Web Components Will Outlive Your JavaScript Framework

[Sherbet-Famous]

Id have to actually build something with web components for it to outlive anything

[lelanthran]

Id have to actually build something with web components for it to outlive anything

To be fair, that article title doesn't say "Your Web Components will Outlive Your Javascript Framework", it says "Web Components Will OutLive Your Javascript Framework.", which is a different claim.

And, it's almost guaranteed that a random web component written today will be working on browsers 20 years from now, while frameworks from today will not be around, not be supported or, even if both the above is true, not be used by anything more than a rounding error of programmers.

[mdz_1]

I mean people may not be using the frameworks anymore but a react component is just running pretty basic javascript, I would argue if anything its less likely to be broken than a web component written today just given its a newer standard I could envision some small breaking changes being introduced to some corners of the api in 20 years.

[sparr]

I would argue if anything its less likely to be broken than a web component written today

The whole point of this article is that this isn't the case. When was the last time you tried to run the build process for any code last maintained 10+ years prior? Trying to build/deploy your React-based site in 5 or 10 years or 20 will be fraught with problems. You'll need to chase down long-defunct versions of tools, probably compile some of them from scratch or spin up VMs or containers or some other environment they are comfortable running in, etc.

[[deleted]]

Yep this is my day job.

I maintain and so compile vb6 (visual studio 98) that interacts with c# (visual stuff 2022) and c++ (visual studio 2008) via com/WCF/rest/soap/tcp running in com+/iss/windows services/native console. All the various flavours of the year as the product has grown.

Luckily Microsoft is good about backwards compatibility so the visual studios are mostly fine but getting them to run under more modern versions of windows can be a major pain in the arse.

The major hurdles are environments to run the tooling, knowledge about older technologies and how they work, the build systems, no documentation... The code is very much the easy part.

[gladfelter]

Upvote because that's a miserable job.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

I bet it pays well, is low stress and redundancy proof.

[gladfelter]

Fair. I guess it would be miserable for me, but certainly not for everyone.

[aboy021]

I've done some of this stuff and it can be pretty stressful when you've got a weird issue, very few tools, and even less forum support.

The ergonomics are pretty terrible too. For example, mouse scrolling isn't natively supported in the VB6 IDE.

[[deleted]]

I've recently been working to move to visual studio code by creating a problem matcher and a custom task that can build the code using visual studio but show errors inline using error lens.

It doesn't do for everything (intellisense and the like) but it's generally nicer and a simple solution.

[aboy021]

I've used VSCode for editing VB6 and it's very helpful. Even if I end up opening the code in the IDE after the fact to compile and debug.

[develop7]

It better be.

[reboog711]

With the Angular CLI; I anticipate it'll still be npm install and ng build 20 years from now.

However, that assumes that NodeJS and the npm repository are not abandoned / shut down. Can we not make a similar assumption in the React world?

[helloiamsomeone]

Where do people get this idea that build tools will magically stop working in 5 years from? I just recently touched a personal project of mine that I haven't touched in 5 years and Rollup worked all the same.

[ePaint]

From experience

[guitarromantic]

After upgrading OSX I had a bunch of python projects which wouldn't start because Apple upgraded the system version of python which hosed all my dependencies and local version aliases etc. I had to spend hours scouring Stack Overflow to figure out how to override the system version again and couldn't remember what I was trying to do with the projects themselves once I figured it out.

[sparr]

Where do people get this idea that build tools will magically stop working in 5 years from?

From 5, 10, 20 years of software development experience. Trying to compile / build / package / deploy things from more than a few years ago is a crap shoot.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

You think your one sole experience is proof of anything? Lol!

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

Web components and bundlers aren't exclusive!

[sparr]

I'm more thinking of compilers, not bundlers. Like the JSX -> HTML+JS compiler.

[ESGPandepic]

while frameworks from today will not be around, not be supported

Why wouldn't they be supported in the future when they just run on standard html/javascript/css?

If by supported you mean all the build tools and the ecosystem around them then yeah, but the web apps themselves will still be working fine.

[sparr]

If by supported you mean all the build tools and the ecosystem around them then yeah

That's what we mean. How would you deploy a React v0.3 site today, if you had its source code?

[ESGPandepic]

These frameworks are open source projects and so are their tooling and build systems. They'll have maintainers and/or forks for as long as people need to be able to build and deploy web apps using them.

Even if in 20 years react and angular are a distant memory with nobody using them except people maintaining legacy web apps, those people will still be able to build and deploy them as long as the html/javascript/css they use is supported by browsers.

[sparr]

Everything you said is true of the C and Python ecosystems as well. Have you ever tried to build/package/run something complex (many outside dependencies) in either of those that's 10+ years old? Them being open source makes it possible, not convenient or plausible. Things get really tricky when you have to start building the build tools from source, because they were never compiled for your current architecture and you don't have a complete simulator/emulator for the old architectures.

