Frontend

I just got small online conversation about jQuery, hahaha. Every year, some developer discovers that jQuery still maintained and yet it is still installed on 73.5% of websites and immediately rushes to write a blog post about how “shocking” this is. The comments fill up with people acting like they’ve discovered some dark secret of the web. Here’s the reality check: jQuery isn’t competing with React, Vue, or Angular anymore. It stopped competing years ago. And that’s exactly why it’s not going anywhere. ...

Unpopular Opinion: We’re repeating history by relying on bloated abstractions and forgetting the fundamentals. Modern frameworks? They’re the new jQuery, and we’re going to regret it. Before you grab your virtual pitchforks, hear me out. I’ve been around the block a few times, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that tech trends often loop back around, sometimes with a fresh coat of paint but the same old foundational issues. ...

JS frameworks be like: “I see you clicked. Let me rerender your whole soul.” We need to talk. While everyone’s out there building apps that could power a small rocket ship just to display a todo list, I’m over here having a love affair with document.querySelector. Yeah, that’s right – the same DOM API that’s been sitting in your browser since Obama was president (the first time). The Framework Fever Dream Don’t get me wrong, I love React, Vue, and all the cool kids on the block. But sometimes I feel like we’ve collectively forgotten that browsers got really good at DOM manipulation. Like, scary good. Modern browsers are basically Formula 1 cars, and we’re strapping a whole trailer to them because we’re afraid to drive stick. ...

Unpopular Opinion Alert: Your UI doesn’t suck because JavaScript is hard. It sucks because you never bothered to learn CSS properly. Picture this: You’re building a simple layout, and things aren’t aligning quite right. Instead of figuring out why your flexbox isn’t working, you reach for JavaScript. “I’ll just calculate the height dynamically,” you tell yourself. “I’ll use getBoundingClientRect() to position this element.” Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. Here’s the thing: Flexbox isn’t a yoga pose. Learn it. ...

Unpopular Opinion: JavaScript isn’t slow. You are. We’ve all been there. Your app is sluggish, your users are complaining, and your first instinct is to scream into the void, “Dang it, JavaScript! You’re so slow!” Or Python. Or PHP. Or Ruby. Pick your poison. But more often than not, the language itself, especially a mature, highly optimized one like JavaScript (thanks, V8 engine!), isn’t the root cause of your performance woes. It’s usually a combination of developer anti-patterns. ...

Picture this: You’re debugging some JavaScript code at 2 AM, your coffee has gone cold, and you stumble upon something that makes you question everything you thought you knew about programming. You type [] + [] into your browser console, expecting… well, honestly, you’re not sure what to expect. But when you see an empty string pop up, followed by [] + {} returning "[object Object]", you start wondering if JavaScript is just trolling you at this point. ...

In the world of JavaScript frameworks, there’s React with its massive ecosystem, Vue with its gentle learning curve, Angular with its enterprise backing, and then… there’s Mithril.js. Quietly sitting in the corner, being fast, lightweight, and surprisingly powerful while everyone else argues about hooks vs. composition API. I’ll be honest – I stumbled upon Mithril by accident years ago while looking for a lightweight alternative to React for a small project. What I found was a framework that made me rethink what I actually need from a frontend library. Spoiler alert: it’s not 200KB of runtime and a build process that takes longer than my lunch break. ...