A Few Paragraphs on Angular 2

Posted on by Rob Larsen

Look! I’m back! I may end up writing here more often that I have over the past couple of years as I’m significantly cutting back on the amount of time I spend on Twitter. If you’ve enjoyed me saying “get off my lawn” on Twitter over the past few months, you’ll have to come here to read those thoughts. There is the benefit of paragraphs and formatting on the site, so there’s that. If you’re curious what the hell I’m talking about, this tweet-storm is a great example. That kind of stuff will live here now, if the mood strikes me.

The mood has struck! Read on!

I just finished up a long-term consulting gig and, while I’m kicking off a shorter-term a project for another long-term client, I’m also looking to set up my next big project. That’s the big question for me right now- what am I going to be doing for 2017?

As part of that process, I’m finally going to do a deep dive into Angular 2. I worked with it a little bit at my last client, but that’s not really enough for me to really feel like I know it. People are interested in it. I’m interested in it. So… I’m looking at it.

I’m starting with Switching to Angular 2. I’ve got a bunch of Angular 1.* experience so a book written for people looking to move from 1 to 2 seems like a decent place to start.

Between the book and the exposure I had to it on my previous project, my initial take is that it feels like everything that’s right and wrong about the web all wrapped up into one package.

It’s “right” in that it’s really well put together. The general framework architecture combined with the use of TypeScript make it a very compelling alternative for certain types of applications and teams. Like Angular 1 before it, it works for me for some things.

It’s “wrong” in that it’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense for most of what people actually need to do on the web.

Modern web development is generally too damn complicated for its own good. That complexity is heightened by the interconnected, patchwork nature of modern front end development. If you buy into this mode of development you are relying on a matrix of software that no human could possibly vet. You’re basically acknowledging you’re going to live with random bugs, dependency issues, and reams of alpha software you’re supposed to trust going into production.

Angular 2 is exactly that.

On my first project with Angular 2, I experienced weeks of flaky builds as the development landscape shifted randomly underneath us. Many dependencies were also flaky and/or barely maintained. So much fun! Once the builds stabilized, I was flabbergasted to take a look at how much code was required to run the application. node_modules had over 1000 dependencies and our main.bundle.js was over 4.5MB. This was for a read-only application. It didn’t even do anything. I can’t help but think that’s ridiculous. For complicated, large-scale applications I can see the benefits, but for something simple… holy cow that’s a lot of code to solve the kinds of problems I was able to solve with a few hundred KB of pure JavaScript in 2006.

More on it as I get deeper into this dive.

On a final, related note, I’m really interested in exploring a way to marry the best of modern web development with a more stable, accessible (in both senses) and minimalist approach. There’s got to be something more appropriate for smaller applications and general “web” development.

Happy Birthday Palatino Consulting!

Posted on by Rob Larsen

My business turned two years old on Friday. Yay my business!

So, how’s it been?

Great.

It’s truly been a joy working for myself over the past two years. I really wish I’d done it sooner.

One thing that’s been a negative is the fact that I haven’t done any writing or speaking engagements since The Uncertain Web was released. It’s a bummer, but that’s the way it’s gone. I’ve been busy with paid work and, to be honest, I was a bit burned out from writing three books in three years, so a long break has been good for me.

I’ve actually got a pretty big backlog of ideas to go through. There’s been a lot of bullshit flowing through front end development over the past couple of years and I have “big thoughts” on all of it. Considering how busy I’ve been so far in 2016, I doubt that I’ll get a change to write about it, but if I do, I promise I’ll make you laugh.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work with a variety of technologies over the past couple of years, so I have opinions (real, working opinions) on just about everything out there right now. That’s fun and would be fun to share.

We’ll see.

(Don’t hold your breath, though!)

One thing that I have kept up with is open source work. I haven’t been a demon or anything, but I have been knocking off some work pretty consistently over this year especially. That’s always fun.

One thing I should mention is that I occasionally need some development help. I’m especially interested in WordPress, Angular and pure HTML+CSS freelancers. Shoot me an email if that sounds like you.

Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results

Posted on by Rob Larsen

Here I am taking a shot at shorter form writing. Watch me write!

