from Hacker News

JavaScript frameworks and topics to learn in 2017

by kp25 on 12/18/16, 4:38 AM with 114 comments

  • by dictum on 12/18/16, 11:32 AM

    > Webpack: The most popular bundler for standard JavaScript look for simple starter kit/boilerplate config examples to get things running fast

    Unless you're already familiar with a tool, I'd suggest starting with the very Hello, world basics.

    For Webpack, that's creating an empty project and incrementally adding config, starting with just an entry point (use a simple script importing some modules) and an output filename. Add one loader/plugin at a time. Move into boilerplates once you're familiar with the basic concepts.

    (I wish more projects had a Concepts page like Webpack now has: https://webpack.js.org/concepts/)

    A boilerplate is another person's code, and while it's good to avoid NIH, unless it's superbly documented, it contains tricks and workarounds that only cloud real understanding.

    ---

    Eric wisely started the article with JavaScript & DOM Fundamentals. For people like me, who were familiar with pre-ES6 JS but weren't actively writing JS lately, the basics themselves have changed a bit.

  • by eranation on 12/18/16, 5:19 AM

    Learn programming, not just frameworks. Frameworks will come and go, but the core programming concepts (good design, algorithms, cleanliness, simplicity, data structures, architecture) will tend to stay relevant longer. Learn the principles of Reactive Programming, not just RXJs, learn the philosophy of Redux, not just its syntax. You won't be able to keep up with it otherwise. Source: a guy who was an actionscript guru 15 years ago.

  • by fenomas on 12/18/16, 1:28 PM

    > Learn [Vue.js] after you have learned React or Angular.

    Hugely disagree with this. I really like Vue - but in my (very limited) experience, its appeal is that even though it's not as powerful or flexible as React or Angular it's way easier to learn and get moving with. Fewer new concepts, less new tooling, no ecosystem of related stuff to consider, etc.

    I'd have suggested learning Vue first, and sticking with it until you outgrow it. If you start with Ng/Rx, and get to where you're comfortable and have a tooling/workflow around them that works for you, then sure you could still learn Vue afterwards but I'm not sure what it gets you.

  • by moxious on 12/18/16, 5:02 AM

    Yeesh. In fairness it's a fine list, but you can be an excellent JavaScript developer and know less than one third of what's on that list. Ambitious JS lifers maybe can get to most of that, but for people who value some breadth of knowledge across tech, I'm not sure even pursuing such a list is a good idea.

  • by daenney on 12/18/16, 7:07 PM

    > Node lets you use JavaScript on the server, meaning your users can store data in the cloud and access it anywhere.

    I don't see how using Node server-side has anything at all to do with user's capability to store data in the cloud.

  • by alistproducer2 on 12/18/16, 7:55 PM

    My 2 cents. I would consider myself a JS expert as I have writen AngularJS and RequireJS clones. Personally, I don't agree with the path that OS JS dev has gone in recent years. The reliance on build systems and transpilers are fundamentally anathema to the spirit of simplicity and low barrier to entry that attracted me to the language and ecosystem inn the first place.

    I understand that as we have moved from web pages to web apps the increase in complexity was inevitable, but I question a lot of the tools being used now. For one thing, once we moved to creating full applications using JS, one of the concerns that tooling moved to address was maintainability. This is why MV* caught on and destroyed JQuery as a viable option for many projects. That being said, Angular pretty quickly swapped one kind of maintainability problem (refactorability) for another (over-abstraction and cyclomatic complexity).

    As for the dev tooling (webpack and company), one of the reason I avoid a lot of them is in my experience they can get in the way of maintainability. For example, I recently tried to pick up a 3 month old project in Android Studio and it took me around 3 hours just to get it to compile again because of updates and other tooling complexity. This NEVER happened using Eclipse. The same thing is happening and will happen when the apps being built today get dumped on some poor sod 3-5 years from now.

    Lastly, an example from my job. I was recently asked to update the verbiage on a sign in form built ~13 years ago. The devs decided to use some java framework that had buzz at the time named JATO. Jato literally doesn't exist anymore and building it is basically impossible. This is to say nothing of modifying it as all documentation has literally disappeared from the web. The devs picked JATO b/c they thought it would be easier to modify and maintain. Exactly the opposite has happened. They could easily have written the form (literally two input boxes and a submit) using plain JSP. If they had, that code would still be useful today.

