3 ms·

Is there a "too clever" mentality in frontend web dev culture of late? An overly fragmented workflow toolset? Not sure the cause, perhaps the influx of enginee

by exodust 13y ago

Is there a "too clever" mentality in frontend web dev culture of late? An overly fragmented workflow toolset? Not sure the cause, perhaps the influx of engineering "computer science disciplined" brains into the frontend world. Or a panicked competitive race to achieve a nirvana dev environment. Or a tendency to think that workflows for large websites with countless modules is the best workflow for a one-page web app. Overkill for the intended task, or cluttering your project with too much technology, is the thing to watch out for in the frontend aspect. Layers of tools and libraries and plugins can easily get out of control and beyond a joke. Don't forget you've got a web app to build while you mess around with the "right way" to build it. You do not need a cup-holder on your scaffolding. Just using plain JS with Jquery, and perhaps some additional smaller specific plugins/libraires, is enough to do a lot of cool stuff if we're talking "javascript" projects. Then just get a good editor and off you go.

marknutter 13y ago
> Just using plain JS with Jquery, and perhaps some additional smaller specific plugins/libraires, is enough to do a lot of cool stuff if we're talking "javascript" projects. Then just get a good editor and off you go. These new tools and frameworks are becoming numerous and popular precisely because for large, complicated front-end applications you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. The only people I meet who have an aversion to these modern JS frameworks are front-end devs who refuse to learn them or server-side devs who hate javascript.
- exodust 13y ago
  > you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. Nonsense. Maintainability is all about good documentation, neat code, sensible peer-reviewed code, a good dose of manual testing and a healthy injection of personal responsibility in seeing the project be the best it can be for your users. I test my work manually on a bunch of test devices and computers I own. It doesn't take long and I get to see any browser specific display glitches that automation tools wouldn't pick up. It's a no-brainer, and you LEARN about the nature of browsers by testing manually. I hate bootstrap, don't use it. I've made big website templates with lots of traffic, and smaller components and other things. I don't want bootstrap in the mix thanks. Whenever I have to maintain a project which someone else started with bootstrap, I sigh and dive into the ridiculous use of simulated rows and columns, and the crappy CSS overrides meant to give us flexibility, but actually giving us not much at all. So how do other developers like my work when they have to maintain it? Well, I leave them something SIMPLE and well documented to decipher, so they can get straight to work doing the maintenance and getting on with business. No learning curves of countless toolsets and pre-processing junk. Just the basics. I've had no complaints. Frontend is very much concerned with visual elements and interaction. I don't know much about server side except for what I find behind the projects I work on and fetch with AJAX or other means... such and such data feeds, this or that outputs etc. I'm more interested in user interfaces and how a web app or webpage "feels". I know exactly what to do when something doesn't feel snappy, or a graphic flashes or renders poorly on load. I know what to do because I haven't sold my soul to a framework that promised me the world, but delivered mediocrity. Each to their own.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  These new tools and frameworks are becoming numerous and popular precisely because for large, complicated front-end applications you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. That's a rather negative view, and I don't think it's entirely realistic. I am involved with multiple long-running web projects that have been using things like (real) MVC architectures and single-page applications since long before any of these trendy JS frameworks existed. The projects have been built using sound software development principles and usually a small number of carefully chosen supporting tools and libraries. They are still doing their jobs just fine, and they have stood the test of time in terms of maintainability. The only people I meet who have an aversion to these modern JS frameworks are front-end devs who refuse to learn them or server-side devs who hate javascript. Please consider that there is at least one more option, which I imagine applies to many of the older readers here. Some of us have seen before the rapid evolution of an ecosystem as a programming language takes off, and we