure, but large distributed teams couldn't work like this? You know, this solo project is more ambitious than 99% of the projects I work on at my actual work. You know, projects that have 10, 40, or 100 devs working on it.

baobabKoodaa 2y ago

Oh yeah? And when will that happen? Because people have been throwing this argument at me since at least 2014. I still haven't slipped on a banana peel and accidentally fallen on a homegrown framework. You don't just create a framework by accident.

dariusj18 2y ago
I don't have any context, but I do have trouble imagining that any of your projects have scale/complexity above brochure-ware if you haven't run into this.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  If you have trouble imagining, here's one such project: https://github.com/baobabKoodaa/ouija https://github.com/baobabKoodaa/ouija
  - quantadev 2y ago
    Even if you know of massive projects in JS, the problem isn't that they cannot exist, it's that maintaining them takes 100x the manpower it would in TypeScript.
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    Jesus Christ, a 1300 line single file codebase.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      Not a single file codebase
      - quantadev 2y ago
        > Not a single file codebase. Yes it is. App.js is all the code there is. You can't count the two other files with 10 lines each. lol. Let's be honest here. And yeah for a tiny toy project like this you can get away with having zero design, zero architecture, zero object models, zero classes, and sure since everything is zero, we can throw in "Zero TypeScript" and "Zero Frameworks". Looks like some high-schooler's first ever coding project.
        baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        > App.js is all the code there is No, it's not. Chatbot.js is 3400 LOC. There's literally only 4 JS files in the whole repo and you couldn't be bothered to check how much code they have? Even after I told the other guy who made the same false claim "no, it's not a single file codebase"? Jesus you people are insufferable. So obnoxiously confident while being wrong about easily verifiable facts. > tiny toy project Huh? 99% of web development is about rendering text and images. This project is moving your mouse inside a web browser & provides a plausible chat experience without a language model. That's more ambitious than just about any actual work project I've seen.
        em-bee 2y ago
        the expletive is unnecesary.
        baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        Point taken. Edited.
        quantadev 2y ago
        Even considering chatbot.js, it's still a small enough toy project to just barely get by without type safety. I don't consider a project "large" until it's in the 30K to 50K LOC at least, where it becomes impossible to literally remember where each use of any given variable is. Type Safety catches most typos at build time, and also allows ease of refactoring. Only these small projects can get by without type safety, but EVEN the small projects DO benefit from catching errors at build time. It's just a self-foot-shoot to find bugs at runtime instead of build time.
  - floydnoel 2y ago
    I have a lot of "framework free" single-developer projects as well (such as https://bongo.to https://bongo.to ), but that isn't really what I think we are talking about here. Single developer projects can do whatever they want, it isn't a problem. The problem comes when you have to work with distributed teams, juniors, etc. One way or another a large team still has to come to agreements about how to do things, and without an external reference it will have to be made up in an ad-hoc manner instead. This often leads to issues, many of us have noticed.
    - quantadev 2y ago
      I absoluetly agree with your sentiment, and furthermore in projects as large and mature as mine, with 500K LOC (about maybe 30% in TypeScript) lots of times I simply cannot remember enough about my code to effectively refactor it from memory without type safety (to check me) and IDE refactoring to DO the refactoring. I mean if I need to change a variable name in a class or something, unless it's a perfectly unique name (easily searchable), it would take me hours to do in JS what I can do in 4 seconds with TypeScript.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      The goalposts just keep moving... The claim upthread was that you couldn't make a web app at all without a framework ("or it would just be a document"). I said yes you can and the goalposts shifted to: sure, but only "brochure-ware" (referring to simple unambitious projects). I show an ambitious interactive project made without a framework and now the goalposts are moving to: sure, but large distributed teams couldn't work like this? You know, this solo project is more ambitious than 99% of the projects I work on at my actual work. You know, projects that have 10, 40, or 100 devs working on it.