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Ask HN: Does a front-end JavaScript framework impact team structure / behavior?

4 points by markwillcollins ↗ HN
Our team is going to start using AngularJs and I’m keen to understand what (if any) impacts these frameworks could have on the team and how best to deal with them.

I’m pretty confident there will be learning curve to deal with, but also potentially more separation of skills.

Great to understand people’s experiences and how to best organise the team and dev process to better use these frameworks.

5 comments

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ing33k
this will have a high impact on the complete dev process ( at least in the beginning ).

I cannot really offer exact things you can use , but I can share some insights , as we are also in a similar situation.

As you have mentioned that its Angular.js project , I am assuming you will have an internal API , make sure there is a clear API Doc .

For inspiration :

https://github.com/wordnik/swagger-spec

http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html#!/

You really cannot expect a backend developer to learn Angular.js just like that.

I hear this a lot, "I have completed the back end work and waiting for the front end guys to do it" .( can be the other way also , but they can always use mocks ). This is where proper planning has to be done.

it will be good to have a generalist who can contribute to both the front end and back end.

will try to add more info after a while .

markwillcollins
Yeah, I have been worried that it could divide our team a bit - front-end vs back-end, which I'm keen to avoid. I like the idea of having a generalist that can help build that bridge. Thanks!
auganov
It definitely has some impact. From my [limited] experience it seems you'll need one person to really deeply understand Angular to be your team guru and Angular advocate. Angular might take a bit to grasp. If you'll have every teammate only sort-of know what's going on it will create a lot of trouble. That's surely not exclusive to Angular but from what I experienced it's easier to get away with nasty hacks in other frameworks. Did all team members agree to use it? My primary concern would be how each team member will like it, especially if they have prior front-end dev experience.
markwillcollins
Good point about getting a guru. We are all a bit new to it, but a good friend of mine is a guru and will help training. But this strategy has its risks. Not everyone was fully supportive, particularly a person who works mainly on back-end. Perhaps we've been a bit too directive and might need to get more support first
thoughtpalette
Definitely need one person intimate with the framework or they'll be a lot of mistakes made along the way. The backend guy (if he's not working on FE) should just be building an API for the Service/HTTP calls. He should have a very easy time. There is a lot of communication between the BE dev and FE dev on Models though. We'd usually have our FE guys implement a mock model for testing and implement it in (at the time) C#.