Modern front-end development: skinny jeans and handlebar mustaches ITT

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Modern front-end development: skinny jeans and handlebar mustaches ITT

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Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

The issue with library code, especially as you get closer to UI code, is that you tend up with lots of stuff that doesn�t quite fit.

Library dependant code often ends up generating a lot of �making it work� code, that sometimes - depending on the scope of the library - actually ends up with code more confusing and constricted than if you just wrote the code you needed.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 09:35

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 20:23

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

Suspicious Dish posted:

i would rather work with a codebase written by people that know how to write left-pad by hand than people that include it as a dependency

I would like to work with people who could write all the code in libraries by hand, but realize that reinventing the wheel every day may not be as productive as using libraries and so they include them as dependencies where it's appropriate.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 16:56

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

One of the back-end guys was rolling around the office today after lunch clowning on the front end dudes working on another project about how front-end isn't real development.

He did this during the moments he was stepping away from his machine working on the java null pointer exception he'd been stuck on since 9:50am.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 20:54

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

I think the root of this behavior is the backend devs that do this are straight up terrified of JavaScript and it's ecosystem, and really hate the attention it gets.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 22:31

Geno: Apr 26, 2004; STUPID
DICK

Is it just me or are AngularJS docs not showing up in google search results?

When I search "angularjs docs input radio", I don't see the docs in the Google results but they show up just fine in Bing for me.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 22:35

Capri Sun Tzu: Oct 24, 2017; by Reene

Skandranon posted:

I think the root of this behavior is the backend devs that do this are straight up terrified of JavaScript and it's ecosystem, and really hate the attention it gets.

I also suspect backend guys are sometimes envious of the attention the front-end team gets for making things look cool

# ? Feb 8, 2018 22:37

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

Geno posted:

Is it just me or are AngularJS docs not showing up in google search results?

When I search "angularjs docs input radio", I don't see the docs in the Google results but they show up just fine in Bing for me.

I dunno but I know you should be dropping angularJS like a hot fuckin' rock unless you absolutely need it for work or something.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 22:48

huhu: Feb 24, 2006

Geno posted:

Is it just me or are AngularJS docs not showing up in google search results?

When I search "angularjs docs input radio", I don't see the docs in the Google results but they show up just fine in Bing for me.

Try incognito mode. If it works in incognito, Google is showing you the wrong priority for results.

# ? Feb 8, 2018 23:11

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

I mostly do backend nowadays with a smattering of frontend.

Some portion of backend people who are idiots about frontend dev work just don't like the fact that to the end-user the frontend is the product.

# ? Feb 9, 2018 00:18

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

Yeah. It is nice to see your changes represented in a user-oriented way. Front End gives pretty immediate human-focussed feedback.

# ? Feb 9, 2018 00:21

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

Capri Sun Tzu posted:

I also suspect backend guys are sometimes envious of the attention the front-end team gets for making things look cool

That's why I do both.

Skandranon posted:

I think the root of this behavior is the backend devs that do this are straight up terrified of JavaScript and it's ecosystem, and really hate the attention it gets.

Actually the way the npm ecosystem is designed terrifies me. The designers of NPM are that front-end developer that has no clue how relative / absolute paths work and copies all of the styles, js and images into every directory for easy access.

# ? Feb 9, 2018 02:04

Kobayashi: Aug 13, 2004; by Nyc_Tattoo

Just curious since I only tangentially follow Javscript developments, but is there any notion of a Javascript standard library?

# ? Feb 9, 2018 05:45

FormatAmerica: Jun 3, 2005; Grimey Drawer

It's getting better and if you have control over platforms to some extent (e.g. enterprise webapps) it's really not a concern day-to-day.

But no. Frameworks & libraries often either specifically or incidentally normalize browser behavior. Some are really lovely to work with - rxjs is far superior to other things in JavaScript used for async operations.

Also things like Angular, Node, React, Bootstrap/Material, etc all have design intent and prescriptions, some stronger than others.

FormatAmerica fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Feb 9, 2018

# ? Feb 9, 2018 05:54

prom candy: Dec 16, 2005; Only I may dance

If I was a back-end guy without really specialized knowledge I'd be sweating a bit. It's crazy how much we've replaced back-end systems that we used to handcraft with developer focused SaaS offerings. There's an API-first hosted solution for more and more stuff these days and it makes rolling out custom back end code for common problems really unattractive in comparison.

# ? Feb 9, 2018 06:26

darthbob88: Oct 13, 2011; YOSPOS

Kobayashi posted:

Just curious since I only tangentially follow Javscript developments, but is there any notion of a Javascript standard library?

To an extent, though this still runs into the usual issues with browser compatibility.

# ? Feb 9, 2018 07:40

teen phone cutie: Jun 18, 2012; last year i rewrote something awful from scratch because i hate myself

Having a really annoying issue that I can't figure out. I'm applying for this new job and they gave me a coding test which involves making a POST request to this endpoint.

