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Stack Overflow Stats Reveal 'the Brutal Lifecycle of JavaScript Frameworks' (stackoverflow.blog)
A developer on the Internal Tools team at Stack Overflow reveals some new statistics from their 'Trends' tool:
JavaScript UI frameworks and libraries work in cycles. Every six months or so, a new one pops up, claiming that it has revolutionized UI development. Thousands of developers adopt it into their new projects, blog posts are written, Stack Overflow questions are asked and answered, and then a newer (and even more revolutionary) framework pops up to usurp the throne...
There appears to be a quick ascent, as the framework gains popularity and then a slightly less quick but steady decline as developers adopt newer technologies. These lifecycles only last a couple of years. Starting around 2011, there seems to be major adoption of a couple of competing frameworks: Backbone, Knockout, and Ember. Questions about these tags appear to grow until around 2013 and have been in steady decline since, at about the same time as AngularJS started growing. The latest startup is the Vue.js framework, which has shown quick adoption, as it is one of the fastest growing tags on Stack Overflow. Only time can tell how long this growth will last.
"Let's be honest," the post concludes. "The size of a developer community certainly counts; it contributes to a thriving open source environment, and makes it easier to find help on Stack Overflow."
There appears to be a quick ascent, as the framework gains popularity and then a slightly less quick but steady decline as developers adopt newer technologies. These lifecycles only last a couple of years. Starting around 2011, there seems to be major adoption of a couple of competing frameworks: Backbone, Knockout, and Ember. Questions about these tags appear to grow until around 2013 and have been in steady decline since, at about the same time as AngularJS started growing. The latest startup is the Vue.js framework, which has shown quick adoption, as it is one of the fastest growing tags on Stack Overflow. Only time can tell how long this growth will last.
"Let's be honest," the post concludes. "The size of a developer community certainly counts; it contributes to a thriving open source environment, and makes it easier to find help on Stack Overflow."
What happens if you need to patch or upgrade in a few years? Like for security? Do you have to rely on unsupported frameworks or throw everything away and start over? How does it work?
Remember, companies pay huge licensing fees exactly for support.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
As the fastest and leanest framework
As a once Delphi programmer, that is one reason I like the combination of JavaScript/TypeScript, the Mithril vdom https://mithril.js.org/ (which uses a "HyperScript"-like API to define HTML via code), and Tachyons http://tachyons.io/ for embedded CSS where each class defines the CSS effect (e.g. "underline") -- along with a simplified Flux-like one-way data flow architecture. Although people could swap out Mithril and Tachyons for similar systems to get a similar effect.
Sadly, for my day job I am stuck using Angular, which is a my-way-or-the-highway framework with a lot of questionable design choices leading to excessive complexity and difficult debugging.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I started using Vue this year. I evaluated React but I just couldn't enjoy the JSX syntax. Angular 2 had just come out and I found it to be far too obtuse, too far from "the metal." I briefly experimented with Riot, but it was losing IE11 compatibility too fast.
Vue hit the sweet spot for me -- the ramp-up was easy, the code and API have a small but powerful footprint, it works well either interpreted in-browser or compiled via webpack, the Chrome dev tools are great, and I didn't have to learn the entire ecosystem (Vue, Vuex, Axios, etc.) to become productive. Coding single-file components reminds me of the good old days of writing server-side ASP.NET controls -- markup and script are separate, the lifestyle is simple to grok. The framework just does one thing--it handles the DOM update/manipulation details, allowing me to focus on behavior and state. I also like that the vast majority of my Vue code isn't really "vue," it's just plain HTML and JavaScript, so whatever comes next (web components, etc.), the transition will be much less painful than if I were using a more opinionated framework.