We're all building a client-side framework. And they're all different implementations of the same stuff. A while back I tweeted this. https://twitter.com/polotek/status/339852946508505089
"When it comes down to it, everybody is building variants of the same MVCish framework. We should be talking about the shared patterns."
I want to explore the shared patterns that we all use to build our front-end apps. Patterns like the following.
- Representing a list of data items. Updating the view when the list updates.
- Rendering nested views.
- Data binding, e.g. automatic UI updates
- Controlling when and how the UI gets re-rendered on data updates
- Handling the loading state, where you've requested data and you're waiting to get it back.
- Storing data client-side to achieve more responsive UI.
- Real-time updates that get reflected in your UI.
I want to compare the approaches that popular frameworks take to solving these patterns. If they even try to solve them at all. I also want to include info about the custom framework that Yammer uses. It'll be illustrative to see how all of these have different approaches to the same set of patterns. Finally, I want to encourage a movement to focus on the patterns themselves. This is what the community needs to do in order to really start converging on a shared set of solutions, rather than continue the proliferation of frameworks.