The company told me "CORS is enabled. If you're having problems with fetch, try enabling a proxy in package.json, otherwise, just use jQuery."

Now, I've tried both and I still can't get it to work. I keep getting a no access allowed error

My package.json looks like this

code:

"proxy": "https://company.amazonaws.com/"

and my fetch request looks like this

code:

const headers = {
    'Accept': 'application/json'
}

const loginEndpoint = 'https://company.amazonaws.com/blah/foo';

export const login = (username, password) => {
    return fetch(loginEndpoint, {
        headers,
        method: 'POST',
        body: JSON.stringify({username: username, password: password})
    }).then(data => data.json());
}

I've tried looking at the network request and it looks like my requests are still coming from http://localhost:3000 despite setting up the proxy. Am I setting the proxy wrong?

HELP! I need this job.

# ? Feb 14, 2018 03:56

teen phone cutie: Jun 18, 2012; last year i rewrote something awful from scratch because i hate myself

Solved my issue. Needed to use http://localhost:3000 in my fetch request instead of the remote url

# ? Feb 14, 2018 04:09

Knifegrab: Jul 30, 2014; Gadzooks! I'm terrified of this little child who is going to stab me with a knife. I must wrest the knife away from his control and therefore gain the upperhand.

edit: Nevermind, it was weird behavior of filter applying to siblings. I mitigated.

Knifegrab fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Feb 15, 2018

# ? Feb 15, 2018 22:56

putin is a cunt: Apr 5, 2007; BOY DO I SURE ENJOY TRASH. THERE'S NOTHING MORE I LOVE THAN TO SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BIG SCREEN AND EAT A BIIIIG STEAMY BOWL OF SHIT. WARNER BROS CAN COME OVER TO MY HOUSE AND ASSFUCK MY MOM WHILE I WATCH AND I WOULD CERTIFY IT FRESH, NO QUESTION

Skandranon posted:

I think the root of this behavior is the backend devs that do this are straight up terrified of JavaScript and it's ecosystem, and really hate the attention it gets.

Capri Sun Tzu posted:

I also suspect backend guys are sometimes envious of the attention the front-end team gets for making things look cool

Maybe a small part of it is professional jealousy, but I think the obvious answer is the right one - they literally do believe that front-end is easy. They've likely never tried it and have no knowledge of the skill-sets involved or the challenges faced.

# ? Feb 15, 2018 23:13

Lumpy: Apr 26, 2002; La! La! La! Laaaa!; College Slice

a hot gujju bhabhi posted:

Maybe a small part of it is professional jealousy, but I think the obvious answer is the right one - they literally do believe that front-end is easy. They've likely never tried it and have no knowledge of the skill-sets involved or the challenges faced.

No matter where you go or who you talk to, a large number of people firmly believe �everything I don�t understand is easy�

# ? Feb 16, 2018 00:05

Nolgthorn: Jan 30, 2001; The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense

I've done front end and back end a lot, front end is easy if you're doing server rendering. Front end is massively more difficult than back end if you're doing client rendering. And more difficult than either of them is dev ops.

# ? Feb 16, 2018 00:41

prom candy: Dec 16, 2005; Only I may dance

There seem to constantly be articles getting passed around by people who have developing websites off and on for a decade or more complaining about how complex the tooling is for simple websites now. What they don't seem to understand is they're welcome to use 2008's toolchain, or 1998's toolchain, if all they want is 2008 or 1998 results. Expectations have changed.

Also yes devops is super difficult and I wish I was better at it. I've been trying to learn Docker off and on for like 2 years now.

# ? Feb 16, 2018 18:51

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Nolgthorn posted:

I've done front end and back end a lot, front end is easy if you're doing server rendering. Front end is massively more difficult than back end if you're doing client rendering. And more difficult than either of them is dev ops.

I've done a lot of frontend and backend and a modicum of devops-ish stuff.

They're all just difficult in different ways I couldn't say one was more difficult than the other.

# ? Feb 16, 2018 20:23

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

Nolgthorn posted:

I've done front end and back end a lot, front end is easy if you're doing server rendering. Front end is massively more difficult than back end if you're doing client rendering. And more difficult than either of them is dev ops.

I think the front-end gets a bit of a bad wrap of just being layout. I am full stack, but CSS outside of the basics. I've never done a responsive site and know better than to just throw the minimum number of points for a visual task.

I think it's misleading to say client-rendering means that front end is more difficult. If all you're doing is simple CRUD objects then transmogrifying them, then yes, JS can get more complex than some back end work. But if you're doing that, it may not be the best way.