simply don't buy the hype. We saw the arrival of Java, with all its garbage collected wonder. Then we saw the nightmarish descent into over-engineered hell that followed. We saw the arrival of Boost for C++ and the potential of community-developed, peer-reviewed libraries. Then we noticed that in 2014, C++ still doesn't even have basic features for working with filesystems or rendering a simple UI as standard. We saw the evolution of very dynamic "scripting" languages like Python and Ruby into widely used server-side languages for real applications. Then we saw people trying to maintain those applications a few years later, when they weren't prototypes any more and when quality and performance mattered. More recently, we've seen front-end web development shift toward JavaScript and move away from the likes of ActiveX controls, Flash plug-ins and Java applets, as language support became more consistent across browsers and some real effort went into improving performance. Today we are also seeing the inevitable explosion of the surrounding ecosystem as JS becomes a tool for building more heavyweight software, signalled by the arrival of vast numbers of different automation tools and libraries and frameworks. But with the cynicism of the industry veteran, we also see that many of these new tools will do 80% of a job easily but make the last 20% much more painful. We know that some are merely short cuts aimed at people who now work in front-end development but whose backgrounds aren't necessarily in programming and who haven't yet developed their general software development skills in that way; there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but such tools have no (or negative) value to those who have moved beyond the level where they are helpful. Most of all, we know that five years from now, as the ecosystem evolves standards and consolidates, it is highly unlikely that most of the currently trendy tools will still be as effective and well maintained as they are today, but that like the five-year-old projects some of us work with today, someone will still have to maintain those projects after all the hypesters have moved on. This doesn't mean that we somehow refuse to learn new technologies. It just means that if I can see what looks like a fire, and it feels as warm as I expect when I get close enough to examine it, I'm not still going to jump in for a few minutes just to see if it's really as hot as it looks because I read on a web site somewhere that all the cool kids were doing it. Now get off my lawn. :-)
acjohnson55 13y ago
I think that's a naive way of thinking about the problem. Do people write rich server-side web apps in Plain Ol' Python? Of course not. Why reinvent the wheel? For a tiny app, sure, maybe it's not so bad to just use jQuery. But if you're working on something with a very rich front-end architecture, a framework gives you a very necessary...er...framework to use to eliminate boilerplate and organize your work. Not only that, but you get to minimize your code debt to your actual business logic, not the plumbing.
- exodust 13y ago
  Maybe people are trying to avoid work? If that's the case, be careful losing your innovative and creative edge from being shackled to an interlocking formula of tools and frameworks. This debate feels loose. We are lucky to have so many options. It all depends what project you're working on. I prefer rich possibilities in design and functionality rather than rich possibilities in minimising how much I have to think/solve/innovate. I don't want a crutch, I want a turbo boost of creativity in web development... and that comes from hard work, not automating your life. These tools are often about slapping the same old stuff down day in day out. Where's the fun in that? Am I re-inventing the wheel? Spreading boilerplate code around in a mess? No I am not. My boilerplate code is nicely organised and easily deployed thanks very much! And the wheels.. well, the wheels I make are lightweight, and I know and trust them inside out. They're my wheels. I made them, and they stand out from the crowd.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Do people write rich server-side web apps in Plain Ol' Python? Perhaps not, but plenty of us write them using a lightweight framework like Flask rather than heavyweights like Django, and even in a relatively mature field like ORMs, there are downsides to using them that sometimes outweigh the advantages. For a tiny app, sure, maybe it's not so bad to just use jQuery. I've got ~100,000 lines (before minimising etc.) and ~5 years of successful maintenance "just using jQuery" for one web app that I can quickly check from here that is still going strong. I think most of us would agree that's not a tiny single page application.
  - 13y ago
mrmzr 13y ago
The common PHP developer mentality.

