Context

Before I decided to take my front-end journey to the next-level, I felt reticent to dive into JS frameworks for a long time. It appeared as an overwhelming engagement into learning if someone is not 100% into it, and it is in some way.

Nowadays, I guess almost all the front-end community embraced working with JS frameworks to sustain and ease all the cumbursome work we need to deliver modern web applications.

Learning those tools is a both enjoyable and exhausting thing, as it brings an insane amount of abstractions to memorize and practice.

Vue

I started with Vue in early 2019. I worked as a solo developer and I chose something with an easy learning curve.

I enjoyed it a lot and quickly jumped on Nuxt, as I needed to render static pages.

I quickly tested Quasar as I was into Cordova at this time, but it didn't suit my needs at the end.

Then I tried and adopted Gridsome for more than a year, as it perfectly suited my needs for simple static web pages. But I often found myself struggling with the GraphQL layer and lack of working third party tools.

React

Two years has passed, and I considered finding a job in a company. I realized React was still the king on the job market, so I decided to learn it to be more employable. Same as Vue, I switched almost immediately on Next as static sites and landing pages were still on the table.

I totally embraced Next and it's powerful capacities regarding ISR and other very advanced deployment patterns. I loved the community and energy around it and I still love it.

Svelte

I heard from Svelte from a while and didn't consider learning a new tech until I finally got convinced about the simplified developer experience it brings, in comparison of all the over-engeneered and weird abstractions brought by React (yes, useEffect and all the stuff ^^).

I'm still on the phase of building a first solid project to hone my skills on it. It's to early to take a stock at the time, but my first impression is I really feel like writing component as an easier experience with its lightened syntax.

The result is the same but the flow is more enjoyable so far.

Future?

As I'm actively following front-end dev, I'm aware of all the shiny toys that span here and there on a regular basis (Remix, Solid, Fresh, Deno, Eleventy, Qwik, Astro...), hard to position one-self into those.

As my experience grows, it feels easier and easier to jump from one tool to another, but there's still a lot of frictions at the beginning, the time to get used to the nitty-gritty of each solution.

I don't aim to experience every tool as some does. At the end, I'm just attracted by the promises on finding the best technical solution to deliver products in an enjoyable way.

I think there will always new paradigm that will get me to switch from a tool to another as time goes by.

I just think this switching pace is a bit too fast as I never felt mastering something enough so far.

Let's see how Svelte will maybe pave the way of this front-end journey for the upcoming times...