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sorry I just have to vent a little... I feel like I got wrecked twice jumping on the GWT and then the Angular train. I am not sure if I have the energy to jump

sorry I just have to vent a little... I feel like I got wrecked twice jumping on the GWT and then the Angular train. I am not sure if I have the energy to jump on the Angular 2.0 train and get wreck once more... Any advice would be helpful.

watty 12y ago
My only advice is to leave web development if you're afraid of changing technologies. The web is moving at light speed, any framework you pick today will likely be significantly different or gone in 10 years.
nfriedly 12y ago
Well, on the one hand, GWT and Angular 1.x both still work. They might not be new and shiny anymore, but they do still get the job done. Personally, I still like using Backbone.js. I liked it from the start because I could read and easily comprehend the entire codebase. That might be a decent rule of thumb before getting very invested into a tool/framework/whatever.
VeejayRampay 12y ago
Google built their brand-new email product Inbox with GWT apparently. GWT might not be hip but it was still their technology of choice to build an extremely complex, intricate and convoluted web application.
sgt 12y ago
Angular 1.x is still highly useful right now, and will be for a years going forward. I don't think we'll see much 2.0 adoption though, but we'll see.
marknutter 12y ago
Don't take this the wrong way, but perhaps you should rethink your career choice. If tools changing and be supplanted by other tools causes you too much stress then I have unpleasant news for you - it will never stop. The good news is, it doesn't have to be stressful. If a tool you like works, use it! Don't worry about the shiny new stuff coming out, worry about being productive today, and you will find that your stress level will decrease dramatically. But above all, become comfortable with the fact that you will always be learning new things until the day you retire. You aren't flipping burgers.
- MasterScrat 12y ago
  Fair point, however his fear of "getting wrecked again" is a very valid concern for companies. Which certainly don't want to end up with webapps relying on obsolete frameworks. At work we have some old projects built on GWT, some newer projects built on AngularJS and both will soon be outdated. Also there is no real choice to build a modern web application, that clients now expect, while being really future-proof. That's the first time I see a situation like this, typically you need to pick between shiny new tech vs old boring one.
  - marknutter 12y ago
    Building anything on the web and expecting it to last more than 5 years is foolish in my opinion. But yes, if your company is expecting to build an app that won't be re-written for more than 5 years then by all means do it in vanilla javascript, but you'll likely end up building a custom framework anyways.
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      Building anything on the web and expecting it to last more than 5 years is foolish in my opinion. But why should it be? The goal of building web sites and apps isn't to use the latest shiny new technologies. You can build excellent web sites that serve valuable business and/or social functions, using nothing but technologies that have been around for 10 or even 20 years. And if we're talking about app-style development, why should someone who invests significant time and resources to build, say, an intranet app to automate some function in their business not expect that app to still work five years from now? This is why standards and stability are important, and it's why "living standards" are a pile of [expletive deleted], and it's why it's a bad thing that some browsers currently have very rapid release cycles with an obvious emphasis on adding new shiny things at the expense of maintaining support for older technologies, and it's why you shouldn't build anything you might need to maintain for more than a year or two with the JS framework du jour. A lot of front-end devs today make building simple user interfaces to access databases seem awfully complicated. Every time I read articles like this one I become more convinced that most of that complexity is of their own making. They talk down to old school developers who put most of the logic on the back end, or who build interactions using jQuery, but sites written 5 years ago using those technologies still work and can still be maintained just fine. I wouldn't bet on that being true for anything built with a framework like Angular or React today.
ep103 12y ago
There was a time when you could blindly trust Google to put out products for developers, with development in mind. That time is long past.
- panopticon 12y ago
  I don't think there was ever a time you could blindly trust Google to do that. It has a very sordid history when it comes to development support.
jhpriestley 12y ago
Keep it minimal. I've written pretty serious web applications with no more dependencies than jQuery, lodash, browserify, and handlebars, for instance. Learn javascript really well, leverage "plain old javascript" patterns like function composition and closures over fancy but poorly-motivated new stuff like reactive data-binding and MVWXYZ.
pjmlp 12y ago
Never jump to framework flavour of the month until it gets mentioned in Requests For Proposals by customers. There is a reason we old timers are usually sceptic of new frameworks/languages.
- needusername 12y ago
  I have seen several large enterprise organizations build important applications in AngularJS. The kind of applications that you don't want to rewrite the UI in 2 years. In fact I know of one that will start in a few months. I would not be surprised if AngularJS was in the RFP. These days I just stay away from those projects and watch them burn.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Yes I can imagine that. 2014 was the first time we got AngularJS on a RFP. Then again, I am glad the project is now gone, given the direction AngularJS is going.
rdtsc 12y ago
Switch the train station completely and give React a try ;-)
craigvn 12y ago
Don't trust Google APIs or Frameworks. They have a reputation of throwing it all away with each new version leaving you in the lurch and having to do major rewrites.

watty 12y ago

My only advice is to leave web development if you're afraid of changing technologies. The web is moving at light speed, any framework you pick today will likely be significantly different or gone in 10 years.

nfriedly 12y ago

Well, on the one hand, GWT and Angular 1.x both still work. They might not be new and shiny anymore, but they do still get the job done. Personally, I still like using Backbone.js. I liked it from the start because I could read and easily comprehend the entire codebase. That might be a decent rule of thumb before getting very invested into a tool/framework/whatever.

