Member-only story
Every so often there’s a new Framework in town that seems to be the newest, best thing ever. All past frameworks are bad/slow and should not be used anymore, and anyone still working with said older frameworks are working on legacy projects.
Sound familiar? Well maybe not that extreme, but this is the trend it seems. Like nowadays it almost feels accepted to bash on JavaScript developers that use jQuery. Sure, jQuery is old, but does it not do well what is was set out to do? Is it really so bad to use an old framework that does exactly what you’re looking for? Isn’t it the same community that also says, “You need to pick the right tool for the job”?
I feel like it is time to speak up, and therefore I decided to write this post. How is it “cool” someone drives a 70s car, but it is not cool to use a framework from less than 10 years ago that seemed to have peaked usage only last year while at the same time React is used much much less compared to jQuery. (And Vue even less than that).
The recent State of JS made me even more aware of this perception problem. Svelte seemed to be all over the place. It scored in the top pretty much in every category, yet there is no overwhelming demand for jobs. According to State of JS, Svelte was used by 15%, while this might be true for the State Of JS demographic, this is far from the truth globally (even in Silicon Valley).
And because of this perception problem everyone in the development sector is peer pressured to be using new tools, and not proven and established tools that are actually used in most companies. This drives insecurity, FOMO and perhaps even depression. At the same time finding a job which mentions jQuery is more likely than REDUX or React Native. Sure, this is only a subset of job positions and might not reflect global jobs accurately, but it does paint a good picture of the discrepancy between developer interest and the current real life requirements.
I am not here to tell you you should ignore innovation and just stick to what you know. The opposite in fact, you should always keep learning, but put priority on your own mental health first. No, you do not need to learn Svelte this year just because it scores well. If your goal is to learn from new frameworks then it might be great, but if you don’t know React or Vue, why not look into those first? And if you want a (new) job in JavaScript, you probably should just learn Node.JS and/or React at this point. Keep the newest, latest, hyped framework for those spare hours in the evening when you just want to learn something new, and learn of the framework that could be big in a few years. It doesn’t hurt to know the differences between frameworks, but it does hurt to have to learn them. Only do it if you know a use for it or simply if you have interest and time.
And lastly, please stop bashing those that are still actively developing using old(er) technologies like jQuery, because let’s face it, 73% of the top 1 million websites use it. If it was truly that bad, no one would be using it anymore, and in the end someone will have to maintain it.