In today's data setups, yes the final call might be a simple call to an endpoint, but that's on purpose. The data has been denormalized so that the REST call is as fast as possible. The amount of work behind the scenes to make that endpoint quickly and easily digestible can often be a complex process. We take a mixture of normalized and denormalized data and dump it into Redis / Solr so that the object that is returned is as simple as possible. Many of our operations have a TTI of < 200ms because of that backend work.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 03:57

Nolgthorn: Jan 30, 2001; The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense

I often hear controversy when I say client side is harder. Recently I did a sort of bare bones CMS, just markdown. But even with that you want to upload files. So what do you do, you don't want to put that on a different page really. So you end up negotiating popups, ajax file uploads, json injected into templates, delete, edit, if you have edit you may as well preview/edit text file contents too.

There you go that's a hundred lines of carefully engineered javascript. What had to be done on the server? Some rest routes. Use the database to store and update records, return json. The server stuff is simple comparatively.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 07:56

Vincent Valentine: Feb 28, 2006; Murdertime

The challenge of front-end versus back-end for me personally is that back-end problems are often extremely ambiguous. It's very, very easy for me to diagnose problems with front-end code. Right now, I have a back end challenge where the server shuts down the moment it starts up without so much as a whisper of an error. I have no idea why, nothing looks wrong. Nothing seems like it should be causing that behavior. No error catches are catching. Every time I make a change, I can't even tell if I just made things worse, or if it made things better but was only part of the puzzle so it's not clear as to whether or not I should keep the change. The last time this happened, it was because my database wasn't set up correctly and when the server tried to connect, it got upset and turned off. There was no indication this was the case, just a ton of trial and error.

Meanwhile, on the front-end side of things every error I get is significantly more clear as to what is causing it. Between chrome devtools, natural framework error reporting and even just good ole console log, I always have a pretty good idea right out of the gate as to what a problem is, and usually have a pretty good idea about where the error would be located. For UI this is especially easy, since you can visually see what the problem is which gives you an idea about what adjustments you need to make to resolve it.

Databases are super easy to deal with. Front-end tends to be rather pleasant to resolve, because there's so much information about how to fix problems. Server code frustrates me more than words can possibly say almost every time the smallest bug pops up.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 09:28

Tei: Feb 19, 2011; Can't post for 23 hours!

The thing of backend, for me, is that the server can run whatever you want. If you want to program in Prolog running in a Plan9 OS. Is your choice. You can't choose what browsers people can use, but you can choose the OS and OS version, what languages use serverside, what database engine or other type of technologies.

In the Browser you are using Javascript, In the Server you are using Whatever The Hell.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 10:11

geeves: Sep 16, 2004

Nolgthorn posted:

I often hear controversy when I say client side is harder. Recently I did a sort of bare bones CMS, just markdown. But even with that you want to upload files. So what do you do, you don't want to put that on a different page really. So you end up negotiating popups, ajax file uploads, json injected into templates, delete, edit, if you have edit you may as well preview/edit text file contents too.

There you go that's a hundred lines of carefully engineered javascript. What had to be done on the server? Some rest routes. Use the database to store and update records, return json. The server stuff is simple comparatively.

I run a full CRM / CMS SaaS as my job. I just led a small team to hack around TinyMCE to get Big4 social media to all play nice with the editor. In the end it was pretty simple, but it took us a couple of sprints to get it solid.

"The server stuff is simple comparatively." I hear you on that if all you're doing is CRUD, but I do think that's a little disingenuous at best when it comes to actually running a product for clients. Your business rules are not going to be handled client-side in the browser.

There's a lot of neat stuff that can happen on the server side - even with content. Machine Learning, NLP, Probability of how well your content will be perform based on previous articles your company has written and how they rank on Google and Bing, etc. and raw statistics. Is the article plagiarized? Are all of the links correct and returning 200, 301, 302, etc? Are the images you uploaded or embedded in your content found elsewhere on the web? Is the content spell-checked based on your company's custom dictionary? How do you handle revisions and diffs? What's the content's reading level and probable emotional impact?

Now you can write this all into one application, but it will never scale, even with mongo db :v:

Instead, you're dealing with several if not dozens of subsystems to handle 1000s of pieces of content going through a massive editorial process each day. The logic isn't necessarily easier,,, but it's getting smarter these days if you're architecting your systems right.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 16:17

lunar detritus: May 6, 2009

Google finally confirmed what everyone already knew: AngularJS is dead(-ish).

# ? Feb 17, 2018 18:15

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

gmq posted:

Google finally confirmed what everyone already knew: AngularJS is dead(-ish).

Soon will be the time to make bank charging stupid money to maintain/upgrade AngularJS apps.

# ? Feb 17, 2018 21:42

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Nolgthorn posted:

I often hear controversy when I say client side is harder. Recently I did a sort of bare bones CMS, just markdown. But even with that you want to upload files. So what do you do, you don't want to put that on a different page really. So you end up negotiating popups, ajax file uploads, json injected into templates, delete, edit, if you have edit you may as well preview/edit text file contents too.

