React and PyTorch.
For everyone hating on the company, they did more for software engineers than any other company. The most meritocratic and highly compensated
These people are only one reorg away from losing their income, Mr. lz4/zstd should be able to focus on his work without such fears, so great is his contribution to our field.
That the direct-corporate-patronage/semi-employeeship model is so prevailing is a sign of brokenness. We need more, collectively, to have a health of our technical ecosystem.
Having these corps willing to hire great folk & have them keep hacking is still often a good option, often. "Create more vue than you capture" is easy to back/do when it's so clear who is out there creating mad value.
1. Being angry at an action doesn’t make someone an ingrate. You can both be grateful and angry; I’d say it’s even common to be both.
2. Meta has had no meaningful impact on my software niche, or many others’. Their only real impact on me has been radicalizing my older family members and firing a few of my friends. They aren’t entitled to any particular gratitude for that.
Were they primed by other sources of media and culture exposure? Absolutely; what distinguishes Facebook is its place in the timeline, and the abundance of evidence that radicalization broadly tracks with social media engagement.
I agree with the pushing up pay point. That was good, though it appears to be ending now.
1. Virtual Dom 2. One way data binding
I think one could argue that the virtual DOM wasn’t important, and possibly even led the industry in the wrong direction considering how it’s not as popular, for good reasons, anymore.
One way data binding was huge, however. Every other framework at the time was proudly promoting 2 way data binding. 2 way data binding would be in their website’s hero image and their entire sample app (invariably a todo list app) would be based around promoting the benefits of 2 way data binding.
I think minus React, a switch to one way data binding would have taken much longer, simply because the momentum behind 2 way data binding was so strong.
When you get more experience, one thing you’ll learn is that when “literal hell” isn’t entirely untrue it’s a social problem. If your organization isn’t good at maintaining a large application, a tool won’t save you. It’s very common for people to look at problems and blame the current tools because that’s where the symptoms are and, critically, it doesn’t require saying anyone needs to be doing a better job managing the project.
JFC, "when you get more experience". If you people are going to be throwing around this bs you better have your linkedin on your profile and you better have 20 years of experience.
edit: Which you do, touche. That being said, I'm experienced, I'm just hyperbolic and emotional about things. Not everyone that's experienced has that "cool, I've done this a million times before" demeanor ok.
Again, I’m not saying that React is horrible – only that people are prone to misattribution leading to overstating the benefits of their current favorite tool relative to other factors. That works both ways, too: it’s not uncommon for people to credit a newer tool for productivity improvements due to their skills increasing over the same time period.
Developing for the web was far from hell before React…
If I had to be absolutely honest, the developer experience side of EmberJS was miles ahead of what React is today. NextJS is only just coming closer but I’m not even sure it’s there yet.
If React hadn’t existed, and more people had experienced EmberJS, I think web development would have been a far better experience today than it is right now.
FB’s devrel dollars completely drowned out EmberJS, which was being pushed by a very small indie team, and web development would have been immeasurably better if we were using EmberJS today, as opposed to React and its bandaged on partners.
That whole concept is severely busted. The ancient Greeks knew some part of success was just luck - I have no idea why these ideas which started off being used as a joke, or a dystopian pejorative term, got taken seriously.
"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is another - try it. It's physically impossible! The term started as a JOKE.
But there's this sector of people who honestly believe their success says something about them, but they give nothing back to their community and offer nothing to Luck.
Wild.
Kevin Kruse wrote a book about that a few years ago and anyone familiar with American politics or religion will recognize a lot of the people involved: