[vendakka]

I just started working with javascript recently after a long time in Java/C++ land, and this really resonates. I get the feeling the javascript community is where the Java world was a few years ago. A number of the npm packages that I've used (and this could just be selection bias) tend to be frameworks rather than libraries. They do a lot for you, but they also choose how to do it. The net result is that in order to achieve something different from the original intention you need more code. The cycle continues indefinitely. The Java world was bitten by this with Spring and companions, but over time has evolved to be more library centric. The fact that javascript allows so much magic also makes the situation worse than what it was with Java. It'll probably take 5 years or so to settle down.

In the course of a few weeks, I've experimented with react + coffeescript, react + typescript and settled on react + jsx + flummox + react-router in es6. I've finally come to the realization that I need to read the code for all of these to have some sense of what is actually happening. Not doing so is leading to obscure bugs that take hours to chase down.