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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

I am so tired of everyone complaining about complexity in front end frameworks, as if this sort of thing doesn't exist in other languages and stacks, and as if frontend dev isn't as complex as other domains. Just ignore them or do something else.

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There is a reason we complain about front end frameworks. The fatigue is real. The npm and node_modules hell is real. The constant quirks with JS to make it work with our backend is real. I have been programming professionally for 18+ years and even though I can do anything, JS frameworks give me the most anxiety. Just this other day, something broke with an npm package and the error messages require me to hire a cryptography expert. I am half joking.

I am all in for something that keeps us on server side templates/HTML with dynamic capabilities.

I’m tired of everyone talking about the frontend as if it’s a monolith. In a world where web uses span all the way from a blog with a contact form to an entire app like Gmail it’s silly to pretend there’s only one answer.

I think we’re still suffering from “everything with React” syndrome, I’ve never used htmx but if it can help as an antidote I’m all in.

This is so true. I have two real hobbies - web dev and wood working. One thing that makes me chuckle is the different takes the communities have on tools. In the web dev people constantly argue about how there is one best tool!!! The wood workers make an art form out of collecting the most tools possible, because each tool has a job and the person who dies with the most tools wins.

(Edited for typos)

> as if this sort of thing doesn't exist in other languages and stacks

It doesn't.

For example in the Java world and in the last 10 years there were only two "frameworks". Just Spring and Oracle/Java EE

Now two more have appeared (Quarkus and Micronaut) bringing the total number of frameworks to 4.

Sure, if you ignore Dropwizard and tons of other less popular java frameworks out there.

Maybe I am missing something but Dropwizard is not a framework on its own but instead of collection of external and independently developed libraries

Maybe you are? Yes, it integrates existing frameworks and libraries. In fact, the home page says "Dropwizard is a Java framework for developing ops-friendly, high-performance, RESTful web services."

While I would love to argue whether DropWizard is a framework or not there is no need for that.

Just go to google trends and compare Spring and Dropwizard. Or look at https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/java/. Dropwizard doesn't even appear in the list of web frameworks.

I mean, if you still believe that Java has as many frameworks as Javascript has (and had in the past) there is nothing I can say that will convince you.

I've been using Java on and off since 1996. It absolutely has had a ton of frameworks over the years. Yes, I realize many of them are niche or no longer in use, but that doesn't mean there isn't a legacy application where you have to maintain 10 or 20 year old garbage.

FYI, I despise both J2EE and Spring. (Maybe Spring Boot is okay.)

Spring Boot is recapitulating the worst parts of old (like, 3.0-era) Spring. It's the biggest step backwards in programming history since... I actually can't think of anything worse.

Is the argument here that there are too many JS frameworks, or that the complexity of the frameworks themselves tends to grow over time?

If the former, totally agree. If the latter, Java frameworks are plenty complicated.

Also not sure how you've missed a lot of other frameworks; Spring and J2EE are certainly not the only ones that have been around for 10+ years. Dropwizard, Vert.x, akka-http, GWT, Play... just to name a few.

The argument is that I could learn Spring in 2002, find a Job then I could learn Spring in 2008 and find a job and then I could learn Spring in 2013 and find a job and then learn Spring in 2018 and find a job and then learn Spring in 2023 and find a job.

Spring IS complex, but you learn it once and you are done with it.

Or learn Cobol in 1965, find a job. Learn Cobol in 2022, find a job. Or Fortran - which I started using in 1983. Or C# (2000 for me)

I think the key distinction is that these languages and libraries evolve over time.

this is really useful if you know in advance which framework is going to stay around twenty years. If you invested in GWT...

I'm not a java man but a quick google leads to a lot of "10 java frameworks you should know", "17 popular java frameworks", and a "list of java frameworks" on Wikipedia that's dozens long.

Frontend wise it seems similar at a glance, in that you could use react for the last 10 years and be fine. Or you could jump from react to vue to svelte and make life hard for yourself.

I looked at some of the articles you mention and they are completely clueless

They include stuff like

- Hibernate - this is just an ORM

- JHipster - this is just opinionated Spring

- mybatis - again ORM

- Grails - > This is Groovy and not Java

- Play -> This is Scala primary

- Primefaces -> an implementation of Oracle/JavaEE

I think you get the idea. I am actually amazed at who is the target audience of this kind of blog posts.

Makes sense, probably just ad click driving spam page, appreciate the info :)

I wonder how much of people being burnout on "front end frameworks" is because of "17 must know javascript frameworks" articles akin to the JAVA stuff at the top of google.

Vaadin? GWT? Not a java guy, may miss some distinctions.

As someone who came into webdev only recently with a long experience in just-development, it feels like there is no problem with frontend at all. The problem is that the frontend industry chose the worst perverted defaults and those defaults pay the most money. That’s the whole drama. It’s just a “five monkeys experiment” sort of situation.

or try htmx!

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