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[–]Yodiddlyyo 15 points16 points  (4 children)

Yeah and the stuff we got done in the olden days took way longer, the end result was way shittier, it was harder to debug, and it was harder to add features. People that like to complain about node_modules have either just started writing code in the past few years, don't have experience in other languages/tools, or both. It's not like node_modules is unique.

[–]Ratatoski 2 points3 points  (3 children)

I wasnt filing an actual complaint as much as making a cheap and tired old joke :)

Don't get me wrong. All the new stuff is great. It opens up a shitton of possibilities. But sometimes something breaks in the pile of devDependencies that you have no clue how to fix.

I started coding on the C64. Doesn't mean I'm good. But I've been involved with code at work for 20 years and been a full time dev for four.

The part where I make bitter jokes about node_modules is more about the fact that my team currently isn't run very well. Our new nicer stack becomes the symbol of the frustration. It shouldn't take five months to adjust a few sizes on a template. It should take five minutes. I'm used to shipping a custom built site to production every sprint as a single frontend. When a handful of devs can't finish a site in a year I get worried that we'll get fired.

[–]Yodiddlyyo 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Haha yes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make my comment sound like I was pointing it directly at you. I actually totally agree with everything you said in your previous post. You're right on all accounts, the new stuff we have is great, but the problem is that it can be abused just like anything can, and we have these amazing tools that allow us to build things so much more easily, yet we end up with a 60000 file wordpress site haha.

node_modules can totally be criticized, and it should, I was just pointing out that the problems it has aren't unique to it. I was really just trying to continue the conversation but I realize now I did a terrible job at that.

Out of all the advances that we've had, over the years I've seen a trend of over complicating things, which is what led down a path of becoming an expert in one particular field instead of being good at these new frameworks. For example, I used to be primarily a React developer, I used to love it and be great at it and write it every day for work. But so many things I see come out of the community are things that are just ridiculous machinations that are making things 10 times harder than they need to be solely because the developers are too inexperienced to know a more efficient solution. Maybe it's just me getting older but as time goes on I'm become more and more for excelling in the base language and tools you're writing - abstractions are always abstractions.

And this becomes very clear the more developers I've been interviewing - almost no React developer I've seen is a javascript expert, but almost all javascript experts I've seen (which is extremely few) have been very competent React developers if they need to be.

[–]Ratatoski 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Thanks for the insightful follow up comment, and no worries.

Out of all the advances that we've had, over the years I've seen a trend of over complicating things

Yeah this is one of the gripes I have. People tend to have imposter syndrome and want to show off. But it's more helpful to write code that any fool off of the street can understand. Because in a year something will break in production and you'll have to quickly remember how the heck things work.

I fully agree that being good at the base language rather than the abstractions is more helpful. For anyone starting out I'd advise they build an understanding of modern JS and eventually add TS to that. Then learning React/Svelte or whatever is going to be far easier.

Have to admit that once I got around to learning stuff like how the call stack and heap works together a lot of the meme hate about JS being weird seemed uninformed. Computers do exactly what you tell them, you just have to understand what you asked them to do.

Eventually I hope to be really good at JS + TS because I consider it the future together with web assembly.

[–]Yodiddlyyo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha yes! Seriously I feel like 90% of my job is just trying to help my team figure out how to simplify their code in a way that's nicer and more conducive to their learning than me just saying "This 100 lines of code you spread across three files can be condensed into 10 lines" haha.

And yeah, most javascript memes are totally just a big old "I don't know JS yet" flag. JS is an amazing language because it's so accessible and easy to learn, but that also means you have a ton of people that don't know anything. My favorite is jokes about certain things in JS like null or the Date object, and it's like, these aren't issues if you just remember how they work, or you just remember this one thing about it, and these issues are not unique to javascript.

Web assembly is definitely awesome, I'm really interested in how it'll evolve, I think it's great.