Comment by fron
5 years ago
> but the idea of having to learn different language constructs for loops and the like doesn't seem that herculean of a task.
I agree. As long as you understand the basic concepts, it's only a matter of learning the syntax, which is really not as big of a deal as the person you replied to is making it out to be.
It's not a herculean task... I agree, until you've learned 10+ (angular, vue, svelte, wordpress/php, jade templates, laravel, underscore/lodash, handlebars/mustache, hugo, etc..) of these "super simple templating languages"! And keep them all straight. I have no problem learning a new language if there is a compelling reason. But If it's just additional shit I have to remember for no clear reason... No thanks...
We can have a debate on unidirectional data flow vs 2-way binding, how each framework manages state changes, how opinionated each framework is... How mature and vibrant each developer community is... etc. These are all another discussion though. My question is why must we reinvent the wheel again and again.
You need to stop insisting that a wheel has been reinvented with Svelte. It shares 95% of the same DNA as other frameworks, with multiple improvements over them. So with that in mind, what you're actually suggesting is that the existing offerings were somehow perfect, and we don't ever need to improve on anything again. That is an absurd notion, especially given that the other frameworks have gone through MASSIVE changes since launch -- sometimes even complete rewrites, because they acknowledged they got it wrong the first time.
100% agree !
>It's not a herculean task... I agree, until you've learned 10+ (angular, vue, svelte, wordpress/php, jade templates, laravel, underscore/lodash, handlebars/mustache, hugo, etc..)
So you want all of these to be a universal-template-language - (D)HTML ?
100% - Common guys we are programmers in a field that is know for changing consistently (probably a lot faster than other careers). If you see learning new "syntax" for the basics (loops,conditionals etc) then you going to have problems down the road. Weather you use svelte, or some other new tech. If you really never want to learn another syntax.. learn LISP and be done with it.
You are a programmer, you will need to learn new syntax a few times in your career.
If some of the "biggest" complaints are "oh no I have to learn how to write for-loops again" - I guess svelte is doing the important stuff right.
Wayyyy back in the day(ok not that long ago - 80/90's) when I was learning a new lang (Pascal,C, C++) I used to tell myself If I can get an working example of:
1) "user-input (readline,scanf etc)"
2) "printing input/output"
3) "calling functions/procedures"
4) "Do the loops + conditionals"
5) "file I/O"
6) "Memory schematics"
You basically mastered the "building blocks/mrk(min-req-knowledge)" of the new lang and like maths you only need now practice or a good project.
TL;DR If you are a professional-career-programmer, learning "new syntax (we used to call them keywords)" is a requirement.
Oh but it‘s not just about the syntax, it‘s also about the semantics, scope rules etc. This is the reason I still like JSX best, because I have a fairly deep understanding of that stuff in javascript while vue templates still leave me scratching my head sometimes. But I can see the appeal either way.