

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

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.<p>I’m pretty confident there will be learning curve to deal with, but also potentially more separation of skills.<p>Great to understand people’s experiences and how to best organise the team and dev process to better use these frameworks.
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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.

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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#.

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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](https://github.com/wordnik/swagger-
spec)

[http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html#!/](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!

