Don’t Build a General Purpose API to Power Your Own Front End (2021)

Re:Don’t Build a General Purpose API to Power Your Own Front... by ggregoire on Sunday August 20, 2023 @03:34PM (#37202249)

I feel like frontend complexity is just a meme on HN to be honest. If you have a decent background in software engineering, some basic knowledge of HTML/JS and picked a good framework like React (which celebrated its 10 years 3 months ago), you are set for frontend development. I can't remember the last time I had to learn something new in this field or had to update my stack. Maybe like 4 years ago when React released hooks? And switching from webpack to vite.js (which magically builds everything for you) like 2 years ago? Then you deploy your app in a S3 bucket and the job is done.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don’t Build a General Purpose API to Power Your Own Front... by d357r0y3r on Sunday August 20, 2023 @04:17PM (#37202574)

Yeah, it's this.

It's not that tough to keep up with FE. React has been dominant for closing in on 10 years now. ~2015 was probably peak framework fatigue. If you left the industry in 2016 and came back now, you could probably get productive and you would even recognize a lot of the tools.

The HN meme is that "Well ackshually you could build Figma with ASP.NET Forms, just like we used to do back in my day." That just doesn't resonate with anyone doing the work day to day because applications themselves (not necessarily the front-end tech) have a much higher bar today.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don’t Build a General Purpose API to Power Your Own Front... by ern on Sunday August 20, 2023 @08:27PM (#37204245)

How complicated is it to learn a framework like React (which celebrated its 10 years 3 months ago) if you have a background in software engineering and some basic knowledge of HTML/JS? Like an afternoon to read the doc? 3 days to practice and be totally fluent? I managed graphic designers who knew nothing about computers but were able to learn React and be very productive.

The idea that React 10 years ago is the same as React today seems to be highly oversimplified. React was simple, then hooks were added, and state management fads that turned something simple and intuitive into an IQ signalling exercise. At least that was the case when I switched to back-end only dev a couple of years ago. And of course other parts of the stack also keep evolving: TypeScript (which is probably a positive, but again, I know people who do bizarre things with the language to build their "nerd cred").

Off the top of my head there was also Grunt/Gulp/Webpack/whatever is around now. NPM-Yarn->NPM. Angularjs->Angular 2.0+.

How many different CSS positioning methods are there? (that's what led me to leaving front-end, I was expected to do a pixel-perfect rendering of a design for a time-critical back-office app for some reason).

[ Parent | on HN ]