Are you overwhelmed by new (software) technologies ?
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
Having lived through (and indeed taken a small part in) the development of CP/M, MSDOS, windows etc. I have long since adopted the philosophy of using dev stacks that run behind the pack. The number of times when I hadn't even completed a coding task only to find that some dependency had changed, or a library no longer worked the way it did before (or even got completely broken by some update - Hello Borland!? Anyone there?) are too numerous to count. For my recent web/mobile apps the only framework I have used has been Bootstrap, and that only because it is both so long in the tooth and so widespread it is at least fairly mature and has at least some chance of being maintained into the future (ie like PHP!). It is also completely available as source code, and I keep a buildable copy of the version I am using in my setup at all times. Of course, even in that kind of setup, so much is outside your control: something I built less than a year ago is already being slowly strangled to death by Microsoft forcing Windows to use Chrome based browsers and yet within it's own apps (eg Office) still only providing IE based browser controls. Thus all the services this little add-on to Office talks to are gradually refusing to work, so I am having to find a way of calling an external browser to do authentication with third parties rather than doing it within the app... The only thing that remains the same in this industry is the rate of change!
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
those are just kids doing home "howto" videos. nobody knows what's in those gazillion npm packages. everything will be bad until you find yourself a good tutorial. a person who makes sense to you. that is why you'll have to skim over a few tutorials and chose what seems reasonable to you. i have seen video tutorials where a person goes with a "and now by the magic of copy & paste" from something like console.log("hello world") into a full fledged server that nobody understands how it's working. you blame yourself for not understanding. it is only when you find a person who knows what he is talking about that you realize there are a lot of garbage tutorials out there. and yes, i am overwhelmed by new technologies. it is not that i care about the 307th web framework that is going to fix the web, because the 306th framework that was proclaimed with fanfare to have fixed the web actually failed. i am overwhelmed that they make changes to javascript and c++ every year or two and i think it's madness. they are making changes to c# and java and rust and it's madness. the cognitive load is getting bigger and bigger and you end up looking at working code from 15 years ago that is completely different than code from two years ago in the same language. who cares about vue 4, angular 22, jquery 6 and react 13 when they meddle with the very nature of javascript?
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
I know what you mean. It is all a bit overwhelming. What I usually do is break it down into smaller pieces. I would say tackle each part individually:* First, do HTML
- Then do CSS
- Then do general javascript
- Followed by Typescript
- Then Vue (or any other framework)
- Finally, try to add it all together
I found that trying to learn everything combined will get you lost. Finally, let me wish you all the best learning this 'new' stuff. :)
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
In my opinion, the vast majority are neither beneficial nor needed. I agree wit you wholeheartedly.:mad:
ed
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
Vue is a framework, so in spite of all of the yuck of npm package use, that's what a framework requires. I think you need to first make peace with your stack, then look at existing code that your team has generated with it. Take on some small task of updating or adding small functionality to existing code, or just take notes as you learn what the existing code does and how it flows. This approach is the best way I know to learn a new tech stack. It can be fun if you let it be what it is - a kind of treasure hunt. Good luck.
-
Maximilien wrote:
I'm overwhelmed with new technologies.
Yes, I was. I started programming before the web was a thing. Also doesn't seem worth to study the tech of du jour, since it obsolete tomorrow.
Maximilien wrote:
They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages.
I don't use npm packages. I'm responsible for the result, so I don't muck around with code that I haven't read in detail.
Maximilien wrote:
There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies.
Not from a Garfield-approach ("what is in it for me?") Outside of the learning curve, there is the issue of trusting other people's work. I'm not sticking a backdoor in my software after that work, forget it. Log4j? Not in my code, it's not like a logger is too complicated to write.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
-
Vue is a framework, so in spite of all of the yuck of npm package use, that's what a framework requires. I think you need to first make peace with your stack, then look at existing code that your team has generated with it. Take on some small task of updating or adding small functionality to existing code, or just take notes as you learn what the existing code does and how it flows. This approach is the best way I know to learn a new tech stack. It can be fun if you let it be what it is - a kind of treasure hunt. Good luck.
for my personal amusement i would do something else than vue/svelte/angular/whatever, but sometimes we cannot chose. orders are orders. in that regard, this is a fairly good advice. although, svelte is tempting. orders notwithstanding.
