React is a node project, so I can do so trivially. React is a top tier library when it comes to key features like stability, documentation, backwards compatibility, and extensibility / usability.
I can also say TypeScript is one of the most amazing projects of all time.
Last but not least - express is super easy to use. I don't know what "dev-friendly" means, as a criteria though. Keep in mind, though, since it's JS, it's really easy to wrap and extend. To me, you have to justify how Flask is superior to Express; I think you just like Python more.
As for TypeScript, I agree it's amazing, but it's neither a framework nor a library for building web applications. It's more of a superset/transpiler. It makes working with Node/React/Express better, but it doesn't replace them.
With regard to Express, it's decent, but e.g. do we really need to torture newcomers by expecting them to know they'll need to also include/install and require body-parser? I mean, why would I be using a web framework, even a micro-one, if I'm expected to bring in a separate tool just for parsing requests?
Regarding the suggestion that I like Python more, I would gladly choose TypeScript over Python (the typing tools there are still immature) if there was less churn in the JS ecosystem. Deno is promising. :)
Yes. Despite what you're trying to imply about them "updating" too often, my code from 2016 still works correctly against the newest versions of React. That's pretty much the definition of stability to me.
> the change was far less abrupt, and you can still use functional views if you want to
So you are hating on React because you don't know this, but this exact optional progression has always been how they have introduced new features into React. Again - old code works with new React versions.
> do we really need to ... expect them to know
True, this is a weakness, but the documentation is pretty explicit on this front. It's not like there isn't a big community around the library to address this.
Anyhow, I respect your points here, and concede that writing server-side code in Node is probably not what you want to do; I reach for tools like Hasura in this case regardless. With low-code backend tooling and React, I can promise you I can make a better website than with just Python no matter how much Django template wizardry one can muster.
It would be great if developers stopped treating tools they like with this much sentiment. For starters, it would mean fewer flamewars.
They're just tools, criticizing them is not "hating" and your liking them is no endorsement (for anyone other than you, anyway).
> With low-code backend tooling and React, I can promise you I can make a better website than with just Python no matter how much Django template wizardry one can muster.
How can you "promise" this? How can anyone "promise" this? I'm not even sure I understood what you meant by this. Even more so in this case as the tools you mentioned are geared to different types of applications.
The only way I can parse this sentence is that you're claiming that react is indisputably better at [not sure what you meant to do since you said "website" and a website doesn't need a backend$, but you mentioned backend regardless] than any tool in [whatever other language/framework, clearly, even if you're using Python as example] and I'm gonna need a source on that one. It's a pretty strong claim, assuming I didn't misinterpret it.
$ Technically, a website doesn't need a frontend either; it's debatable whether a website even needs javascript, but certainly not react, which is a library for creating web applications.
The only people I could see not noticing or ignoring this are people new to React or people who are emotionally attached to classes.
Regarding Django templates, I know how they work, but actually prefer building an API with Django, and connecting to that with an SPA (preferably one built with Ember since, as you can probably tell, I prefer batteries-included frameworks).
I'm really not as anti-JS as you inferred from my initial post (or as I unintentionally implied), but saying the ecosystem is not problematic makes it harder for it to get better.
That is no time at all in "enterprise level software", being software with investment counted in millions of dollars.
What about your code from 1996? Will your React code word in thirty years?
It's not that TypeScript hasn't helped at all, it just doesn't feel like it's this revolutionary thing that people treat it as. And I'm not even going to touch how visually noisy and distracting I find the C#-style type syntax to be.
Usually this happens with casting. Casting an `any` variable as `string` doesn't do anything other than letting the compiler knows that it must be string. It doesn't transform the variable and throw error when it is not string. This is a bit like casting struct pointer in C.
This usually happens at IO: `fetch`, `localstorage`, `fs.readFileSync`, etc. It can't be solved purely with TypeScript. I used `io-ts` to mitigate this problem.
This is a good paradigm to adopt in TypeScript projects https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-va....
Other than data type, brutally tweaking your tsconfig (and webpack or rollup, if you use them) can also cause errors in module resolution, which is not a nice thing.
TypeScript is almost revolutionary. The thing I wish to exist is a superset of TypeScript that allows Rust-like macro. It is super handful, super beautiful.
> It's surprisingly common for me to wrrite code that compiles but crashes at runtime
Well, is it also common for you to allow `any` in your code?
TypeScript is strongest when it can type-check your entire code. If your API endpoints return data that doesn't match your type (or at any other external data load point), TypeScript clearly can't help with that. I'm actually quite sure that if you have this kind of behavior in TypeScript, your other JS-targeting languages would fail too; you have just mis-typed something.
> Other, better
Yes, you're not biased
> JS-targeting languages manage to allow me to retain type-level features at runtime
What does this mean? They compile to put a magic key `_type` on an object?
> while also outputting leaner, faster, and safer code
I highly dispute your claims. You're building JS still, it's not going to be magically better - this just means you write bad TS. Show me some numbers or some code to make this claim.
> it feels like a huge push for the right reasons and in the worst possible direction
Given that you started your complaint with "no one documents their types", I am not so inclined to listen to your opinion. Types are the documentation. Interface names, key names, types, full autocorrect interacting with any objects, generic type support, reasonably smart type solver / caster, great error messages; these are all things TypeScript offers for learning a thin extension of JS.
> I'm not even going to touch how visually noisy and distracting I find the C#-style type syntax to be
Why not? I would love to hear more ridiculous complaints which only make sense thru your personal lens and have no justification or empirical evidence behind them
