Comment by impulser_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by impulser_ | Hacker News Reader

I never built a web app in my life. I have always been on the server side.

Recently I spent a couple days building the same web app in Next, Nuxt, and SvelteKit just to get a feel of how to build a web app today. The web app was pretty basic. A couple of pages showing data from different apis and auth with user setting page.

My favorite by far was SvelteKit despite being the one with the smaller community. It was actually enjoyable compared to the others. It was very easy to feel like I was actually building something. You feel productive right away. The app automatically felt well organized with how the file layout was. Everything belong in a specific place. Layout goes here, Server stuff goes there, pages go here. Even form processing with nice. Building components was like building components in regular JS.

Next was my least favorite mostly due to the syntax and how you had to build the application. I really didn't like the whole style of Next and React. Just felt dirty.

I would highly suggest people to try SvelteKit. The file names might be a bit weird but it will teach you to use file finder in your IDE.

> I never built a web app in my life.

> I would highly suggest people to try SvelteKit.

I feel like this is a good summary of tech trends these days.

A beginner suggesting something to try seems fine to me. They have something no amount of study can give, a fresh perspective.

Fresh perspective, or lack of perspective?

> A beginner suggesting something to try seems fine to me. They have something no amount of study can give, a fresh perspective.

When the beginner's critique of the competition is that it felt dirty: Next was my least favorite mostly due to the syntax and how you had to build the application. I really didn't like the whole style of Next and React. Just felt dirty.

.... then I don't know that I trust their suggestion.

More importantly, technologies like programming languages and frameworks tend to shine at different levels of app size and complexity. Novice building a demo app says nothing about how the developer experience and code complexity will scale as you evolve your app or add more developers to the team.

As a beginner its helpful to me because I don't want to spend my entire life learning syntax I hate.

Then there's "I build one web app in my life. Typescript is the best thing ever."

And us greybeards: "I have built 50 different web apps across 20 years and I'd rather poke my eyes than work on client-side Javascript again. No, your new framework isn't any better."

Typescript is very different to Javascript (and it isn't a framework). But I get your point.

Then there's "I've been writing frontends since Javascript was a thing and I think developing for the frontend with anything but Typescript is more effort than its worth and a little bit ridiculous, but maybe I'll give something with WASM a try when it's more mature"

If you're a Rust programmer Leptos looks pretty intriguing. It uses Signals like SolidJS.

Oh that sounds cool, thanks

Which is valid as an unpolluted testimony about smoothness of adoption, right?

BTW, is noticeable that you were careful to omit the `I have always been on the server side` part.

It goes all the way upstream. People build SAAS companies offering services based on best practices while the product/engineering have had zero prior experience with the subject until their current project. People found companies selling themselves to investors as experts in the field that they have no experience in. Investors sell themselves as experts of the industry that they just invested in these founders for. Pension managers investing in the VC funds sell themselves as investment managers who practice a disciplined investment strategy.

Yet, the only people who usually are carefully evaluated are the engineers. The rest get a pass based on personality and character.

How convenient that (what is likely) your role is the only one in the world the gets any scrutiny /s.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo3cL4nrGOk

Ease of building from scratch and long term maintainability are different concerns and maintainability can require higher complexity at first.

Eg. I would say involving TypeScript 100% loses at ease of building something simple quickly but with some experience I would not start a significant project without it anymore.

Just curious why you preferred SvelteKit to Nuxt? Literally every single thing you said of SvelteKit is also true of Nuxt.

I like them both, but tend to lean more toward Nuxt for the modules ecosystem and layers/extends. I also find composing reusable props with typescript to be nicer in Nuxt, but that's more of a Vue vs Svelte thing than Nuxt vs SvelteKit.

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