Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

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I don't understand how this is the top comment. It's so generic and lacks any investigation or insight; I could copypaste this as a reply to any software project post on HN and it could vaguely apply in the same way (but not specifically apply).

Case in point with JS libs and the following line: "You are going to start adding modules and eventually you're going to have a whole ecosystem". This happens with individual JS-built products using libs, but definitely does not happen universally with most JS libraries. Take React, the first comparator referenced in the post title: its ecosystem is entirely 3rd-party addons and the core is focused and single-purpose to this day. They've added a lot of internal complexity to their vdom implementation which adds code bloat, but it isn't what this commenter is describing.

Vague comments like this never apply to all cases (often apply to no cases). It's a lazy comment that contributes nothing without being specific to this new library. You need to read the code and develop some genuine insight to have this type of commentary.

> I don't understand how this is the top comment. It's so generic and lacking of any investigation or insight; I could copypaste this as a reply to any software project post on HN and it could vaguely apply in the same way (but not specifically apply).

Yes. And that is _exactly_ the point. These anti-bloat libraries either die or become the enemy they set out to defeat. We've been to this rodeo before, yes?

Nothing wrong with that per se. But we gain nothing by pretending this cycle doesn't exist.

Perhaps a smarter approach would be: I've replicated 80% of X's features with 20% of the weight. Here's what's missing.

Then if Library X puts on weight, so can you, if you want. But feather weight in and of itself is not a benefit per se (especially when it's likely temporary). It's a feature. And too often we all gets sucked into the feature trap because we forget it's ultimately about benefits.

> die

This idea puzzles me. It's not like the code suddenly breaks or the world changes so much as to render it completely obsolete.

It's borderline madness to keep chasing new and shiny things and then complain that things keep changing.

Stability is a feature, not a bug.

> These anti-bloat libraries

This probably isn't true, but more importantly this statement misses the point because you're bundling a bunch of stuff into the "anti-bloat libs" bucket with no consideration for the individual architectures of each.

To come back to the example above—React—the core react library is 3.2kb[0] gzipped. (and it hasn't died out). What I'm selectively omitting here is the architectural detail that React have separated their API implementation (core), their renderers (DOM, Server, Native) and their templating (JSX), all of which are loosely coupled optional components. That's a very effective approach to omitting bloat, and is a model that can be copied in an approximately compatible way (see e.g. the anti-bloat Preact and Inferno, further examples of anti-bloat approaches that have not "died out")

[0] https://unpkg.com/react@17.0.1/cjs/react.production.min.js

[1] https://preactjs.com/

[2] https://infernojs.org/

Call it Grey-Beard Cynicism if you will.

To be Clear; The submitted ShowHN is a welcome effort and espouses (imo) fantastic ideals and objectives. I'm glad that people like the developer take/make the time to contribute to the greater good of the open source community.

It is also great/fantastic/good/{some other positive superlative} that people like the submitter keep on fighting the good fight when it comes to program bloat.

While I'm not trying to read another persons thoughts here - Perhaps their comment was indeed meant as a 'oh another thing that's gonna end up bloated due to feature request creep' (which was my initial jaded reaction too although I just didn't think it was an opinion worthwhile posting as a comment that contributed something worthwhile to the conversation so didn't do so).

Call it a measure of the current global mood within the HN that the comment became the top voted comment.

As to what my point was? Uhmmm I forget.

Thanks for the kind words. I completely understand the cynicism, especially when it comes to the front end / javascript scene. I'm not entirely sure if the title I chose has helped or hindered more, but it has fuelled some discussion at least and I've got some good feedback and even a first contribution, so it's definitely been worthwhile.

History rhymes. Noting a pattern is insightful.

Only if there is one. Which it takes at least a modicum of time spent on analysis to ascertain.

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