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Adam Crockett πŸŒ€
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€

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10 a Penny, one consideration before you specialise in a JavaScript framework

Hi!

This is the perspective of a hopeful entrepreneur

When React was very new, it used to wind me up that people didn't call themselves JavaScript developers after all that is what they are writing, and only with Svelte and similar languages I can honestly thats not true anymore, its a language dressed as a framework.

I was told in a surreal encounter with an old school C programmer when I used to work in a corner shop/store, "Go where the money is" I always try to.

So i'm an experienced consultant with a business idea, I can write in any framework or language I want too, i'm at that stage I don't really mind what i'm using, but I see speed as important in my particular use case, fast is good - so I would choose the fastest, but what about hiring?

If I got big

If the business really took off, hiring Svelte developers or python (on Graal) developers might be hard - I could choose React after all there are so many react developers that their average wage is actually lower than any other framework, because 10 a penny and for Svelte its almost twice as much in wage but half as much work out there, so do I pick the best by using the best performing stack? I have no idea whats right...

Top comments (7)

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dwoodwardgb profile image
David Woodward

Please pick what's best for your users! That means React and Angular are bad options because the JS bundle sizes are too big. It really matters for users with low end phones, spotty wifi, users who are traveling in and out of tunnels etc. Svelte and Vue are great choices. Astro is great as a metaframework to work in tandem with Svelte or Vue etc. There is also Solid but that's even more niche than Svelte.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€

Disney streaming fair play, got any jobs 😎?

I can see your point of view, I think there was a Google talk about this on YouTube, the average American having a low end smartphone so the team had to make their application work well in that context, and of course we have amazing hardware that never really reflects the consumer. There’s a disconnect for sure.
There’s so many customer concerns to address and so many β€œX first” rules and methodologies then what really comes first.
So I’ve got to ask who is my customer, and I think it’s you and I the people who need to talk to recruiters and get a CV/Resume up to date and tailored to the customer.

On the subject of tunnels I used to take the train to work everyday and I learned all about PWA tech as it emerged (before i left the tunnel)

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

I just wanted to point out that it's not all black and white. There may be good reasons to choose react or even angular, though they are mostly chosen for poor ones and there may be even better reasons to choose something else.

No framework is a silver bullet. There's a lot of marketing BS about many of them, but cut through the crap and you'll see that each one is based on certain compromises. Look at the trade-offs and what it means for your use-case. You won't find a perfect solution, but maybe you'll find a slightly better one than "Hey, I know XY! So let's use that!"

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

You can replace react with preact and reduce the bundle size significantly. On the other hand, if the framework slows down the development because it has a lot of limitations (e.g. hook rules) and foot guns (like infinite effect loops), then it's not only bad for your users, but also for your project.

However, the ecosystem of react is easily twice as large as those of the next two frameworks combined. This can both be an advantage and a disadvantage, as many of these projects are orphaned and some may be of lesser quality.

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

The problem with abundance is that it is often combined with mediocrity – and developers specializing in react are no exception to that rule. If all you need is someone who can use component libraries to build some UIs, that's fine, but you'll likely need more than that.

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adam_cyclones profile image
Adam Crockett πŸŒ€

An AI powered Resume platform would indeed need more than that. I think I’m just going to chose what I think is right, python and svelte

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lexlohr profile image
Alex Lohr

Svelte and SvelteKit will definitely give you an edge. Also, you'll mostly find developers who understand their tools and not people who sat through a udemy course and now want a job.