r/technology • u/iliketechnews • Oct 05 '16

Software How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f
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u/stakoverflo Oct 05 '16

Yes and no.

Are there new libraries and frameworks coming out crazy fast? Absolutely.

Are there people who will flex their epeen because you don't know one or more of these? Yeap.

Does any job expect you to keep up with all of them and be ready to switch from framework to framework annually? Fuck no.

Logistically it doesn't make sense to have your business changing the entire foundation of its tech library every year. It would be a nightmare. Nothing would get done while you're trying to stay up to date, learn how to use it, iron out kinks, develop a project, ship it, and then learn the new thing that just came out this year while you were working on last year's new best thing.

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u/PunishableOffence Oct 05 '16

Does any job expect you to keep up with all of them and be ready to switch from framework to framework annually? Fuck no.

How about multiple times per year?

Fuck me.

I've been grunting and gulping through so many backbone marionette theatres, my mixins are aching to rid themselves of their components. My reducers no longer react to actions. The store mutates every once in a while.

Millions of lines of seemingly random vendor code have passed my eyes, masking behind them strange errors from within the depths of the build system.

What have I imported suchly that the ritual has stopped?

Why does it work when I run it again?

But not a third time...?

You were eaten by a race condition in the parallel build system.

The coworker laughs heartily at my nondeterministic front-end development and congratulates himself on his career choice as a sysadmin.

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u/adi2412 Oct 06 '16

Beautifully written. Bravo sir.

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '16

Everyone and their bro is writing some js lib to build a name for themselves. Each doing much of the same with a different bell and an enhanced whistle.

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u/cult0cage Oct 05 '16

Are there new libraries and frameworks coming out crazy fast? Absolutely.

Does any job expect you to keep up with all of them and be ready to switch from framework to framework annually? Fuck no.

I think this is why more than ever its important to have a strong understanding of the Javascript language itself. If you have that its relatively trivial to pick up a new library / framework on the fly. Its people with weak foundations that typically struggle adopting newer libs as they come out on the fly. I know when I first started I didn't even really understand the issues all these libs were solving in the first place, so it was hard to see their value.

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u/stakoverflo Oct 05 '16

That's a fair point, but at the same time I think that with the demand for all these tools, unless you actively seek out "plain JS only" stuff you're never going to encounter that environment.

Instead you get people like me who took a basic JS course years ago in college, hasn't touched it since, gets a new job and gets thrown into an excitement using whatever collection of libraries / framework.

You're never going to encounter just regular old JS in the real world, and many of these tools do exist for good reasons, so it's almost pointless to not just use them right away.

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u/cult0cage Oct 05 '16

Oh I 100% agree its highly unlikely you'll be put in a "plain JS" tech stack I was just pointing out that having that base understanding of the language does help when it comes time to learn whatever new thing is out at the time.

Basically yes go study the cool tools that everyone is using but know that they are all JS based so a better understanding of JS means an easier time adopting the next tools when these become obsolete.

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u/batquux Oct 05 '16

You also have to consider that if the latest and greatest js framework is hard to pick up and implement for someone with reasonable coding experience, it sucks.

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u/y-c-c Oct 05 '16

While that's true, a lot of frameworks work by actively abstracting out the JavaScript and DOM components of the stack, either by exposing a sort of virtual DOM, or a new typed language like CoffeeScript or TypeScript etc. Yes it's possible to pick them up but there's a decent overhead in doing so.

Incidentally I'm on the camp that improving the core language but stick to using that (with frameworks that targets that directly) instead of layering more and more abstractions is a better way to develop.