I get NPM for backend development but I don't understand why frontend developers require NodeJS just to utilize it's package management. It really does not make any sense to me considering that NodeJS is server side javascript. If my backend is Python or Go or .NET or Java or whatever, now I'll need NodeJS for the frontend and only for NPM (and now this). It's a reason why I don't enjoy dealing with "modern" frontend technologies.
It doesn't make sense to require a backend tool for frontend technologies. That's just me though. So that's why I'm asking. Couldn't they just create a package system that's not based on some backend tech?
If you're writing a tool that's written in Javascript, you need an implementation of Javascript to make it work. Node, while focused on being "Javascript on the server", is also a really convenient way to get going with a Javascript runtime.
So yeah, in theory, you could create a whole 'nother binding to a runtime just for front-end tooling. Nobody's found node lacking enough to do that.
I guess I don't understand. How would you fetch/build/etc frontend JS files without some sort of backend technology?
(Also don't forget that frontend JS has to target dozens of subtly different browsers, so we unfortunately need to "build" JS files to account for backwards compatibility, etc)
We have that and it's called `bower`. We moved away from it because having two package managers to manage javascript (one for front-end and one for back-end) is more insane than the issue you described.
developers use node to compile whatever version of javascript they are using with a version that will run in most browsers without issues. It's also useful when concatenating and minifying assets. It's called an asset pipeline where you build a release, just like when you compile and package your Java,.NET or Go code before deploying it. Now of course javascript is a dynamic language and should not need all that stuff ... in theory ... but for some reasons developers love complexity. You can design the most simple system the most simple language, developers will find way to add layers of layers of complexity one way or another ... before going back to square one. It's interesting you are talking about Go. right now Go is quite simple, You bet your ass it will look like Java in 10 years just like Javascript is becoming more and more complex with tons of tools, transpilers and what not.
I blanket block every ad (or whatever the list currently has). If a site has ads, I'll manually block those too. I'll go into their code and find their ad service url and add it into my list. I'll do whatever it takes to remove them, regardless if its simple or not. I do not want to see them and I will continue to visit those sites. I just wish a good adblocker would come to mobile because I'd use it there as well.
And I respectfully disagree. I don't enjoy ads, I never click on them even if the item is something I'd use at the time, I will not click on it. I'll just go to amazon or whatever and get it there. I will never, ever click on an ad. So I'd rather not even see them.
Clicking on ads isnt necessary. A vast amount of ads are paid on an impression basis and I can guarantee that you've been affected by the advertising you've come across in your life.
This is one of the most data-driven industries on the planet and there are petabytes of data generated every day showing how well it works.
That's cool. I never said I wasn't affected. Just that I don't click on them. Ever. Like I said, I'd go to amazon or drive somewhere before I click ANY internet ad. And thus far, I have never clicked on one... willingly.
I have. Back in the days when Google had those little unobtrusive text-only ads to the right of the search results, I clicked on those once in a while, and they were actually really useful! If advertising were all like that, we wouldn't be having these arguments.
Your mistaken, and this opinion is what the second sentence was for; just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know anything. FTL is likely not physically possible. That's not to say it's impossible, just that it's not likely given the vast number of things we do know about physics.
Wouldn't that just make the code more confusing? You'd get some random name that doesn't mean anything to what its intended purpose is. Keeping the simple 'a-z' scheme the beautifier does allows people to not use the variable name as a descriptor of what it handles.
