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The author's remarks echo my feelings on the state of front-end dev well: [Angular and Ember] are both smart, valid, and potentially wildly successful appr

by jffry 12y ago

The author's remarks echo my feelings on the state of front-end dev well: [Angular and Ember] are both smart, valid, and potentially wildly successful approaches. The fact that there are different teams of smart people building software to make the front-end better, and that those teams have different and directly conflicting philosophies is fantastic. This was also a theme echoed recently at ng-conf. Shift the mindset from "X framework is better unilaterally" to "X framework is really good at Y but less good at Z". They're tools; nobody's going around saying "hammers are better at everything than screwdrivers"

dragonwriter 12y ago
> They're tools; nobody's going around saying "hammers are better at everything than screwdrivers" But different front-end frameworks are, arguably, more like different brands or designs of hammers than they are like hammers vs. screwdrivers. And while different brands of tools in the same class may have tradeoffs that make some better for particular uses and others better for other uses, quite often it is the case that people do perceive one is better (or, more often, worse) than some other for every task. Those that are widely perceived as better in that sense over time come to dominate until an alternative that it doesn't beat in all uses becomes available, those that are perceived as worse in that sense gradually (or quickly, depending on the strength of the perception and the degree people who already started using the tool are locked in) are abandoned and left behind.
- jffry 12y ago
  Yeah, my analogy wasn't the greatest. Substitute "claw hammers" and "sledgehamemrs" and "deadblow hammers" instead. What excites me right now is there's a lot of great, interesting, useful tools available right now (React, Ember, Angular, to name a few). Maybe one or more won't ultimately pan out, but they're great opportunities to try new approaches and learn from each other. To build a web app with one of these new tools exposes you inherently to the risk that this tool might be abandoned in the next 1-3 years. It's up to you to weigh the risks of a new tool against its benefits. If long-term stability is something your project highly depends upon, then perhaps these new tools aren't the appropriate choice, and something like jQuery/Backbone is a better option.

by jffry 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

> They're tools; nobody's going around saying "hammers are better at everything than screwdrivers" But different front-end frameworks are, arguably, more like different brands or designs of hammers than they are like hammers vs. screwdrivers. And while different brands of tools in the same class may have tradeoffs that make some better for particular uses and others better for other uses, quite often it is the case that people do perceive one is better (or, more often, worse) than some other for every task. Those that are widely perceived as better in that sense over time come to dominate until an alternative that it doesn't beat in all uses becomes available, those that are perceived as worse in that sense gradually (or quickly, depending on the strength of the perception and the degree people who already started using the tool are locked in) are abandoned and left behind.

jffry 12y ago
Yeah, my analogy wasn't the greatest. Substitute "claw hammers" and "sledgehamemrs" and "deadblow hammers" instead. What excites me right now is there's a lot of great, interesting, useful tools available right now (React, Ember, Angular, to name a few). Maybe one or more won't ultimately pan out, but they're great opportunities to try new approaches and learn from each other. To build a web app with one of these new tools exposes you inherently to the risk that this tool might be abandoned in the next 1-3 years. It's up to you to weigh the risks of a new tool against its benefits. If long-term stability is something your project highly depends upon, then perhaps these new tools aren't the appropriate choice, and something like jQuery/Backbone is a better option.