[scottmf]

Funny, but it's not quite that complex.

How about "Here's a link to a CLI utility or git repo which will give you a working project in 2-3 hours"?

I took a break from web dev for some years and had barely used any JS frameworks besides jQuery, until June, when I began working on an ambitious project and quickly got up to speed with the state of JS.

I'm using React/Redux/Sagas/Webpack/etc. for the client, and Express (with ES6 and what have you) for the API.

Developing with these new technologies has been a delight, especially compared to hacking bits of jQuery together.

Sure I've had to learn a lot of new concepts, particularly after being away from this world for so long, but this has always felt like a continual learning process to me.

We are the early adopters, the cutting-edge types. If you want to work with aging technologies there are plenty of companies invested in them.

Otherwise you can learn React in a few hours. What's the big deal?

[stoikerty]

Here's a link to a CLI utility which will give you a working project in a matter of minutes.

https://github.com/stoikerty/dev-toolkit

It does depend what perspective you're looking at it from. I appreciate it generates awareness about a current state of affairs for newcomers. But it's always easier to complain about something that to grind your teeth on it and learn, research and develop. The latter, although more painful, is a driving force forward.

Help > Complain

[mattmanser]

Funny, but it's not quite that complex.

I'm using React/Redux/Sagas/Webpack/etc. for the client, and Express (with ES6 and what have you)

Funny, but that sounds like the very definition of complex.

I particularly love the "etc." and "what have you" because your stack is so complex you can't even be bothered to type them all out.

[scottmf]

I don't see it as too different from "I'm using Rails, ActiveRecord, Sprockets, Ruby 2, CoffeeScript, etc".

Which stack do you prefer to use?

[mattmanser]

Why would you need to say you're using ActiveRecord or Ruby if you said you're using Rails? You've missed the point of the article.

Also, will everyone decide in 6 months times that, hmmm, you know what Ruby sucks and we should all start using BooRuubie next year instead?

Because I guarantee at the absolute minimum one of the technologies you mentioned will be out of favour this time next year.

Also, I can practically guarantee in a year's time when you come to do some maintenance work on that project and there's a bug and you google it, the code you find will be incompatible with what you've built.

Or someone new comes to setup the project and is googling about the config for something you mentioned, the article will be utterly wrong and will spend days just getting the damn thing to run.

[scottmf]

>Why would you need to say you're using ActiveRecord or Ruby if you said you're using Rails?

Exactly. "Rails" implies all of those other components. That's my point.

And your stack is relevant. I'm curious what simple stack you use, and how much more simple it is.

[pauljaworski]

You didn't answer his question. What stack do you prefer to use?

[mattmanser]

Purposefully, as it's utterly irrelevant to the discussion on whether a stack is complex or not.

[pauljaworski]

It is absolutely relevant, since you're criticising his stack. Even if it wasn't, you could still reply, but for some reason you won't. Hmm...

[reitanqild]

JavaEE? Or spring boot?

[lucb1e]

> which will give you a working project in 2-3 hours

> you can learn React in a few hours. What's the big deal?

Assuming we are still using the same example (filling a table with some data and filtering it), I think 2-3 hours is a good example of how long it takes to write that in plain Javascript and testing it on every browser back to IE6 while having lunch in between.

[erelde]

Funny, I actually had that last year in a 2 hours midyear exam, access to Internet authorized. I was the only one to complete the exam and had the best mark, didn't use internet, just my own code lying around my pc, finished in half an hour, vanilla js/php LAMP.

But many of my class couldn't do it.

[scottmf]

For sure, but the time spent learning React would provide value for all his future projects too.

I'd probably use React for a project that simple, particularly if it needed to be maintained and expanded by others.

[pauljaworski]

Agreed. I started a new project a few months ago, and if I had listened to the advice in the threads that have popped up around this whiny article, I would have had to refactor my codebase 6 times already by "adding the stuff I need."

I made a decision from the start to use React, Redux, and Webpack with ES6/Babel. There was a bit of a learning curve, but I couldn't be happier using those tools. Recently I started adding Immutable, and I wish I had done so from the start.

I've tried adding Flow and Typescript to the project, and it's a major pain in the ass to do it now. I would have done it from the start, but I made the mistake of listening to some of those voices going on about "unnecessary complexity" and left it out.

I'd like to invite all the people saying to start a project in Vanilla JS or jQuery to do so, and let me know how it's going when you've got 15k lines of code and you want to refactor your app to use some of those complex tools.