There you go that's a hundred lines of carefully engineered javascript. What had to be done on the server? Some rest routes. Use the database to store and update records, return json. The server stuff is simple comparatively.

I feel like you're comparing the easy part of backend work to the complicated part of frontend work.

edit: I sounded snarkier than I intended.

Thermopyle fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Feb 17, 2018

# ? Feb 17, 2018 21:46

Nolgthorn: Jan 30, 2001; The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense

You also need the CSS to hold it together, for it to work across devices. If you're doing modern front end then you need to know a myriad of tools including compilers, bundlers, frameworks. I just can't think of any project I've worked on where the server was more complicated than the client.

I differentiate between dev ops and server side work though, so that may be where a lot of disagreement comes from. Dev ops is hard.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 04:16

Maluco Marinero: Jan 18, 2001; Damn that's a
fine elephant.

Nolgthorn posted:

You also need the CSS to hold it together, for it to work across devices. If you're doing modern front end then you need to know a myriad of tools including compilers, bundlers, frameworks. I just can't think of any project I've worked on where the server was more complicated than the client.

I differentiate between dev ops and server side work though, so that may be where a lot of disagreement comes from. Dev ops is hard.

I do lots of complex front end so front end is hard.

I do mostly simple back end so back end is easy.

Back end can get complex just as much as you can simplify front end. Front end isn�t inherently complex, we made it complex, sometimes ignorant of simpler ways to achieve the same result.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 07:18

prom candy: Dec 16, 2005; Only I may dance

geeves posted:

I run a full CRM / CMS SaaS as my job. I just led a small team to hack around TinyMCE to get Big4 social media to all play nice with the editor. In the end it was pretty simple, but it took us a couple of sprints to get it solid.

"The server stuff is simple comparatively." I hear you on that if all you're doing is CRUD, but I do think that's a little disingenuous at best when it comes to actually running a product for clients. Your business rules are not going to be handled client-side in the browser.

There's a lot of neat stuff that can happen on the server side - even with content. Machine Learning, NLP, Probability of how well your content will be perform based on previous articles your company has written and how they rank on Google and Bing, etc. and raw statistics. Is the article plagiarized? Are all of the links correct and returning 200, 301, 302, etc? Are the images you uploaded or embedded in your content found elsewhere on the web? Is the content spell-checked based on your company's custom dictionary? How do you handle revisions and diffs? What's the content's reading level and probable emotional impact?

Now you can write this all into one application, but it will never scale, even with mongo db

Instead, you're dealing with several if not dozens of subsystems to handle 1000s of pieces of content going through a massive editorial process each day. The logic isn't necessarily easier,,, but it's getting smarter these days if you're architecting your systems right.

What product is this, that feature set sounds amazing.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 07:19

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

gmq posted:

Google finally confirmed what everyone already knew: AngularJS is dead(-ish).

Its still going to take years for angularJS to move out of the ecosystem purely because there's still going to be applications in development that are using it. A lot of newer projects are moving on to angular2 but yeah, you'll see jobs posted with angularJS for a few years to come.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 08:37

HaB: Jan 5, 2001; What are the odds?

Ape Fist posted:

Its still going to take years for angularJS to move out of the ecosystem purely because there's still going to be applications in development that are using it. A lot of newer projects are moving on to angular2 but yeah, you'll see jobs posted with angularJS for a few years to come.

And unless it's an ng1 -> ng2 upgrade job as a cash grab like Skandranon said, any dev would be a fool to take one of those jobs.

Wondering if this will force my previous shop to finally update their toolset. Knowing the level of megalomaniac the guy in charge is, probably not.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 17:48

Rubellavator: Aug 16, 2007

gmq posted:

Google finally confirmed what everyone already knew: AngularJS is dead(-ish).

Hilariously, our current modernization effort is moving everything away from JSF to AngularJS.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 18:00

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

Rubellavator posted:

Hilariously, our current modernization effort is moving everything away from JSF to AngularJS.

There's probably no way you're going to convince anyone to change but for the love of god try to get them to move to Angular 2.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 22:21

lunar detritus: May 6, 2009

Ape Fist posted:

There's probably no way you're going to convince anyone to change but for the love of god try to get them to move to Angular 2.

Or Vue, which is much more friendly to hydrating server-rendered views.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 22:23

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# ? Jun 8, 2024 20:23

Ape Fist: Feb 23, 2007; Nowadays, you can do anything that you want; anal, oral, fisting, but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

Yeah, hell, even Vue. I think they might be a bit sketchy about taking on Vue though because of its lack of market share. Angular 2 will just be an easier sell.

# ? Feb 18, 2018 23:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Modern front-end development: skinny jeans and handlebar mustaches ITT

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