Picking a Framework

[00:00:00]
>> Big picture questions when you're considering picking a library or framework, like what's the lifespan of your project? Is this gonna have to live forever, are you gonna need something really robust in years to come? Or is this a smaller experiment where maybe you can live on the bleeding edge a little bit more?

[00:00:18]
Yeah, what's the lifespan, what's the roadmap for the library that we're evaluating, what's their funding model, were they just acquired? Gatsby was just acquired by Netlify and nobody knows what's gonna happen with it, maybe not the best choice right now. Sorry, sorry, people, still love you. But think about that, what's the state of it, has it been around for a while but it's kind of dying?

[00:00:43]
Do an honest assessment of that, cuz there are some risks associated with picking a library that's on its way out, and that is hard to predict. I mean people have been thinking React's gonna go down and it's still super solid, it's partly cuz I think a lot of us love it, but some people don't.

[00:00:59]
So these are all pretty subjective questions. But in terms of business we have to think about longevity, what our goals are, what are the risks. Who's maintaining this library, what's the state of their issue tracker code base? Can you do a partnership, you're a big enterprise, can you pay those open source people to fast track your issues?

[00:01:23]
I've seen that kinda thing happen, partnerships, there's stuff like that with axe-core, so you can fast track getting your issues. Microsoft, and axe-core, and Deque, they work together, that's how Accessibility Insights came about. So these are all things, as a tech lead or in leadership we should be thinking about these kinds of questions.

[00:01:44]
And then look for accessibility APIs within the framework to help make your decision. React has refs, there's use ID, all the testing libraries and things. Vue has template refs, Ember has somewhat of an accessibility culture. Angular, I think you're kinda more on your own, unfortunately.