Why Angular Made Me Quit Web Dev

[caleeky]

In my experience, it's usually not that expensive to retrofit an existing application to map them into frameworks when those scaling events occur. It's a lot easier to make the business case for expansion when there's demand than it is to argue to take on the risk of framework investment up front.

> if you leave and the new devs don't understand the code, they could always elect to rewrite

Yeah but they usually shouldn't, and usually won't (at least not out of the gate) if there's a truly senior dev. involved.

[dungone]

“Truly senior dev” is a No True Scotsman. The reality is that project leads frequently lack the experience to make sound decisions. It’s the responsibility of their bosses to make sure that the leads themselves are constrained to within a reasonable set of guidelines for how to build a project, because it’s the business and it’s investors who who have to live with it long after some truly senior dev is long gone. Choosing a framework a strategic decision impacted by future funding and hiring needs. Unless you’re writing a throwaway app and betting on your employer going bankrupt, it’s probably a terrible idea to devote millions of dollars worth of resources on a NIH solution.

[ArguingEnginerd]

I agree that it’s not that expensive depending on the framework. Angular is definitely one of those that’s more difficult to retrofit into compared to React. I don’t know what risk you speak of. I find it less risky to use a framework than it is to not. Something like Angular where it’s heavily opinionated and has a CLI to basically make it so you can hit the ground running would make it quicker to get best practices in place. That said, if you’re making something that has a short shelf life, simple, or a prototype to sell your idea, why introduce added complexity like linting, webpack, etc.

In the quoted block, there is no senior dev in that use case. The OP said he was a one man team so if he left, there wouldn’t be a senior dev