JS frameworks are absolute cancer. They do nothing but kill page load times and degrade user experience: since when is it a good idea to recompile the whole entire standard library each time a program is run? They're also completely redundant in the modern browser, since standard compliance has gotten much better and more features have been added to HTML/JS/CSS. It's just yet another api that developers have to learn to code against, despite not offering any additional features.
First time page load is heavy, yes. Then after that, it's much faster, as all the server has to hand over is JSON, which can turn a 150-500ms page load to a 15-90ms page load.
Furthermore, it allows for easier data portability- when you can 'collect' data as you go and have API calls that much faster, it's okay to make more expressive UI decisions.
Not to mention, at the end of the day I like having a separation between my frontend and backend. Frontend testing from Rails or Django always feels a little dirty, a little off, and in many cases is even a discouraged practice("If you need to test your view, you should be using a helper" logic). I also like not ever having to make model method choices based on what my frontend desires might be- the concerns can be completely separate.
And lastly, I frankly can do a lot more interesting things much faster in Ember than I can in Rails from a UI standpoint. Ember turned my favorite part of software development, UI design, into the joy it used to be when I was just using pad and paper.
You can't get around needing to do some DOM manipulation via javascript, and Angular completely reduces the amount of code necessary to perform common user interactions. I've coded the jQuery way forever, and as a developer I quickly fell in love with Angular. That being said, it really depends on your needs for you application whether or not to implement a framework.
> I consider developer productivity and code maintainability to be features. Sure, there are performance tradeoffs, but there are some obvious benefits.
In a client side application,if the app is slow,the users wont be happy about it.
If it takes for ever to load,the users wont be happy about it.
On the server there is always caching so that requests never hit the app itself.
On the client,if the js code is slow ,for whatever reason,you cant hide it to the user.
What you say might be true on the server,these "features" definetly have to be balanced with performances on the client.That's why sometimes it make sense to use React over AngularJS,for instance,because Angular is known to be slow.
wow , is this the ... show HN hyperbole thread??? ...
they do something ... thats why they slow down the page ... but you know the page wouldnt even be there if you didnt have a tool to speed up your development ... I hope you have fun with your css transitions call me when you want some two way data binding with ajax calls ... I think I know some tools that help do that :>