by exodust 13y ago

marknutter 13y ago

> Just using plain JS with Jquery, and perhaps some additional smaller specific plugins/libraires, is enough to do a lot of cool stuff if we're talking "javascript" projects. Then just get a good editor and off you go. These new tools and frameworks are becoming numerous and popular precisely because for large, complicated front-end applications you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. The only people I meet who have an aversion to these modern JS frameworks are front-end devs who refuse to learn them or server-side devs who hate javascript.

exodust 13y ago
> you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. Nonsense. Maintainability is all about good documentation, neat code, sensible peer-reviewed code, a good dose of manual testing and a healthy injection of personal responsibility in seeing the project be the best it can be for your users. I test my work manually on a bunch of test devices and computers I own. It doesn't take long and I get to see any browser specific display glitches that automation tools wouldn't pick up. It's a no-brainer, and you LEARN about the nature of browsers by testing manually. I hate bootstrap, don't use it. I've made big website templates with lots of traffic, and smaller components and other things. I don't want bootstrap in the mix thanks. Whenever I have to maintain a project which someone else started with bootstrap, I sigh and dive into the ridiculous use of simulated rows and columns, and the crappy CSS overrides meant to give us flexibility, but actually giving us not much at all. So how do other developers like my work when they have to maintain it? Well, I leave them something SIMPLE and well documented to decipher, so they can get straight to work doing the maintenance and getting on with business. No learning curves of countless toolsets and pre-processing junk. Just the basics. I've had no complaints. Frontend is very much concerned with visual elements and interaction. I don't know much about server side except for what I find behind the projects I work on and fetch with AJAX or other means... such and such data feeds, this or that outputs etc. I'm more interested in user interfaces and how a web app or webpage "feels". I know exactly what to do when something doesn't feel snappy, or a graphic flashes or renders poorly on load. I know what to do because I haven't sold my soul to a framework that promised me the world, but delivered mediocrity. Each to their own.
Silhouette 13y ago
These new tools and frameworks are becoming numerous and popular precisely because for large, complicated front-end applications you can't just get away with using "plain JS with Jquery" without it becoming an unmaintainable mess and writing boilerplate DOM manipulation code all over the place. That's a rather negative view, and I don't think it's entirely realistic. I am involved with multiple long-running web projects that have been using things like (real) MVC architectures and single-page applications since long before any of these trendy JS frameworks existed. The projects have been built using sound software development principles and usually a small number of carefully chosen supporting tools and libraries. They are still doing their jobs just fine, and they have stood the test of time in terms of maintainability. The only people I meet who have an aversion to these modern JS frameworks are front-end devs who refuse to learn them or server-side devs who hate javascript. Please consider that there is at least one more option, which I imagine applies to many of the older readers here. Some of us have seen before the rapid evolution of an ecosystem as a programming language takes off, and we simply don't buy the hype. We saw the arrival of Java, with all its garbage collected wonder. Then we saw the nightmarish descent into over-engineered hell that followed. We saw the arrival of Boost for C++ and the potential of community-developed, peer-reviewed libraries. Then we noticed that in 2014, C++ still doesn't even have basic features for working with filesystems or rendering a simple UI as standard. We saw the evolution of very dynamic "scripting" languages like Python and Ruby into widely used server-side languages for real applications. Then we saw people trying to maintain those applications a few years later, when they weren't prototypes any more and when quality and performance mattered. More recently, we've seen front-end web development shift toward JavaScript and move away from the likes of ActiveX controls, Flash plug-ins and Java applets, as language support became more consistent across browsers and some real effort went into improving performance. Today we are also seeing the inevitable explosion of the surrounding ecosystem as JS becomes a tool for building more heavyweight software, signalled by the arrival of vast numbers of different automation tools and libraries and frameworks. But with the cynicism of the industry veteran, we also see that many of these new tools will do 80% of a job easily but make the last 20% much more painful. We know that some are merely short cuts aimed at people who now work in front-end development but whose backgrounds aren't necessarily in programming and who haven't yet developed their general software development skills in that way; there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but such tools have no (or negative) value to those who have moved beyond the level where they are helpful. Most of all, we know that five years from now, as the ecosystem evolves standards and consolidates, it is highly unlikely that most of the currently trendy tools will still be as effective and well maintained as they are today, but that like the five-year-old projects some of us work with today, someone will still have to maintain those projects after all the hypesters have moved on. This doesn't mean that we somehow refuse to learn new technologies. It just means that if I can see what looks like a fire, and it feels as warm as I expect when I get close enough to examine it, I'm not still going to jump in for a few minutes just to see if it's really as hot as it looks because I read on a web site somewhere that all the cool kids were doing it. Now get off my lawn. :-)

acjohnson55 13y ago

I think that's a naive way of thinking about the problem. Do people write rich server-side web apps in Plain Ol' Python? Of course not. Why reinvent the wheel? For a tiny app, sure, maybe it's not so bad to just use jQuery. But if you're working on something with a very rich front-end architecture, a framework gives you a very necessary...er...framework to use to eliminate boilerplate and organize your work. Not only that, but you get to minimize your code debt to your actual business logic, not the plumbing.

exodust 13y ago
Maybe people are trying to avoid work? If that's the case, be careful losing your innovative and creative edge from being shackled to an interlocking formula of tools and frameworks. This debate feels loose. We are lucky to have so many options. It all depends what project you're working on. I prefer rich possibilities in design and functionality rather than rich possibilities in minimising how much I have to think/solve/innovate. I don't want a crutch, I want a turbo boost of creativity in web development... and that comes from hard work, not automating your life. These tools are often about slapping the same old stuff down day in day out. Where's the fun in that? Am I re-inventing the wheel? Spreading boilerplate code around in a mess? No I am not. My boilerplate code is nicely organised and easily deployed thanks very much! And the wheels.. well, the wheels I make are lightweight, and I know and trust them inside out. They're my wheels. I made them, and they stand out from the crowd.
Silhouette 13y ago
Do people write rich server-side web apps in Plain Ol' Python? Perhaps not, but plenty of us write them using a lightweight framework like Flask rather than heavyweights like Django, and even in a relatively mature field like ORMs, there are downsides to using them that sometimes outweigh the advantages. For a tiny app, sure, maybe it's not so bad to just use jQuery. I've got ~100,000 lines (before minimising etc.) and ~5 years of successful maintenance "just using jQuery" for one web app that I can quickly check from here that is still going strong. I think most of us would agree that's not a tiny single page application.
- 13y ago

mrmzr 13y ago

The common PHP developer mentality.