Do JavaScript libraries change too often?

Question

Someone recent told me that JavaScript libraries, particularly Node.js libraries change fasted than an ADHD squirrel and another friend says she thinks that's not so much to be functional, but to keep them in the public eye, because that's how the market works.

Do people find this to be true and if so, is the speed of change actually resulting in significant benefits that make it worth the effort to keep up?

Answer 1

Yeah every year there's another js framework that's "so innovative and will stay around like forever man".*
I just tend to write vanilla javascript for my home projects and use whatever my employer/co-programmers want me to use for others. By knowing vanilla js well you can adapt to frameworks very quickly.

I don't think that the framework craze is completely pointless though. Javascript is a pretty broken language, and the frameworks usually do a good job of trying to fix it. Around 20% of underscore.js and like half of jQuery eventually made their way into vanilla javascript, which is great! Thanks to nodejs and webpack we'll be getting `require` in the browser soon.

*EDIT: Just last year I heard everyone say that react will be all javascript from now on because it's got big corporate backing (facebook) and now everyone is jumping on vue.js. The irony!