Podcast – How to survive and embrace new frameworks


  • Share on Pinterest

Season 1 Episode 19

We live in a time when software development tools are rapidly evolving. This has both a positive and negative impact on us as developers.

If you look at Web development, for example, there is the joke ‘What new Javascript framework got released this week?”.

And while there is truth in the joke, there is also maybe a hidden sting in there as well. So many new ones are joining the mature stack that it can not only be impossible to keep up. But, at times, know which one you should use.

Here are my tips for surviving the fear of missing out and screwing up.

For production, use a stack or framework that is both mature and familiar. Because when everything goes wrong, you need to know that there is a community and plenty of resources out there to solve your production problems quickly and reliably.

Avoid cutting-edge releases and jump on the “everyone is using it” bandwagon. This is another surefire way to encounter problems at the most inconvenient times. You don’t want to upset customers with downtime and breaking changes.

It is fine to embrace and try out new frameworks and tools but put them in that “just playing around” bucket for now until you are comfortable with them and they are stable. For example, I lived through the Swift version one to three years, where change was the only constant.

If you feel you must use the new hotness, do so sparingly and gradually. As developers, we think nothing of re-writing from the ground up, but stop and look at the time and resources you spend on doing so. Think beyond the developer mindset to a more product management approach. Are there bugs you should be working on instead of a rewrite?

An example of gradually moving to an updated framework is React. I recently started converting a React-Native application from a class-based approach to the new recommended functional approach. Thankfully this was something that could be implemented over time and multiple releases.

Finally, as you look at new technologies. Document everything you discover. You will thank yourself later when you need to remember something. I love the developer journal idea. That’s why I started blogging as an online reference for myself. It’s amusing when I do a Web search and find my content with a solution I forgot about, and it’s also a little embarrassing.

I’d love to get some feedback and thoughts from you on this.

Let’s help each other improve and move forward together.