The biggest job/career related error I made this past year was going against my own policy and talking to a company I had a bad feeling about from the beginning. I’ve actually known about this company for a long time and think poorly of them. The thing is, a recruiter came along and told me how much they were paying for a high profile role they were trying to source. That number was higher than the honestly very high number I have in my head to go work for someone else at this point. So, against my better judgment and against my own stated policy of not talking to people unless I’m sure the company will be a good fit, I talked to them.

I’m a dumb-ass.

The one part of the conversation that sticks with me is the “big” question in the interview. Apparently, they’ve got a lot of separate development teams who have worked in multiple versions of Angular on different components that have to play nice together on the same page. As you can imagine that has caused problems. Apparently, they’re also kicking off some development using React. With that cluster in mind, they asked, how would I help solve the issues they were having with all these interoperability concerns at an architectural level.

My answer was simple. I said, “Stop doing that. Don’t use React and standardize on one Angular version.”

I could hear the frustration in the interviewer’s voice as he said, “that’s not really an option” as if pointing out the obvious solution to their self-inflicted problem was an insult to him personally. I could tell he wanted to hear some hair-brained technical solution (“I know we’ll write REACTANGULAR and it will normalize across all Angular versions”) that would rescue them from a disaster of their own making, without having to do hard work. He lead me down that path a little with some follow-up questions. The thing is, that’s precisely the kind of bullshit is never going to come out of my mouth. I wasn’t going to blow smoke up his ass just so that he can ignore the obvious solution. To me, when you’re doing something so fundamentally wrong, the best solution is to bite the bullet and do something fundamentally right to counteract it.

How they thought introducing an entire second library to the mix was a good idea is something that will forever confound me. They’ve already identified this as a problem and they’re willingly making it more complex. That’s insanity.

Suffice it to say, they didn’t like me for the role.

So many companies are obsessed with being on latest and greatest libraries and frameworks. If, like this company, you want to be a great engineering organization you should focus on doing great work. If you’re architecture is a patchwork monster it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the new and shiny. You’ve just got a new and shiny patchwork monster.

Palatino Consulting, One Year In

Posted on by Rob Larsen

While I’ve been consulting independently for slightly more than a year, I’ve been doing so under the Palatino Consulting banner for exactly one year, this week.

It’s been going pretty well, thanks for asking.

I’m at the point now where I’m starting to think about whether or not I want to expand this business to include more than just me. The opportunity is there (and has been since day one, to be honest), I’m just not sure if that’s the way I want to go. I like my simple life right now, but I do miss having a team to work with so I’m tempted to start to expand. Maybe, like the founding of the business itself, I’ll be forced into a decision one way or another by some circumstance. At least in this case it will be positive (some opportunity I can’t pass up) rather than negative (getting laid off.)

The one downside to the success is that I’ve had a hard time finding time to write . Which is fine on a lot of levels as I like what I’m doing and working for myself makes even the longest week a lot more satisfying. This is especially true because, unlike many people putting in 60 hour weeks, I get paid for every minute of my time.

Fireworks
Fireworks by Flickr user maf04

Still, I’d like to share more here as a lot of what I talk about in the book is still going strong, but I’ve found it hard to get into the flow of writing again after 3 or so years writing books back-to-back. We’ll see how it goes. I may try to take some baby steps with short pieces and see if the habit sticks.

If not, remember- I’ve still got the web’s back.

Current Status: For Hire

Posted on by Rob Larsen

My current long-term consulting gig is ending at the end of June and, being a fan of managing uncertainty (did you see how I did that?) I’m trying to line something up for the summer sooner rather than later. I’m sure I’ll find something (I’ve got recruiters knocking down my door), but I’m also interested in finding something that will be fun and/or challenging so I’m making a concerted effort to let the world know.

If you’re interested you can check out the small site for my consulting business

I’m on LinkedIn

View Rob Larsen's LinkedIn profileView Rob Larsen’s profile

This is what I do

  • Front End Architecture
  • Training
  • Front end development, with a focus on the following:
    • General JavaScript and jQuery development
    • AngularJS applications and components
    • RWD (Responsive web design) development
    • Mobile web sites and applications
    • Web performance consulting
    • Pixel perfect CSS layouts
  • Process and standards development

Drop me a line if you’re interested