-
I am the same with some of it, but that is probably more a reflection of my aged brain. Fortunately I don't need to use such skills to earn a living any more.
I'm not old, but at the age of 45 in tech terms I'm ancient. my decades in development have helped keep the door open for new opportunities, but I think I've found a nice spot writing code for a local community college. the work load is just about right, still try to push myself to learn something new all the time, but damn some of the new platforms are so much waisted processing power for little gain, and it really hurts to see such inefficient layers of code.
-
I haven't had an issue with html, css*, or javascript/typescript, but I've never used Vue. Angular has some really good documentation in my opinion. I don't have much experience with React but it seemed... alright. There's a lot of "magic" under the hood though which was confusing since you absolutely need to understand how it works for all but the simplest tasks. I feel you though. A lot of documentation seems to be written for the author rather than the reader. It's a problem I've run into with learning functional programming. Once you get past the beginner stuff, most of the resources are written for people that already understand everything. You have to have a Master's in type theory, set theory, group theory, category theory, nth-order logic, and more just to parse the terminology in a single sentence. *: Except for layouts. Good lord, we have tables, box, flex-box, grid, etc and none of them aptly solve the issue without "clever" hacks half the time.
-
A bit of a rant.... I'm overwhelmed with new technologies. I'm starting doing some html/css/javascript/typescript/vue work. I'm supposed to be fully productive this week. (according to everyone, lol) Every examples, tutorials or paid online courses, I see have different configurations, different versions of those things, clone their github repos, try to run their things, nothing works, obscure errors every time. They all start easily enough, but BAM, in a few minutes, they go to console.log("hello world") to full fledge web sites with gazillions npm packages. There doesn't seem to be a real progressive learning curves to these technologies. Am I seeing this the wrong way ?
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
I'm a desktop developer that is being forced into learning web technologies. I too feel like it's all just too complex for sanity. I played with the web over a decade ago, so I knew the bare bones. My work recently paid for a Pluralsight subscription. Even then, my issue is finding info for experienced coders that just need to know the gotcha's and syntax of the new language. I don't need a for loop explained to me. I need to know the difference between "==" and "===" in JavaScript. I did a basic and intermediate JavaScript course by the same person and skimmed through it. Out of the 3 hours of video, I probably found 10 minutes of useful info. None of the sample code worked out of the box, so at least I learned something by fixing it. Then I found Kyle Simpson's Advanced JavaScript, which torn a big one into what I just learned because he actually explained the concepts behind the syntax. He has studied the standard, so he knows JavaScript well. He also has several utilities out there that are not uncommonly used. The stupid thing is that my work expects me to already know JavaScript (remember, I'm a desktop developer). They want me to learn React and graphQL. I can't even get there until I know the web basics. On the flip side, there is a junior developer at my job (hired right out of college) that doesn't know what cmd is or how to use it. They can, however, work on websites without issue. It's a different world.
Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
-
I stay away from anything 'new' for professional development. I'll wait until it becomes mature enough to have an established knowledge base. I am a team of one and have no use for github or npm packages...the closest to this I've come is jquery and even then, refuse to allow external links/resources.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
You don't need to use github, but even in a team of one git makes sense. You can use your locally installed TFS server for that. Source control really brings value to the development and the power of git branching is second to none. As for npm packages, if you use any web framework, like Angular, there's no way around it. Is it more complicated than it used to be? Yes, no doubt about it. Messier? Heck yes. Impossible? Nope. I'm in my mid fifties and working with a team on average 20 years my juniors. I can still keep up... I assure you they're not immune to these things. The issue with most of them is that they don't have a reference point in the past, to judge things in perspective. The current tech and work style is all they know and they believe it's the best. As a result they over-complicate things. There will be dependency injection, services and all that good stuff even if they have to write a simple console app to load a file...