How to Make Websites That Will Require Lots of Your Time and Energy - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm
- Pick a Framework Before You Know You Need One
- Always, Always Require a Compilation Step
NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program? | Haney Codes .NET
Not to sound all “Get off my lawn, kids!” but I think there might be something to this. When you’re requiring hundreds of dependencies to do little tasks that you should be able to code yourself, something’s not right.
But, for the love of all that is programming, write your own bloody basic programming functions. Taking on dependencies for these one-liners is just nuts.
That said, you don’t want reinvent hundreds of wheels either (as most of the comments point out). There’s a balance to be had.
Related links
Build It Yourself | Armin Ronacher’s Thoughts and Writings
We’re at a point in the most ecosystems where pulling in libraries is not just the default action, it’s seen positively: “Look how modular and composable my code is!” Actually, it might just be a symptom of never wanting to type out more than a few lines.
It always amazes me when people don’t view dependencies as liabilities. To me it feels like the coding equivalent of going to a loan shark. You are asking for technical debt.
There are entire companies who are making a living of supplying you with the tools needed to deal with your dependency mess. In the name of security, we’re pushed to having dependencies and keeping them up to date, despite most of those dependencies being the primary source of security problems.
But there is a simpler path. You write code yourself. Sure, it’s more work up front, but once it’s written, it’s done.
I don’t have time to learn React - Keith Cirkel
React is a non-transferable skill.
React proponents might claim that React will teach you modern UI, but from what I’ve seen it barely copes with modern UI.
autofocus is broken, custom elements don’t work in all but the experimental version, using any “modern” features likedialogor popovers requiresuseEffect, and the synthetic event system teaches you so little about how DOM actually works. This isn’t modern UI, it’s UI from 2013 at its inception. I don’t have the time left in my career to pick up UI paradigms that haven’t evolved much beyond from when Barack Obama was in office.When I mentor early career developers and they ask me what they should learn, I can’t say React, they don’t have time. I mean sure, pick up enough React to land you the inevitable job doing it, but it’s not going to level up your career.
Rich Harris: Hot takes on the web 🌶️ - YouTube
I don’t agree with all of these takes-of-varying-spiciness, but Rich Harris is always worth paying attention to.
Vendor by default - macwright.com
I never knew that the way I add other people’s code to my projects is called “vendoring.” I thought it was just copying and pasting.
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