A Review of “Frameworkless Front-End Development”

The moment I saw the title, I bought it as if under a spell. That’s because the title struck right at the heart of one of my current concerns. These days, it has become hard to even imagine front-end development without a framework. Frameworks are so powerful that they make development easy, convenient, and fast. Just a few years ago, jQuery was all there was to front-end development, so it feels like a different era. That’s how fast this field changes. Right now React and Vue.js are dominant, but the landscape can shift at any time. On top of that, the pace at which each framework releases new versions is incredibly fast. This is what people commonly call JavaScript fatigue.

It’s not just future change that’s the problem. The past is a problem too. As recently as 2017, just three years ago, I was developing with Angular 1. As of January 2021, the latest version of Angular is 11. Over the course of a whopping 10 major version upgrades, the framework’s appearance has changed dramatically. Now, every time I look at the source code of an app I built with Angular 1 in the past, it’s painful. And that’s true even though I loved and praised Angular 1 so much. Vue.js is no different. I feel the pressure of having to upgrade to Vue.js 3. What on earth am I supposed to do about all this?

The decision to pursue frameworkless front-end development came out of this context. Rather than suffering from JavaScript fatigue, the idea is to build only the parts you really need yourself. I agree to a certain extent. If I build it myself, I can maintain it myself! And for someone like me, who has always dreamed of building a framework, it’s an even more interesting endeavor.

So what is this book actually about? In the end, you wind up building a framework yourself. You implement an SPA, you implement a virtual DOM, and you implement a router. As a result, trying to implement it on your own without the book is fairly challenging. Fortunately, the book’s explanation of the source code is quite friendly, so it reads smoothly. It was a chance to examine corners of JS and HTML that I usually just glossed over. It also went a long way toward clearing up the questions I’d had back when I dug through Vue.js’s source code.

It’s been a while since I read such an enjoyable and worthwhile book. I recommend it to all front-end developers!

20210128