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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

I've learnt that it's far, far better to try a library and find that it's everything you feared than to fear it and not try using it. Occasionally it's not as bad as you thought it was going to be, and very occasionally it's actually rather good. Unless you're willing to endure the repeated feeling of failure than you get from trying something and not getting anywhere with it (which is ultimately what we're afraid of when we don't try things) you'll never be able to use the tools that are the best fit for you.

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Confirmation bias? (Due to the experience you had every time you finally did bite the bullet). I ask because by that argument every single person should try every single technology.

For example, by your argument you should try AccDC, Ample SDK, AngularJS, CupQ, DHTMLX, Dojo, Echo3, Enyo, Ext JS, Google Web Toolkit, jQuery, midori, MochiKit, MooTools, PhoneJS, Prototype & script. aculo.us, Pyjamas, qooxdoo, Rialto Toolkit, Rico, SmartClient and SmartGWT, Wakanda, YUI, ZK, Webix, and Web Atoms JS. Why don't you start tomorrow?

While you're at it, don't forget

AccDC, Dojo Toolkit, Glow, jQuery, midori, MooTools, Prototype JavaScript Framework, YUI Library, GUI-related (Widget libraries), Ample SDK, DHTMLX, Dojo Widgets, Ext JS iX Framework, jQuery UI, Lively Kernel, qooxdoo, Script.aculo.us, SmartClient, Graphical/Visualization (Canvas or SVG related), , D3.js, JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit, Kinetic.js, Processing.js, Raphaël, SWFObject, Three.js, EaselJS, part of CreateJS, Web-application related (MVC, MVVM, or otherwise), , AngularJS, Backbone.js, Cappuccino, Chaplin.js, Echo, Ember.js, Enyo, Google Web Toolkit, JavaScriptMVC, Knockout, Rialto Toolkit, SproutCore, Web Atoms JS, Wakanda Framework, Pure Javascript/AJAX, , FuncJS, Google Closure Library, Joose, jsPHP, Microsoft's Ajax library, MochiKit, PDF.js, Rico, Socket.IO, Spry framework, Underscore.js, Wakanda Framework, Template Systems, , Cascade Framework, Handlebars, jQuery Mobile, Mustache, Twitter Bootstrap, ZURB Foundation, Unit Testing, , Jasmine, Unit.js, Other, and Modernizr.

Well, see you in 2015!

Well said.

Although the learning curve was steep and painful but AngularJS saved me from the terrible spaghetti soup of javascript + jQuery. The UI I work on is a bit complex and AngularJS makes it a piece of cake to keep it all-together. Code reuse and stability is awesome. But on the downside I still get caught off guard by "$apply already in progress" and despite all the PhantomJS trickery I am yet to recover from the SEO mess that migrating to AngularJS created for me. Overall the benefits far outweigh the cons though. It was only due to AngularJS that I could add multi-currency support on my site in less than half a day.

I’ve always been under the impression that the use case for AngularJS is applications, and by definition it is not intended for anything where SEO is a concern (e.g. 99.9% of AngualrJS apps should be post-login). Is this not the case? What are you doing with Angular that SEO is enough of a concern to try to work around it, but not enough of a concern not to use Angular?

Full disclosure, I’ve never used Angular but it’s next on my list of things to learn.

I agree with your point regarding applications being dynamic and SEO only for the content heavy stuff. My site is a mix of both where the content is sprinkled with pieces of data that is dynamic.

Definitely true, and well put.

I had a similarly, surprisingly positive experience with AngularJS (right down to the brief time frame, mentioned relevantly elsewhere in this discussion) when a client wanted it used to talk to web services, at which point I grimaced and started learning it.

It's hard for me to be positive about Yet Another JS Framework, but it turned out I enjoyed what it did -- enough that, though that part of the project fell through, I really want to try it out with a Flask back end on a real project.

If you're just playing around in your spare time, sure, why not try it?

If the library ends up in an actual product you have to maintain, and you end up regretting it... I'm not sure it's better to try and find out it's everything you feared.

I'm curious how many developers do such 'own time' side project hacking to learn new stuff.

Yeah I think side projects are important for learning new things precisely because they hedge the risk of those new things. When you know you're making something for work that is actually going to be used for awhile, it's much less risky to use something that you know for sure will work reasonably well than something you think might work really well. There is actually a lesson for businesses here: giving engineers time to tinker with new ideas and technologies reduces the future risk of decisions made for real projects. (Of course if you just employ people who spend their free time tinkering with things, you get the best of both worlds for free!)

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