Rules, we've all got em, weather it's I must use tabs over spaces or semicolons even if JavaScript does it for you, there are no shortage of rules to abide by.
The web today is the equal and opposite reaction of what it once was. If you where around during the rise of jQuery you might remember starting to use plugins for just about everything, jQuery and vanilla became distinguished ways of working, in fact when I was junior, I actually thought that jQuery was some sort of language. Anyway the point is the work and solutions where piecemeal, you would often have to find a conversation and stick to it. There where hardly any style guides to live by.
Then we all started saying MVC MVVM MMMMMM and WOBLSNAP, at this point I was confused, what the heck is MVC! It turns out that frameworks like backbone and handlebars sort of helped answer. Despite that MVC is nothing new. Angular came along and everything changed again. The first question I have about this section of time was and still is, why does nothing stick, why must everything try to improve on everything else?
Today we are at the point of saturation if there is such a thing, React Vue and even Angular are all capable frameworks but more than this, they make you feel you must do it thier way, that they are the center of your stack universe. Why? Well brand is a major factor, they must be adopted to survive, but none fundamentally trump the other, Why is that? Are you just using them waiting for the new hotness, or perhaps SPA apps are broken in the way we architect them, reinventing what the browser can do because the browser has not solved the problem of loading.
I think the tables are turning, I was in denial about this for a while, Perhaps we could be about to see a shift towards web components again, non monolithic frameworks, portal elements and most importantly JavaScript as part of the job title over react developer, I am singling that out as it is wide spread.
It all comes back to rules, if this is going to be the future, who is going to tell you how to do it?
Top comments (1)
Things like Svelte give me hope, it's cool to see framework-neutral methods of creating web components! It's a nice compromise between doing everything vanillaJS and the monolithic frameworks. It irritates me how many jobs expect experience with a library versus a concept or language. People can learn Rails without getting too deep into what an incredible language Ruby is, people can learn React and let create-react-app prevent them from having to learn how everything comes together under the covers, and we can always find abstractions to distance us from learning the finer details.
It's like the whole concept of DevOps. What do you mean you want a DevOps engineer? Do you want a build automation engineer? A sysadmin who is really good at automating things? An engineer who understands non-functional requirements? An unrealistic jack-of-all-trades who will save your broken "agile" process?
I feel like the focus on tools just creates silos within the company. It takes away opportunities to hire staff members who can bring new viewpoints to the table, who can question why things are done a certain way, and suggest better alternatives.