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Comment by shados | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with you, but there is still the point of 3rd party support and workplace acceptance (this is somewhat similar to the stupid "gaming console war").

The more popular a library is, the more support its ecosystem gets, and the more likely you can convince your boss/company to use it. So if you prefer one, you may really want it to be "the most popular" to ensure you can keep using it.

Eg: people who really like Angular 2+ are kind of struggling right now. If you join a company and they're not already using Angular 2+, good freagin luck. Chances are they won't switch from React/Vue/whatever to it anytime soon.

Because of this, and the general perceived volatility of the JS ecosystem, its not too surprising people treat this as a "war". It's unfortunate.

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Another example: Typescript vs. Flow. Two different type checkers, with different capabilities and pros/cons. But given that many devs are using VSCode now there is so much emphasis being placed on Typescript by MS that Flow is slowly becoming a second-class citizen.

Great example. Also means you can google anything about TypeScript like the most obscure bug, and SOMEONE has hit it before you. Flow, not so much.

Facebook really screwed up by not having Windows support for the longest time, and even after they did, not having it as a first class citizen (since most statistics have FE devs to be roughly 50% on Windows). Not that they cared about adoption, but as Flow users, we did.

At my company we started out with Flow and eventually agreed to switch to TypeScript, as the former is getting to be too obscure a technology.

If you join a company and they're not already using Angular 2+, good freagin luck.

You can say that about any library; it has nothing to do with the popularity, support or quality of the particular dependency. If the technical decision makers choose not to use something you like then you won't get to use it.

This is one of the key reasons to climb your career ladder. If you climb high enough you get to be that decision maker.

>You can say that about any library; it has nothing to do with the popularity, support or quality of the particular dependency. If the technical decision makers choose not to use something you like then you won't get to use it.

The "technical decision makers" though has very much to do with the "popularity, support or quality of the particular dependency".

If a dependency is popular then more technical decision makers at more companies will be using it, and the more choices one that likes/wants to work with it has for a job.

>This is one of the key reasons to climb your career ladder. If you climb high enough you get to be that decision maker.

Which will make the point moot, as they wont be the one coding using the technology anymore.

Example: a company is using Angular 1 today and looking to modernize their stack. You have been hired, and one of your first tasks is to pick a new framework and convince the rest of the team that it's the best choice. You're thinking about the following options:

1) React 2) Vue 3) Angular 2+ 4) Aurelia

If your preference is 1) or 2), it shouldn't be too difficult, even though it means a complete rewrite or building in-house adapters to migrate gradually. If it's 3), even though similar adapters exist, good luck convincing anyone. If it's 4, you're basically dreaming.

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