When you should not pick EmberJS as your next front-end tool
Disclaimer: In this article, the point is not to deprecate other front-end solutions. The main goal is to point out that there is no one single technology that fits every context, i.e. every use case, every project or every development team.
Keep an open mind
Freedom does matter!
If your main goal is just to extend an existing application by adding some extra Javascript to it and you are looking for some fancy tool to do so, EmberJS might be an overkill for the job . Why? In most such cases, you will need a tool for building a dynamic user interface. In that case, you can use for example ReactJS. It will give you much more freedom. You will not have to spend your time working on a sophisticated solution dedicated for Single Page Applications (SPA) such as EmberJS and you can thus deliver a feature faster. If you do not know yet what you will need in the future, the solution should stay as thin as possible and EmberJS is not the best choice for you. EmberJS is more like a ready to use Swiss Knife, but it does not mean you always have to be prepared for a nuclear war.
You are a rebel
Following every single rule is not an option. EmberJS is not the best place for being a rebel. Of course, even if you use EmberJS you can mess things up inside your application, but because it has plenty of conventions, it is much more difficult to spoil things than with other solutions. Do you like to do whatever you want? In EmberJS you can’t. With EmberJS you have some rules that you will just need to follow.
You like to code
It may sound strange but thanks to EmberJS your coding is limited to the minimum. As I mentioned before, EmberJS is like a Swiss Knife. It has tonnes of built-in solutions and thanks to that, in many cases, you do not have to code too much to achieve your goals. For instance, if you want to start using JSON API, GraphQL or FireBase, all you have to do is to replace the adapter of the application. The adapter connects your data source (API) to the local data storage. When you follow the conventions, all of this happens auto-magically — just like that. If you like to write a lot of code, reinvent the wheel, EmberJS is not the best choice for you.
To conclude, we should always look for a right tool to do the job at hand. From my experience, EmberJS is one of the best choices for building a SPA at the moment. But before you pick the tool, ask yourself the key question: Am I really building a SPA right now?
Please, share your thoughts/questions in the comments and don’t forget to like the post.
