Comment by travjones | Hacker News Reader

Comment by travjones | Hacker News Reader

I must admit, I'm a relatively new developer, and I also get overwhelmed by the number of new technologies coming out every day. I can't speak for "back in the day" web development other than things I've heard from older devs. For example, "back in the day" browsers sucked, like really bad. Compatibility issues were expected. For example, "How do I make sure this is compatible with IE7," etc. Although web development is not perfect, nothing really is perfect, and I think we have come a long way. At least, I'm happy I got into web development when everything was so approachable, open source software is so accessible, and places like HN exist where I can constantly learn new shit.

I think the primary reason people are tired of new JS libraries is because there exists a certain kind of pressure that is hard to describe, but I will try. It's kind of like, "I don't want to miss out on the hottest framework"/"I don't want to fall behind current tech." The truth is, we should all ditch this mentality. Use what works for you and learn what you care about learning.

When a new JS library comes out, don't groan, take a quick peek and decide if it's worth it to try to integrate it into your workflow. I think it's great to have options and the options in web development are seemingly neverending. I'm happy I write software for the web, and I think we should all recognize how far things have come. Yet, we should always strive to make the web better for users and developers alike.

My biggest problem with all of the new libraries coming out is that it leaves me with the feeling that nobody want to improve upon what is already out there. I understand that paradigm shifts may require a rewrite. But nobody is shifting every 2 weeks and getting anything done.

When selecting technology, I want to make a decision that will grow with me over the next several years. When perception is that each library of the day will be thrown out in 3 months, falling back to jquery/php is a really attractive option.

This exactly. Sometimes I feel like an old fart still using Django (or Flask if the project is small) instead of some new hotness.

But Django has the DSF behind it moving point releases, bugfixes and major releases in a very sane way. The same absolutely cannot be said for angular (major rewrite in progress!) or a lot of similar projects in the Node.js community.

None of this means Node.js is bad, just that there is something to be said for consistency in development. Now watch as Python/Django devs slowly morph into what Delphi devs used to be ;)

You shouldn't feel like an "old fart" using Django or Flask. I think both are awesome, relevant, and will stick around into the future.

One of the great things about being a programmer is that we know how to program in general. If we have to adopt a new syntax or learn the intricacies of some new methods that's ok, and not nearly equal to the amount of effort we expended to learn how to write code in the beginning.

Keep writing your Django apps. I agree that it's great that DSF is backing a stable and productive framework like Django.

I was working the last year on a Django app. First I hated it, but slowly I started enjoying programming with it. This year I worked mantaining an app with all of this http://teropa.info/blog/2015/09/10/full-stack-redux-tutorial... This supposed to be a simple Web app but, it's a complete mess. I miss Django so much right now.

Looking at Angular 2, for example, I feel they should name it something else. It's misleading. There's no continuity from 1 to 2.

I like the 1 branch, and will be happy to continue with it for a while.

There are very few people that have the philosophy you describe. In the JS world, I think the Ember team has decided to do that. They have and are improving Ember with new technologies (virtual dom, server-side rendering) but it's still Ember and they take care of backwards compatibility (for the most part).

The most important part of Ember's development philosophy is "Stability without Stagnancy."

Ember is a very under-rated framework.

I'm glad to see another like minded person. I see the massive explosion of web dev tools, frameworks and libraries as a good thing. I think it's strong indicator that things have become approachable. It's easy to create something new and share it with the world.

I find the authors sentiment very similar to that of those who complain about "all of this terrible music." Music is much easier to create and distribute and that means more of it, which, IMHO, is a good thing.

> For example, "back in the day" browsers sucked, like really bad.

I'm reminded of Mitch Hedberg: "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too."

Not even close, I can't tell you the last time I've wasted a day trying to get something to "seemingly" work in IE that worked in firefox. Sometimes fixing it in one place would break the other. It was a nightmare where I'd loose hours maybe once a week. I just don't have those problems anymore. Maybe its because I was a junior dev back when IE5 and IE6 was everywhere... but I lost a lot of time on it.

Perhaps I should clarify -- I am (happily) not involved in web development, and from the developer's side browsers may very well be in pretty good shape these days (I wouldn't really know).

But speaking purely as a user, I think the statement "browsers suck, like really bad" still holds very true.

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