Comments by "Brent Jacobs" (@br3nto) on "Theo - t3․gg" channel.

  1. 8:33 I don’t get the standards argument. Standards evolve and can improve. CSS and JS has been evolving quite nicely over the decades.
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  2. Web Components are only not useful because there are a few missing pieces to make them useful. There’s actually no declarative way to build and compose them. There’s no HTML templating language, you’re either in JS land or HTML land with no way to properly mix the two. We need something like ERB or Razor pages but for HTML/JS. And there needs to be a way to register these components and to fetch/register them as required.
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  3. 28:18 hydration isn’t how most SSR works. Most SSR generates the entire HTML server side. No need to fetch JSON. Hydration is a very CSR concept.
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  4. 1:37 students don’t just magically start using things. VSCs are one of the primary tools of our trade. At the very least, VCSs need to be introduce to students, and explained their purpose and why they are important. VCSs should be part of the 101 curriculum, and should then be extensively used throughout a degree. Students should be industry ready… it’s one of the primary reasons for higher education... standardised industry ready training.
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  5. Yeah…. But tests are there for other reasons…. Im currently refactoring a rather old codebase. Quite a lot of deeply nested code, many conditionals, lots of coupling, the multiple responsibility principle was applied to everything. I can’t just inject dependencies or mocks, because the system wasn’t built in a way to do that or for that to be useful. There’s also no unit or integrations tests. There are some limited regression tests. Im trying to refactor that code so I can modernise it and upgrade it. But it’s really really easy to accidentally break functionality… every change has subtle effects. I have to maintain all functionality, even the bugs, because who knows what relies on that bug. I have to build tests to verify the existing functionality first, so that I can then make the changes I need to make, and then use the tests to verify my changes didn’t break anything. Had the tests been there in the first place, the app probably wouldn’t have been written the way it was, and I wouldn’t have to do double the work because some previous develop didn’t take time to write tests. Though back when this was written, unit testing was less common… so that dev get a pass. Write tests! Future devs (possible even future you) will thank you!
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  6. Just wait until there are servers on Mars.
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  7. 1:40 most orgs already have some sort of IT department that does that already. Managing the IT infrastructure and security.
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  8. 6:44 to be fair, hashes for private is a JavaScript thing and is actually private scoped.
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  9. Ah. It’s React only. I don’t think your prediction is correct.
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  10. 38:06 OMG you would never build HTML in that way using web components! That’s trying to apply a CRS concept to something that is inherently not CSR. You would either build the HTML in its entirety on the back end using a template, or you would build the HTML in JavaScript on the front end. What even you just described seems purposefully obtuse.
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  11. 8:59 writing in a dynamic language is just different… it’s more about moving and manipulating data… I felt so strangled when I moved from Ruby to C#, I suddenly had to type everything and it felt completely unnecessary, all the simple patterns of data transformation and manipulation were no longer accessible because of the typing. I’ve never quite got that godlike feeling back that I had when I was working with Ruby.
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  12. 1:59 you know when you separate the front end development from back end development, the code seems to get a lot more complex. The code always seems to be simpler on apps where teams are full stack.
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  13.  @WesseI  sure, but that’s just as useless on its own. There are still all the missing pieces I mentioned in o make it usable. Just think how you would loop the though an array of values/objects to populate a ul, or table, or select with values. You can’t. Well you can within JS land, but you can’t intermingle JavaScript and HTML within the template element. The experience is missing the actual templating syntax to intermingle HTML and JS.
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  14. 0:10 GraphQL is not a good solution. In theory we should be able to write actual SQL and send to an endpoint. I don’t get why we need a limited version of that.
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  15.  @MadsterV  no no. Just the syntax. Then map that to one or more persisted data sources. So much like what GraphQl does, except using the standard SQL syntax.
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  16.  @pc1234asdf  thats what schemas are for. To define the structure of the data that can be queried.
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  17.  @kangar1797  that’s my point too. CSS, JavaScript, HTML, HTTP, and many more are all individual web standards, that every site relies on. Sites built 20+ years ago and longer can still run. Sure, we get stuck with past decisions, yet somehow, all these standards have managed to improved tremendously over that time. Some of the new HTML elements means we don’t need to roll our own components, improved CSS means we don’t need to use as much JavaScript, or as much superfluous HTML structure for layout. Improved JS APIs and syntax means we have access greater functionality that brings us closer to that native app feel. So, no, I don’t understand that argument against standards. I agree that Web Components are currently largely unusable because they are not easily composable. I’m currently building a framework that makes use of them, so I understand some of the issues at play. The problem isn’t actually the Web Components themselves; they are actually pretty good, in concept. There are a few missing pieces that make them unusable though. Have a think about how you might map an array of JS objects to an HTML element. You can’t add a JS loop in the middle of HTML code like you can in some of the front-end frameworks. But we should be able to. We should be able to do the same thing as what ERB/Razor pages/PHP does but using JS. The other issue is passing custom callbacks to web components. Only the on* attributes (like onclick) can accept JS and execute them. We can’t define our own and send custom events as arguments. I’ve had to do a lot of weird hacks to make an arbitrarily define attribute to accept JS and to have it execute in the correct scope. The last missing piece is reactivity. I know there is a push to get Signals into JS, but that would be a mistake from my perspective because they are not low level enough. The actual requirement is Object.watch() and Object.observe(). They accept a variable containing a value of object and a callback which gets called whenever the value or object changes. The difference from signals is that it doesn’t keep track of dirty state. The call back gets fired the moment the value changes. That’s the functionality I have identified as needed to make Web Components useable. There are a few more subtle missing pieces m, but those are the large ones. Basically we’re missing an HTML/JS templating syntax.