VeejayRampay 12y ago

Google built their brand-new email product Inbox with GWT apparently. GWT might not be hip but it was still their technology of choice to build an extremely complex, intricate and convoluted web application.

sgt 12y ago

Angular 1.x is still highly useful right now, and will be for a years going forward. I don't think we'll see much 2.0 adoption though, but we'll see.

marknutter 12y ago

Don't take this the wrong way, but perhaps you should rethink your career choice. If tools changing and be supplanted by other tools causes you too much stress then I have unpleasant news for you - it will never stop. The good news is, it doesn't have to be stressful. If a tool you like works, use it! Don't worry about the shiny new stuff coming out, worry about being productive today, and you will find that your stress level will decrease dramatically. But above all, become comfortable with the fact that you will always be learning new things until the day you retire. You aren't flipping burgers.

MasterScrat 12y ago
Fair point, however his fear of "getting wrecked again" is a very valid concern for companies. Which certainly don't want to end up with webapps relying on obsolete frameworks. At work we have some old projects built on GWT, some newer projects built on AngularJS and both will soon be outdated. Also there is no real choice to build a modern web application, that clients now expect, while being really future-proof. That's the first time I see a situation like this, typically you need to pick between shiny new tech vs old boring one.
- marknutter 12y ago
  Building anything on the web and expecting it to last more than 5 years is foolish in my opinion. But yes, if your company is expecting to build an app that won't be re-written for more than 5 years then by all means do it in vanilla javascript, but you'll likely end up building a custom framework anyways.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    Building anything on the web and expecting it to last more than 5 years is foolish in my opinion. But why should it be? The goal of building web sites and apps isn't to use the latest shiny new technologies. You can build excellent web sites that serve valuable business and/or social functions, using nothing but technologies that have been around for 10 or even 20 years. And if we're talking about app-style development, why should someone who invests significant time and resources to build, say, an intranet app to automate some function in their business not expect that app to still work five years from now? This is why standards and stability are important, and it's why "living standards" are a pile of [expletive deleted], and it's why it's a bad thing that some browsers currently have very rapid release cycles with an obvious emphasis on adding new shiny things at the expense of maintaining support for older technologies, and it's why you shouldn't build anything you might need to maintain for more than a year or two with the JS framework du jour. A lot of front-end devs today make building simple user interfaces to access databases seem awfully complicated. Every time I read articles like this one I become more convinced that most of that complexity is of their own making. They talk down to old school developers who put most of the logic on the back end, or who build interactions using jQuery, but sites written 5 years ago using those technologies still work and can still be maintained just fine. I wouldn't bet on that being true for anything built with a framework like Angular or React today.

ep103 12y ago

There was a time when you could blindly trust Google to put out products for developers, with development in mind. That time is long past.

panopticon 12y ago
I don't think there was ever a time you could blindly trust Google to do that. It has a very sordid history when it comes to development support.

jhpriestley 12y ago

Keep it minimal. I've written pretty serious web applications with no more dependencies than jQuery, lodash, browserify, and handlebars, for instance. Learn javascript really well, leverage "plain old javascript" patterns like function composition and closures over fancy but poorly-motivated new stuff like reactive data-binding and MVWXYZ.

pjmlp 12y ago

Never jump to framework flavour of the month until it gets mentioned in Requests For Proposals by customers. There is a reason we old timers are usually sceptic of new frameworks/languages.

needusername 12y ago
I have seen several large enterprise organizations build important applications in AngularJS. The kind of applications that you don't want to rewrite the UI in 2 years. In fact I know of one that will start in a few months. I would not be surprised if AngularJS was in the RFP. These days I just stay away from those projects and watch them burn.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Yes I can imagine that. 2014 was the first time we got AngularJS on a RFP. Then again, I am glad the project is now gone, given the direction AngularJS is going.

rdtsc 12y ago

Switch the train station completely and give React a try ;-)

craigvn 12y ago

Don't trust Google APIs or Frameworks. They have a reputation of throwing it all away with each new version leaving you in the lurch and having to do major rewrites.