I agree, strongly. Lately, I've been involved in the shift from server-side MVC with a sprinkling of javascript to web services API with javascript based front end. I'm inclined to to with rails-api, and probably Ember on the front end, but it's a moving target, and I tend to agree with people who say this has led to a very complicated stack with too much duplication (routing on front and back end, and so forth). But should I use React, Angular? Should I write the backend in node? My current guess that the trend toward "isomorphic" systems will probably resolve this, but again, that's just a guess.
What can I say? There is a tremendous amount of reading, trying, cursing, debugging, evaluating, forecasting what will be valuable later. Some of it is churn, true, and it is unnecessarily complex, but what isn't? (tax law, anyone?) Simplifying things is in itself a huge organizational, social, and mental challenge. All in all, it's pushed me past the edge of my abilities, and I constantly feel very ordinary in this field.
What can I say? There is a tremendous amount of reading, trying, cursing, debugging, evaluating, forecasting what will be valuable later. Some of it is churn, true, and it is unnecessarily complex, but what isn't? (tax law, anyone?) Simplifying things is in itself a huge organizational, social, and mental challenge. All in all, it's pushed me past the edge of my abilities, and I constantly feel very ordinary in this field.