5 ms·

If I had to pick a single pain point about front-end development right now, it would be this. The new features in HTML, CSS, and native browser APIs plus the va

If I had to pick a single pain point about front-end development right now, it would be this. The new features in HTML, CSS, and native browser APIs plus the variations and limitations of each browser (plus the special and not particularly settled world of mobile/tablets) is hard enough to keep up with. But we're now in the stage where there's a dozen frameworks out there, probably classifiable into at least three distinct paradigms, and then we have the languages that target the browser. And I suspect we're a long way from shaking this out into a semi-stable point. The thing that I like least about this treadmill is that time invested in the ephemeral arcana of a stack/platform is time that isn't invested in skills that will transfer elsewhere and help you become a better general problem solver.

bigtunacan 13y ago
It must be so wonderful living in your world where there are only a dozen frameworks to choose from. Does money grow on trees there too? Are the streets made of gold? Do people fly their cars to the beach everyday and swim in cherry flavored cola? Please tell us more.
- dictum 13y ago
  There's a nice world where people aren't snippy about comments that aren't particularly offensive.
  - bigtunacan 13y ago
    I didn't find the poster's comment offensive. It was a joke; relax and find a sense of humor. Heck; I even up voted the poster to give them some karma since they have a valid point. Sheesh.
    - dictum 13y ago
      My comment was a reflection on your comment—"It must be so wonderful living in your world" implies the parent is shortsighted and was ignoring the difficulties of real-life development.
      - bigtunacan 13y ago
        Rather this was you assuming the worst based on the text, which is a commonly made mistake via text based communications. I was trying to be humorous since the parent poster had said dozens of frameworks; which I'm sure (s)he is aware is an extremely generous number. There is a good link here on this common issue as well. Based on the number of down votes my post received; you apparently aren't the only one that took it the wrong way. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179 Personally; I believe that the way a person interprets something like this speaks more of that person's inherit trust/mistrust of society than anything else. I personally try to take the mindset that most people are on whole decent, nice people if you get to know them.
        ctdonath 13y ago
        Well-established insults heaped upon strangers are rarely mitigated by a followup "just kidding".
        saltvedt 13y ago
        There really is more than a dozen front-end frameworks to chose between. Check out http://todomvc.com/ http://todomvc.com/ for examples.
        bigtunacan 13y ago
        Exactly; and that number just keeps growing since everyone thinks they can build a better wheel. I agree with the poster; thought what they said was an understatement so I threw out some sarcasm :) Oh noes! Quick; somebody down vote this guy with his 20 karma! Seriously; down vote me some more people! I want to see what happens after zero!
  - adamman 13y ago
    Where?
- wwweston 13y ago
  Let's say a generous baker's dozen. :)
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
The cambrian-explosion of frontend frameworks you mean is mostly about patching up the web browser to do something it wasn't born to do though. The endless cycle of solving things that are solved elsewhere won't stop as long as the browser keeps being pushed as an application platform.
- jarek 13y ago
  Nevermind things that are solved on other application platforms, we now have frameworks that solve things that are solved in the browser. Moving boldly beyond reimplementing page loads with custom Javascript, Youtube now reimplements page load progress bar with custom Javascript.
  - woah 13y ago
    You sound dismissive of Youtube's page loading. I believe they are loading only those parts of the page that change, which is much faster than re-loading the whole thing. It makes the user experience faster and uses less bandwidth. Do you do much front end development?
    - fphhotchips 13y ago
      I think they were being dismissive of the need to reimplement the page load indicator rather than page loading itself. I could be wrong though.
    - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
      I believe his point is not that YouTube's implementation isn't useful, but rather, that it's insane, at a conceptual level.
      - woah 13y ago
        What's so insane about it? I would say that the logic for which parts of the page to reload should definitely be in the frontend code, rather than the browser itself.
bjoernbu 13y ago
as someone who does very, very little on the side of frontends, i think your time is still invested into a transferable skill that i miss out on: (frontend) framework design, paradigms and trends. If the stable point you mention will eventually be reached, I am sure everything on the way has contributed and those who have been involved in one way or the other will contribute the most to it and will be the ones that can best contribute to iterative improvements on that stable point.

bigtunacan 13y ago

It must be so wonderful living in your world where there are only a dozen frameworks to choose from. Does money grow on trees there too? Are the streets made of gold? Do people fly their cars to the beach everyday and swim in cherry flavored cola? Please tell us more.

dictum 13y ago
There's a nice world where people aren't snippy about comments that aren't particularly offensive.
- bigtunacan 13y ago
  I didn't find the poster's comment offensive. It was a joke; relax and find a sense of humor. Heck; I even up voted the poster to give them some karma since they have a valid point. Sheesh.
  - dictum 13y ago
    My comment was a reflection on your comment—"It must be so wonderful living in your world" implies the parent is shortsighted and was ignoring the difficulties of real-life development.
    - bigtunacan 13y ago
      Rather this was you assuming the worst based on the text, which is a commonly made mistake via text based communications. I was trying to be humorous since the parent poster had said dozens of frameworks; which I'm sure (s)he is aware is an extremely generous number. There is a good link here on this common issue as well. Based on the number of down votes my post received; you apparently aren't the only one that took it the wrong way. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179 Personally; I believe that the way a person interprets something like this speaks more of that person's inherit trust/mistrust of society than anything else. I personally try to take the mindset that most people are on whole decent, nice people if you get to know them.
      - ctdonath 13y ago
        Well-established insults heaped upon strangers are rarely mitigated by a followup "just kidding".
      - saltvedt 13y ago
        There really is more than a dozen front-end frameworks to chose between. Check out http://todomvc.com/ http://todomvc.com/ for examples.
        bigtunacan 13y ago
        Exactly; and that number just keeps growing since everyone thinks they can build a better wheel. I agree with the poster; thought what they said was an understatement so I threw out some sarcasm :) Oh noes! Quick; somebody down vote this guy with his 20 karma! Seriously; down vote me some more people! I want to see what happens after zero!
- adamman 13y ago
  Where?
wwweston 13y ago
Let's say a generous baker's dozen. :)

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

The cambrian-explosion of frontend frameworks you mean is mostly about patching up the web browser to do something it wasn't born to do though. The endless cycle of solving things that are solved elsewhere won't stop as long as the browser keeps being pushed as an application platform.

jarek 13y ago
Nevermind things that are solved on other application platforms, we now have frameworks that solve things that are solved in the browser. Moving boldly beyond reimplementing page loads with custom Javascript, Youtube now reimplements page load progress bar with custom Javascript.
- woah 13y ago
  You sound dismissive of Youtube's page loading. I believe they are loading only those parts of the page that change, which is much faster than re-loading the whole thing. It makes the user experience faster and uses less bandwidth. Do you do much front end development?
  - fphhotchips 13y ago
    I think they were being dismissive of the need to reimplement the page load indicator rather than page loading itself. I could be wrong though.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    I believe his point is not that YouTube's implementation isn't useful, but rather, that it's insane, at a conceptual level.
    - woah 13y ago
      What's so insane about it? I would say that the logic for which parts of the page to reload should definitely be in the frontend code, rather than the browser itself.

bjoernbu 13y ago

as someone who does very, very little on the side of frontends, i think your time is still invested into a transferable skill that i miss out on: (frontend) framework design, paradigms and trends. If the stable point you mention will eventually be reached, I am sure everything on the way has contributed and those who have been involved in one way or the other will contribute the most to it and will be the ones that can best contribute to iterative improvements on that stable point.