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0 pointstptacek7y ago0 comments

If you've invested the time to derive a first-principles understanding of why every element in a React environment works the way it does, and what the alternatives are, and why you're going to use any given alternative, I can understand being irritated with the idea that there's a happy path that people can traverse to get to your level of productivity with 1/50th the amount of effort.

What I don't really get is the reason why their work is going to be less professional and effective than yours will be; among other things, they're much less likely to pointlessly reinvent wheels.

Really, the critique you're delivering applies only to a couple of the points I'm making, and, subtextually, it really applies primarily to the use of CSS/React frameworks like Bootstrap and Material and Foundation and Grommet. I think an ordinary developer can throw a dart to pick any of those frameworks and end up with better, less-janky, more usable UI than they would get by DIY'ing it first (and, inevitably, adopting a framework anyways).

It's a weird quirk of web development, not shared by any of the other kinds of front end development I've been exposed to in the ~22 years I've been shipping code, that "pro" UI has to be done from scratch. WinAPI and OSX developers get UI toolkits from the platform vendor, and while you might work outside those toolkits for some custom stuff, eschewing it entirely will get you looked at funny.

But use a decent UI toolkit on the web and you're "just gluing third party components together".

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8 comments · 3 top-level

commandlinefan7y ago· 2 in thread

> there’s a happy path

The problem is that (if there really is such a happy path) it’s different for every person, dependent on that person’s previous experience, and impossible to determine until you know all the other stuff. You don’t know what you don’t know, and somebody who’s advising you ALSO doesn’t know what you don’t know.

I’ve tried, over and over again, to “just do it” instead of taking things slowly and deliberately (especially because I always have a boss breathing down my neck to “get it done already”) and I always run into completely inexplicable stack traces that Google and StackOverflow can’t help me with. (Or is it just me?). However, when I finally bite the bullet and take the “hit” for the lost productivity spent reading the documentation, working through smaller, simpler examples before building up to the “real” production application, everything is clear, the stack traces make sense, and the application works like it should. The only problem is having to account to the merciless time tracking system for the week or two that I “wasted” on something as trivial as “learning”.

afarrell7y ago

I, too, need to understand how the things I’m using work before I am able to use them efficiently.

commandlinefan7y ago

Whew, I thought I was just crazy.

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statictype7y ago· 2 in thread

Its not so much about re-inventing the wheel but more about understanding how the underlying system actually works.

So yes, go ahead and use a framework if that helps but when your UI Designer gives you something that doesnt neatly fit into a framework component you need to know enough to implement it yourself right?

Also - understanding how it actually works also helps when the JS community rallies around the next big thing 6 months down the road. I still find a lot of devs who cant do basic DOM manipulation without pulling in a jquery dependency.

I’m by no means a full time UI/front end dev - I do it when I have to. Over the years as css has improved and my understanding has improved I find myself less inclined to use a framework because doing it yourself isnt difficult and you’re not stuck fixing bugs and issues in the underlying framework and fighting against it to do whatever weird thing your design requires.

tptacekOP7y ago

I don't know if "difficult" is the word I would use. Is a mail merge in Microsoft Word "difficult"? I think probably not. But it would still take me longer to get a mail merge working in Office than it would for me to implement and test a topological sort or a breadth-first graph traversal. That's approximately how I feel about the level of difficulty involved in DIY-ing CSS and layout. I could get really good at it, I'm sure --- but why would I? Other people got these details right already, and did a better job of it than I would (it was, at the time, the most important thing they worked on, and a perfectly laid-out button or sidebar is always going to be very far down the list of most important thing I work on).

Honestly --- and this isn't fair but I am just being candid about my impressions --- the pushback I see to relying on frameworks reads to me as a combination of specialist front-end people feeling threatened and of dilettante developers being irritated that something might be invented somewhere other than here. But if you're using React at all, hasn't that ship sailed? Oh, wait, there are like 10 bespoke vdom JS frameworks now, so I guess it hasn't.

Buttons, sidebar, grid systems, and vdom libraries are commodities to me. I think they are and should be commodities to 80-90+% of all applications that get built anywhere. Build an online pharmacy or trading position and inventory tracker or continuous integration system or CDN console and I guarantee you that nobody who pays money for it will give a shit whether your buttons came from Foundation or you lovingly handcrafted them yourself.

statictype7y ago

I dont disagree with you.

I guess you’re coming at this from “I need to put this together and it needs to look decent.”

I’m coming at this from “here are the psds from our design team - go implement that”

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csomar7y ago· 1 in thread

> It's a weird quirk of web development, not shared by any of the other kinds of front end development I've been exposed to in the ~22 years I've been shipping code, that "pro" UI has to be done from scratch.

Back in the 2004-2008 these frameworks were not well maintained and their coverage (the amount of elements/styles) they have was very small. They also were, uh, pretty ugly. I think that what made my opinion about them at the time.

But things have changed. Bootstrap now is well used, maintained and you can purchase professional styles for it.

tptacekOP7y ago

For (on a limb here) ~80% of all applications built professionally, making it look better or even just different from the default Bootstrap look-and-feel is a waste of time and money. Users don't care.

There are applications where they do care. The pathology is, people who talk about UI development online act as if the ratio were reversed, and that not looking like stock Bootstrap should be a top-of-mind concern for people building random business applications.

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8 comments · 3 top-level

commandlinefan7y ago· 2 in thread

> there’s a happy path

afarrell7y ago

I, too, need to understand how the things I’m using work before I am able to use them efficiently.

commandlinefan7y ago

Whew, I thought I was just crazy.

1 more reply

statictype7y ago· 2 in thread

Its not so much about re-inventing the wheel but more about understanding how the underlying system actually works.

tptacekOP7y ago

statictype7y ago

I dont disagree with you.

I guess you’re coming at this from “I need to put this together and it needs to look decent.”

I’m coming at this from “here are the psds from our design team - go implement that”

1 more reply

csomar7y ago· 1 in thread

But things have changed. Bootstrap now is well used, maintained and you can purchase professional styles for it.

tptacekOP7y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse