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by heckanoobs 2988 days ago
I think there is a lot of tribalism in the js community and liking one framework (often the one you use for work) is synonymous with hating the others. Take this survey done where the people who have "heard of Ember and would NOT use it" is completely outsized with the rest of the data. (https://stateofjs.com/2017/front-end/results/)

I've been developing professionally for 15 years and even in that short a time I've had to frequently start fresh in new frameworks or languages as the old ones lost their edge. The concept that someone would all-caps "NOT" use something is hilariously junior to me because the sands _will_ shift and you _will_ one day face the cliff of: my existing skills have no job demand, do I learn new skills or change profession? Harboring tribalism toward frameworks will not help you make the right decision in times like these.

3 comments

>I think there is a lot of tribalism in the js community and liking one framework (often the one you use for work) is synonymous with hating the others.

As in nature in general, it helps, from an evolutionary standpoint.

Having too many, and letting them all be, instead of people rooting for their favorite and having one or two emerge as the leaders, leads to dispersion of resources, confusion for newcomers, and multiple weaker implementations of the same thing...

Even if the emergent leader is not the best, the mere fact of it having eclipsed the others, means tons of work, libs, documentation, books, support etc will be concentrated towards it.

And it's better to have one leading framework that's 3/5 good with huge community and support, than a 5/5 good framework with lackluster community and support.

There's no reason you can't have a 5/5 framework with huge community and support.

Tribalism leads to choosing between two hobbled solutions because it closes the door on teamwork across tribes. Ember has its flaws but their upgrade strategy is world class. Every maintainer of an open source project should at least be familiar; but how can that happen when ppl happily report they "have heard of Ember and would NOT use it"?

>There's no reason you can't have a 5/5 framework with huge community and support.

There's no law of physics preventing it. I'll give you that.

But between fragmentation of effort, few full-time collaborators, no funding for less interesting work, and other such things, there are many reasons we can't (and don't) have any 5/5 frameworks with huge community and support.

You have literally said....nothing. And 5/5 is 1 genius.
>You have literally said....nothing.

From a comment without any substance, this is rich.

>And 5/5 is 1 genius

Besides, the ad-hominem, I was referring to a quality rating (as in "5 out of 5 stars") not a generic ratio.

But even at that, 5/5 (1) is bigger than 3/5 (0.6), so the point remains, either way you look at it, Erdos.

> I think there is a lot of tribalism in the js community and liking one framework

Judging by the fossil thread the other day, I'm guessing there is tribalism in any area that requires "investment" to learn/master. The "Git" tribe has a very strong band of loyal followers unwilling to see the merits of other VCSs, ditto for [insert favorite VCS] followers

A fellow 15+ year developer here. I concur. Well said.