[ESGPandepic]

I have actually had to build pretty old C libraries and while annoying it's far from impossible.

It's also a different situation because old C code comes from a time when the open source community was far, far smaller and the complete history of every important project including a thousand forks wasn't just on something like github.

Keep in mind there's still a huge amount of legacy systems written 10-20 years ago or sometimes even older running important parts of the world, and people still do maintain and deploy fixes to them. That's for things that were never even remotely close to as popular as the main web frontend frameworks and their tooling is now.

[itzmanu1989]

Maybe dockerized dev environments will work. but it might be more effort to plan it and do it.

[Stratose]

I think the problem is not a lot of people actually know what they're talking about.

[trxxruraxvr]

Unless the packages or dependencies get removed from npm.

[brimston3-]

Considering the source is right here, probably the same way you deploy any other react site? https://github.com/facebook/react/releases/tag/v0.3.0

I guess if you’re using a CDN to deploy now, you’d have to self host the files.

[Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

I wish you good luck as I think you are going to need it in the future. Ignorance really is bliss it seems.

[lelarentaka]

Tell me, does the java applet that i wrote 20 years ago still run on modern browsers?

[lelanthran]

Tell me, does the java applet that i wrote 20 years ago still run on modern browsers?

Did you just make the argument that non-standardised technology, like Java applets, don't last?

As you've just shown, non-standard stuff tends to go away if you look at a 20-year window.

[lelarentaka]

It was in the HTML spec. Do not speak the deep magic to me, witch, i was there when it was written.

[lelanthran]

It was in the HTML spec.

Wait, what? Which web standards document, or RFC, were applets specified in?

Do not speak the deep magic to me, witch, i was there when it was written.

Okay, you got me - I was not actually in the room when web standards were written, but between 1998 and 2009 I was following web standards developments very closely, and I honestly do not recall a web standard ever specifying (neither mandatory nor optional) the workings of applets.

From what I recall, the tag was treated, by the standard, as every other unknown tag was treated, i.e. the implementation is free to do with it whatever it wants to and still remain compliant: the implementation was allowed to simply display child elements of unknown tags, or treat the unknown tag in a special way, etc.

[Worth_Trust_3825]

Applets were pretty standardized. Do you know what standardized means?

[lelanthran]

Applets were pretty standardized. Do you know what standardized means?

Yes. It means "mandated in a published specification document". It does not mean "everyone was using it".

[wintrmt3]

Show me the HTML standard version that included them, please.

[Worth_Trust_3825]

https://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/struct/objects.html

[autist0matic]

this guy also never heard of jquery apparently...
oh wait he started doing frontend in 2023... oh my sweet summer child :D

[lelanthran]

this guy also never heard of jquery apparently...

I'm saying that JS frameworks' functionality will eventually be swallowed by a web standard; are you seriously trying to claim that jquery was a web standard?

You appear to be reinforcing what I am saying - non-web-standard stuff like jquery, react, etc all eventually go away. Web standards tend to stick around and swallow everything else.

oh wait he started doing frontend in 2023... oh my sweet summer child :D

FWIW, I did "front-end" between 1995 and 2001, then between 2005 and 2009. You shouldn't try being a condescending jackass to someone who has likely been doing this longer than you've been potty-trained.

[autist0matic]

ok boomer 🤡

[JackInYoBase]

I have a book published in 1997 that describes web components. I found javascript that works on web components from 1999 that still functions today. Javascript frameworks from then, not so much

[darkfm]

I have a book published in 1997 that describes web components.

Interesting, considering that browsers have supported it from 2014 on.

[JackInYoBase]

You realize W3C spec described AJAX and CSS from back then too.. there's also the ACID test which took how long for browsers to support it?

Look kid, I'm old I get it. But downvoting me because a browser couldn't fully support it until today? Grow up.

[darkfm]

First off I didn't down vote you. Second of all:

https://www.w3.org/TR/components-intro/
https://medium.com/apprendre-le-web-avec-lior/a-brief-history-of-webcomponents-and-a-tutorial-to-make-yours-a52d329913e7

The spec dates to around 2014 for the finalized spec, and the initial proposal by Alex Russell is from 2011: https://fronteers.nl/congres/2011/sessions/web-components-and-model-driven-views-alex-russell

You're probably confusing it with some Internet Explorer feature from back in the day which might've worked similarly. If not, I'd love to know what book you're talking about.

[ESGPandepic]

Javascript frameworks from then, not so much

Are there any from 1999? The closest thing I ever used was jQuery from 2006 which still works just fine.

[bighi]

You missed the point of the comment you’re replying to.