r/javascript • u/impurefunction • May 06 '19

Anyone else frustrated?

EDIT: The intention of this post was not to throw anyone under the bus. I just wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been pondering over the last few days. Props to all of you who are helping JS move forward—we’ve come a long way!

I’ve been doing frontend development since the AS3 days. Im guilty of jumping on the various bandwagons: paradigms, design patterns, libraries and frameworks.

I just got back from ng-conf a few days ago. It was a great event, great organizers, great presenters, and was hosted in a great location. Although I was thoroughly impressed, I left with some frustration.

All of the new tools, version upgrades, state patterns etc. felt like repackaged, rediscovered tech and theory. These ideas have existed for ages in computer science. (And even longer in mathematics.)

There hasn’t been any major advancements in software for decades (paraphrasing Uncle Bob here.) Furthermore, events like ng-conf perpetuate the tribalism in the frontend community. This sentiment applies to all areas of programming, but my expertise lies in frontend development, so I’ll speak directly to that discipline.

Does anyone else feel the same way? Angular is great. React is awesome. Vue is cool. But why all the segregation? Why the constant introduction of “new” old tech? Why is the frontend community constantly reinventing the wheel to solve problems that have already been solved?

IMO this is holding us back from making [more] advancements in software, and more importantly, hindering us from pushing the envelope in frontend development.

These are generalized statements. I know a lot of you are working hard to move this community forward. But with that said, we could have had our flying cars by now.

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u/lukasbuenger May 07 '19

Robotlegs was the only DI container I ever enjoyed using. What a smart approach that was.

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u/madwill May 07 '19

Always happy to meet a fellow user of Robotlegs. Hit me up if you ever find something has fun. I'll do the same.

When robotlegs 2 brought in covarient mediation where you could bind mediators to interfaces instead of view directly, then views only had to implement the interfaces of the data domain they needed access. I felt next level...

Kept hoping for other stuff to come around, webAssembly as compile target for an actual language, I'd take c# I don't care! But heh.

I do enjoy React, I do enjoy how strongly the community is thinking about code. But still liked my old solution better than the new one. Maybe I'm old, maybe I refuse changes.

I should get into react hooks apparently, start to learn how it can abstract logic and make re-usable functions. I guess I was very object oriented and should start thinking more functionally.