SOTSOG 2019

It's been quite a while since I last did a SOTSOG awards ceremony but there have definitely been some standouts for Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants this year. So without any further ado:

React.js

I wouldn't consider building a front-end with anything else. Hooks have been a game-changer, taking the declarative approach to the next level.

Apollo GraphQL

Version 2.x of the reference GraphQL client library brought vast improvements, and the React Hooks support fits in beautifully. Combine it with top-notch documentation and you've got a stone-cold winner for efficient and elegant data communications.

Next.js and now.sh

The dynamic duo from Zeit have almost-instantly become my go-to for insanely-quick prototyping and deployment. The built-in Lambda deployment system is ridiculously good. Just try it - it's free.

Honourable Mentions

Typescript and ES6

For making JavaScript feel like a grown-up language. Real compile-time type safety and protection from the dreaded undefined is not a function, the functional goodness of map(), reduce() and Promises without pain.

Visual Studio Code

Two Microsoft products getting a nod?!? Amazing to see - a stunning turnaround this decade from Redmond. VSCode has simply exploded onto most developers' launch bars thanks to its speed, flexibility, incredible rate of feature development and enormous plugin community. At this price point, it's very hard to look further for an IDE.

React: 24 years' experience ;-)

I wrote my first HTML page in 1995. Unfortunately I don't have a copy, but given the era you can be pretty confident it would have consisted of a wall of Times New Roman text in sizes h1, h2 and p broken up with some <hr>s, a repeated background image in a tiled style, and, down at the bottom of the page, an animated Under Construction GIF.

My mind turns to that first img tag I placed on the page. I would have Yahoo-ed or AltaVista-ed (we're well before the Googles, remember) for a reference on HTML syntax, and awkwardly vi-ed this line into existence:

  <img src="images/undercon.gif" width="240" height="80">

Undoubtedly I would have forgotten a double-quote or two, got the filename wrong and/or messed up the sizing at first, but eventually, my frustrated bash of the [F5] key would have shown the desired result in Netscape Navigator, and delivered me a nice little dopamine hit to boot. I learnt something, I built something, and it worked. Addictive.

24 years later while reflecting on how far we've come in many areas, I've just realised one of the many reasons why I enjoy developing React.js apps so much. Here's a random snippet of JSX, the XML-like syntax extension that is a key part of React:

  <CancelButton bg="red" color="white" width="6em" />

Seem a little familiar?

One of the most successful parts of the React world is the "component model" which strives to break pages down into small, composable, testable elements, combined with a "declarative style" where, to quote React demigod Dan Abramov:

"we can describe the process at all points in time simultaneously"

If you've written any HTML before, writing JSX feels totally frictionless, because the <img> tag has been encapsulating complex behaviour (namely, converting a simple string URL into a web request, dealing with errors, and rendering the successfully-fetched data as a graphical image with the desired attributes) in a declarative way, since 1993.

And it turns out to have been another web god, Marc Andreessen, who originally suggested the basic form of the <img> tag. Truly we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

SOTSOG 2013H1

Some cool stuff that makes life way easier to do webapps in 2013:

• Play! Framework 2.1 - Scala, Hit-refresh recompilation, built-in LESS, proper request routing (no annotations!) and no XML. Nuff said.
• LESS CSS - Does a great job of de-repetitioning CSS.
• Angular.JS - the most unobtrusive client-side framework I've ever used - just feels like "dynamic HTML"

Also (not yet used, but fully intend to):

• Grunt
• GruntStart
• play-grunt-angular-prototype

I note that in 2013, Standing on the Shoulders Of Giants is more like Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Standing on the Shoulders of Giants - all of the above technologies build on something a bit older, a bit cruftier, a bit trickier.
Have we finally hit the Industrial Revolution in software development?

SotSoG 2010 Hall of Fame

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

When I first moved back from The Dark Side to the world of Java, I was astonished at the vibrant software ecosystem that had grown up around Sun's baby. When I left the Java world at the end of the 20th century, the JDK 1.2 JARs were pretty-much all I knew.

Cut to 2005 and The Apache Project has gone ballistic, churning out libraries for just-about everything and an industry-standard servlet container. There are more app servers, JDBC drivers, XML parsers and webapp frameworks than be conceived by a sane mind, and SourceForge is hosting literally thousands more useful Java projects.

Some of the projects we all take for granted in the Java world represent many thousands of development and testing hours. Truly we stand on the shoulders of giants when our own projects succeed thanks to their hard work and generosity.

Some projects more than others really make Java development a pleasure, and hence I'm calling them out for the inaugural Millhouse Group SotSoG Awards (actual prize is nothing except a warm fuzzy feeling for those involved...)

• The Spring Framework - Still the defacto IoC framework of choice, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg...
• Apache Maven - Yes, it enforces a standard project layout. And that's the way I like it.
• Eclipse IDE - A hulking great beast of an IDE. Plugins for stuff that hasn't even been thought of yet. And still totally free.
• Apache Tomcat - Still my choice, and getting better every release.
• Mockito - a lovely, fluent mocking API that itself stands on the shoulders of EasyMock!

All of these projects deserve their own blog posts, and will get them in time. But in the meantime, if you're not familiar with any of the above, Google them up and give 'em a go! Enjoy the view.