I learned “pure” JS back in 2013, when HTML5 was brand new, and I still don’t get most of the stuff going on nowadays.
Always confused when I see memes like this
You learn js, then you learn a bit about ts and pick react/vue if you want to do frontend or nodejs if you’re into backend. Then you do something basic, like a barebones twitter clone, weather app, etc. By the point when you’re 80% done, you will know most important parts of the ecosystem naturally
After that, learning all the supporting libraries/frameworks is super simple since next is just superset around react, same for nuxt. Solid, svelte, fresh etc are just different flavors of react. Even vue is looking like react this days with composition api, simply because they nailed the simplicity and dev comfort. Average dev will never face weird js/ts parts or confusing libraries because most of their day to day job will be moving buttons and looking how to persist user basket in browser storage…
Sure there are a lot of libraries and ways to do stuff, but 90% of them are irrelevant, only-for-hobby or simply dead and unused since 2010. Knowing ts+(react|vue)+(vuex|redux-tk|mobx)+(styled|tailwind) will land someone a basic job where they can progress and expand their knowledge lol
I tried to learn React, but it was unnatural for me, but then senior front dev at my workplace suggested Vue. I remember Vue’s options api being too weird to even try it.
Then I discovered there’s composition api and fell in love with it. React’s flow without its weird quirks.
I think Svelte is next step towards feeling as natural as possible.
The joke is that nearly everything these libraries/frameworks do is complicate what used to be simple
This is not true. The higher complexity of frameworks is unarguable, but it reflects the higher complexity of modern web apps. The reality is that React/Vue/Svelte achieve things that are simply infeasible with e.g. the LAMP stack or jQuery.
All these things are solving different problems and you absolutely don’t have to use them if they complicate your current workflow.
I can’t imagine making a high interval trading app, things like notion or figma without modern libraries.
jQuery only gets you so far before you will wake up in unmaintainable hell where your team has to re-invent the wheel
You don’t need any of that, not even jquery, to display static content, or even to make a decent commerce page (shopping, booking, tickets). I would wager the vast majority of the internet does not need to work like Figma or Notion (or old timey chatrooms, for that matter), with real time changes being sent to all connected sessions.