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  18.  @_phenomen  I’m not sure what your point is. Pointing out those three things doesn’t detract from the fact that many many many standards do indeed improve over time. It doesn’t even make a comment on their positive or negative impacts. All it says is some standards are no longer used. E.g Flash had an insanely positive cultural impact. We’ve lost so many good applications and games and animations because someone decided to deprecate it.
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  19. 4:25 First step multiple layers I guess. Maybe each element should get a stack of layers too. The “top layer” mentioned here would be a layer for the body I guess?
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  20. As long as you can quickly unit test without having to load up an entire system
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  21. Nice to bring this to client rendered apps. This is REST API and server sided rendering 101.
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  22. 16:39 when I use const, I’m using to mean I can’t reassign this variable. Not that the whole object tree is constant. It’s to force the pattern of transformation rather than mutation in the function body.
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  23. 18:06 you also shouldn’t be splitting “frontend” work from “backend” work. The joy of using .Net frameworks and Ruby on Rails is you don’t constrain yourself to one side of the app because it’s all just one software.
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  24. HTMX + Alpine is a killer front end combo!
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  25. Git is so simple and so fundamental to the software development lifecycle to the point that Git should be used from day 1.
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  26. 11:28 Feature flags sound very similar to authorization flags like can_XYZ. Just assign the flag to a group, and assign users to that group and boom! They have access to functionality.
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  27. 16:42 functional programming is a subset of object oriented code. So OOP is definitely superior.
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  28. Signals are interesting in concept, but the syntax is just terrible. I hate having to wrap what I consider normal syntax in signal syntax to make it work. It all feels like bloat and extra work. I just want to be able to pass around functions and objects. I want to be able to model my app correctly and have a well defined api that can be used to programmatically update state based on user input and have the ui adapt needed. There has to be a better technique than signals.
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  29. 18:41 OOP is literally a better FP. It’s what NDFA is to DFA.
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  30. 19:46 I’m half way through. I hope there’s a proposal for extension methods!
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  31. 7:25 if that were true they wouldn’t have allowed const in function bodies.
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  32. 1:40 not sure what the fuss is about. It’s super easy to add progressive front end interactivity on server side rendered apps. No framework required. Though Vue.js does make client side interactivity super easy.
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  33. 2:41 omg do people actually use && in that way??
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  34. 12:09 what do you mean that things won’t work? Buttons and forms won’t submit? Why aren’t you relying on the native html functionality of those elements? They should, for the most part, work right away!
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  35. 5:59 how do you specify that endpoint requires authentication or permissions?
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  36.  @MadsterV  the reason is simple. When you develop a solution full stack, you can manage the code complexity from both ends, whereas, when you split the front end work from the backend work, each team must coordinate changes with the other, and often that’s time consuming, so instead, they implement all this complexity so they can defer communicating and coordinating with the other team. It leads to the creation of unnecessary code that could have otherwise been avoided. The better way to divide work is feature slicing. A person or team develops a feature across the entire stack. The complexity in that case is when features are interoperable…. Which is then more a design choice.
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  37.  @TheAcademik  had a quick look at Lit just now, it seems to still have the problem I described… the HTML is defined within JavaScript strings. I’m actually building my own library to do the things I’m describing. There’s so much functionality in transpiled front end frameworks that are missing from the browser context all together which makes it really difficult. I’m trying to build some of those missing pieces, but it requires a lot of hacks to get working in a nice way.
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  38. 5:03 I think the fact that it isn’t obvious that it is doing some sort of query parameteristation and sanitising is problematic. Sue I question one you know it’s tagged with the sql at the front maybe…. But I can see how it causes a certain kind of habit which could devs could easily mistakenly use in incorrect ways and accidentally introduce vulnerabilities. It’d be quite easy to skip introduced vulnerabilities in PRs too. Maybe it’s convenient, but it looks fraught with long term problems.
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  39.  @Slashx92  and it’s like how we have ES1, ES2, ES3….. etc. or CSS 1, CSS 2, CSS 3…. Or HTML 1, HTML 1.1, HTML 2, HTML 3, or IPv4 and IPv6…. This same logic also applies to how we all version our code libraries…. Or browser versions…. Or OS versions… The standards argument doesn’t make sense because having a Standard is not equivalent to Bad. Having a standard is a base line. It’s a way of creating interoperability. It performs the same function as an interface in code. And like interfaces/code/versioning, standards can and are improved over time.
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  40.  @Slashx92  And Web Components aren’t actually bad in my opinion. They are just missing a few supporting features, such as: an HTML/JS templating language; being able to support custom JS scripts on custom attributes; and having reactive functionality by assigning JS variables to attributes and having `attributeChangedCallback()` called when the variable value changes. I’m trying to build a JS library that adds those features. I have a working prototype. I just need to make it production ready.
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  41. 7:19 lol it’s pronounced: Briz-bn
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  42. 10:20 how do you snapshot your schema changes and manage migrations??
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