  • by heavenlyhash on 12/18/16, 8:44 AM

    I want a javascript framework that allows me to update a page incrementally, but also always works correctly and contains full content from the first server-side page load.

    Are there any options for this? Are there even keywords I can search for that discuss this?

    Sure, this files under "anything is possible", but honestly, I'd like a javascript framework that doesn't actively fight me also having static content. Any of these libraries that put their document derivation logic front and center are ipso facto refusing to compose well with a simple static first page load that renders fast and then gains progressive enhancement from the JS.

  • by doomtop on 12/18/16, 5:31 PM

    Great list! But I was perplexed by the text editors mentioned. Author claims to be looking at trend data, but seems to have a bias against Subljme Text editor. I don't know if there is some connection to Atom or VSCode, but it seems easily verifiable that Sublime and vim are vastly more popular than other editors mentioned, yet Sublime is inexplicably absent and vim is mentioned last and sort of offhand as more of just a tool you have to know for ssh sessions.

  • by aeosynth on 12/18/16, 5:37 AM

    Is anyone using Tern as an annotations-free type checker?

  • by jaseemabid on 12/18/16, 6:49 PM

    The only issue with the blog post is that most of those tools will be obsolete before you finish reading.

    JavaScript as an ecosystem needs mature robust solutions rather than a new way to do things every other week.

  • by Kiro on 12/18/16, 10:03 AM

    I vote for React + MobX as the goto stack of 2017.

  • by andretti1977 on 12/18/16, 9:19 AM

    I must be honest, my experience with node was very short but this article suggests me that working with js may be really more complicated than working with java. Too many frameworks (which often lives too shortly), too many things to learn, it's overwhelming...sometimes it seems to me that working with js has become so difficult that working with java and jquery is still easier and better (i know lot of people will throw me hate for this comment!)

  • by andrew_wc_brown on 12/18/16, 5:42 AM

    MithrilJS. Such an underated js framework.

  • by ExpiredLink on 12/18/16, 12:12 PM

    Or wait another year and pick the winner of the JavaScript framework war. It's unlikely that we will see new and relevant(!) JS frameworks over the next few years as we have seen in the past. 20 - 25 years ago dozens of Windows frameworks appeared on the market. Eventually VB won. History is repeating itself.

  • by adamnemecek on 12/18/16, 6:07 PM

    You should check out cycle.js https://cycle.js.org. I'm always surprised it's not THE js framework du jour.

  • by ClayFerguson on 12/18/16, 11:57 PM

    TypeScript is definitely by far the most important thing mentioned in the article. And no I didn't even read the article. I just searched it for the word TypeScript to see what it said. However, the author apparently is pretty clueless because he implied TypeScript has something to do with Angular. It doesn't. TypeScript is needed ANY time the runtime is JavaScript. Namely, in the browser. The only other technology TypeScript has ANYTHING do to with is JavaScript itself.

  • by voltagex_ on 12/18/16, 11:55 AM

    Highly recommend spending at least a few hours on https://javascript30.com if you get a chance.

  • by jim_d on 12/19/16, 3:57 AM

    I'm curious what people think about type checkers in JS. I've been doing full stack development for the last few years and BE development before that. Type safety has always been worth it to me, we adopted Flow and haven't looked back, although some FE developers aren't big fans of it.

  • by macpete on 12/18/16, 10:52 AM

    Learn in order to unlearn one year later - welcome to .js !

  • by jgord on 12/18/16, 11:46 AM

    Agree Vue and mobx look promising ...

    I would say Ramda.js is most deserving of much wider adoption.

  • by catshirt on 12/18/16, 5:16 AM

    ugh- how is Angular so popular?

  • by na85 on 12/18/16, 1:44 PM

    I'm going to make my 2017 enjoyable by not working with JavaScript at all.

  • by enraged_camel on 12/18/16, 8:58 AM

    Half of the items on this list - basically, anything not under "JavaScript & DOM Fundamentals" - will probably be invalid by April 2017. :P

  • by FrancoDiaz on 12/18/16, 2:54 PM

    I'm looking for a React Admin/Dashboard template. There's various themes at https://wrapbootstrap.com/ but haven't been totally satisfied with the React offerings.

  • by d13 on 12/18/16, 1:30 PM

    The article recommends learning both pure functions AND closure? So is the point of learning to use closure is just so that you know why you should never use it?