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Honestly, as a mainly backend dev wanting to do more full stack, webdev is frustratingly intimidating. I keep trying to look up best practices but there's so little in the way of consensus. "Use JQuery, no use Vue! React is better, but also React is clunky and bad. Write pure js, no don't that's a waste of time, at least use typescript." It's all such a mess and I spend so long trying to figure out what to use. I'm trying to just pick something and stick with it, but I keep worrying that I'm not doing things the best way.
I'd agree with you if you were saying this about 8 years ago, but IMO the post-jQuery-front-end dust has settled and the "best" (in terms of what most organisations end up choosing) hasn't really changed in a while.
- Typescript unless you've got a really good reason not to.
- React if you have anything remotely complex.
- Webpack (or one of the wrappers) to bundle it up.
Sure, someone may like a React alternative, and that's completely fine. But at the end of the day, most companies are using React because it's basically industry standard at this point, and it's got too much momentum behind it for that to change any time soon.
I'd say the back end is where all the choice is these days
We must be in different organization circles because almost every frontend I've seen at my jobs or those of my friends at other organizations uses Angular
I'll be honest, I think it's been years since I last saw anyone even mention Angular anywhere.
Maybe I'm just too used to it, but with next.js static site generation I find react to also work really well for simple sites too. If you're not dealing with state, react is basically just functions that return templated html. IMO it's pretty sleek for static websites since tsx let's you do basic templating with functions.
As a previously front-end gone full-stack gone and settled in backend/infra... don't bother. But if you have to bother, or really, really want to 🙂, pick a relatively popular thing (e.g. Vue), and learn that, ignore the rest. By the time you come up for air the new hotness will have changed anyways, and the wheel will have been reinvented twice. It's a moving target, just learn the fundamentals with something and you'll be good to go.
Wait until you meet "Platform Engineering"/DevOps. The sheer amount of CNCF projects and new tools out on a daily basis are on par with the JavaScript world.
For sure don't use jquery.
React is industry standard, but not my favorite. That being said, even my personal projects I do in react. I'm happy with my current role, but if I wanna switch down the line there's less openings for a dev with mostly Svelte (my favorite framework) experience.
Right now I'm working on a personal project with Vue because it happened to be the one I was hearing most about when I started. I've got one project that I'm definitely gonna finish at some point started in react, so maybe I'll try out svelte on my next project.
If you just want to try frontend, not trying to get a job there are these frameworks you should try:
- Solidjs (love it so far) for a web application so SPA with separate backends
- htmx to have a decently interactive website, it can be integrated with any webserver
- astro for generating static sites
And i think everyone should use either Typescript or JSDoc for any bigger application.
Svelte is a happy middle ground between vue/react and SolidJS which is maybe too bleeding edge still
Agreed on the svelte part.
But I think solidjs has a real chance of taking over React, because its similar, meaning JSX and hooks, but without the footguns. After using React, its so much cleaner and easier to work with, i cannot recommend it enough.
Thanks for recommending it, it does look really nice. I'll definitely check it out when a fitting project comes along.
The main issue is that frontend is complicated and it can do a lot of very different things. Frameworks exist to solve some issues that may or may not exist in your project.
jQuery is obsolete and insufficient if you're looking for an easy monolithic framework. Angular, React and Vue are all good (disclosure, I haven't used react), just pick one and learn it well and you'll have a good foot in the door. If you already know JavaScript and don't want to learn typescript, Vue can be used with plain JavaScript.
Best practices are pretty straight forward in the typescript community. Frankly I think all the serious professionals from the JavaScript community just went to TS so the people left over that didn't migrate are well...