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Jerod Santo
Jerod Santo

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Is JavaScript the "CO2" of the web?

"The vanilla JavaScript guy" joined JS Party last week and a fun metaphor was discussed:

Is web development stuck in the Hummer days? If so, is vanilla JS a bicycle? A Lime scooter? How far can this metaphor stretch?

You will 💯 want to listen to this and let us know your thoughts on the matter. The CO2 metaphor starts around the 20-minute mark (jump there) 💚💚💚

play pause JS Party

Top comments (5)

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ryansmith profile image
Ryan Smith

Thanks Jerod, I enjoyed the discussion. I think the big takeaway for me is "learning inertia", which is not worrying about the most optimal implementation but instead doing something rewarding that will motivate you to continue. Staying engaged will give valuable experience and hopefully motivate you to go a level lower and understand how things work. We as developers often fixate or debate on how best to solve a problem that we don't end up building anything.

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jerodsanto profile image
Jerod Santo

💯% that's why I believe pragmatism (which focuses on progress over perfection) is the best overriding philosophy for developers to adopt. Get going, work with the tools you have today, make smart compromises, don't get stuck trying to do the perfect thing when the good thing is good enough.

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Kyle Agronick

I enjoyed the episode and found it funny that the Vanilla JS guy was totally fine with Svelt which is pretty much at feature parity with Vue.

The funny thing about Svelt is that it generates so much code that eventually you hit an inflection point where having a static library would net you less code in the end.

I'm curious how the vanilla guy is making completely JS based sites without a framework. You'll either have spaghetti code or end up writing your own framework in the end.

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Thomas Tortorini

"spaghetti code" or not is related to the dev's skill, not technology, i'm sorry but you should say "I'll either have spaghetti code".

It's like saying C/C++ are dangerous because they can SIGSEV, but in reality it's the dev who is dangerous with it's absence of precision...

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nektro profile image
Meghan (she/her)

Javascript may be the gasoline of the Web but it definitely isn't the Hummer of the web. The problem is with developers. Too many still thinks Hummers are cool.