21–30 of 45 posts
I think there's never been a better time to be a JS developer. JS is now everywhere. It runs on browsers, it runs on servers, it runs on mobile devices. You can use it as a scripting language if you really hate python and ruby. You can compile it to webassembly. There's game engines that use JS. Typescript is great as JS projects grow larger and more complex (if you can get over the fact that reading complex types is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comfort and familiarity with a variety of languages is always a nice to have for a professional developer, but if the hypothetical oracle said the opposite, that focusing on JS would indeed limit OP's professional options, then that would be a much more compelling reason to go learn some Golang or whatever than just intellectual curiosity.
yeah "better programmer overall" seems rather vague. The OP seems to be asking specifically "is it even worth it to stay in JS anymore", not "how do i become a well-rounded individual". I personally prefer to hedge my bets by doing both backend and frontend work. If you join a smaller place/startup, you may end up having to push both. Saying, "I can build anything and I can help across the entire stack where needed"…
There will, for the next decade and likely the next two decades, be several million jobs that are using the Javascript ecosystem. (out of ~30M programmers worldwide). If OP (or anyone else) is happy enough working in that ecosystem and concerned only about ongoing employability, finding a way to be in the top 10% of Javascript programmers is more than sufficient. (Being in the top 25% is probably more than sufficient.)
If you start from a base case of 10K hours of JS experience, are you better off with that or instead having 9K hours of JS, 250 of a lisp, 250 of Java/C#, 250 of golang/rust, and 250 of SQL? I think the latter candidate is far more likely to be able to succeed and thrive in the JS world than someone with the "extra" 1K hours of JS experience.
I think you choose JS or not based on whether you like working in JS, then if you choose it, you find a way to maximize your chances for success, which I think is "something different from JS and happens to be 'become a well-rounded individual'."
As a hiring manager who looks at a lot of resumes, I think your hunch is correct. I see a lot of junior to mid-level developers that primarily work in JS/TS/React. That market is heavily saturated and I regularly read posts on LinkedIn from these people about how difficult it is to find a job. The candidates that stand out from the pack are those with some tangible production backend experience in languages like C#,…
I would do those projects, add them to my cv and apply to backend roles for example.
Just saying I was king of JS, but left my realm to become an aspiring pythonista with 20 forked repo PRs and an "amazing" personal project won't cut it. As a tech hiring manager, if and when I cared about your internet presence, it was because of a somewhat popular Github repo or elaborate community activity. Anything else sounded like you were trying to divert my attention, or just not that focused on your work, or, if anything, GH repo work is just too difficult to verify as authentic or may instead work against you.
You can however beef-up your resume with good lower level languages, specially if they compile to wasm, ie Rust. In fact any skill that could be in an employer roadmap, ie "experience migrating to Next.js" makes a great asset for your resume.
maybe anecdotal but in my experience there is no saturation in devs who are doing things properly. im in a multinational company in a billion dollar industry yet our frontend code is reactjs without typescript, eslint misconfigured, stylelint not used, bad practices on use of react hooks, and many more. there are teams and devs that are out of touch on maximizing what tools are available out there. im not even saying…
"yet our frontend code is reactjs without typescript" I don't blame them. I hate Typescript. Worked on projects at a major gaming company, no typescript necessary.
However, if the JS build system was actually sane, TS would be the default choice. It's a superset of JS, so saying no typescript necessary is like saying a horse gets me from a to b, no need for cars. TS is objectively better for many use cases and situation if you spend an hour learning it without all the build tooling nonsense getting in the way.
It's equivalent to a company using assembly when they could choose to port to C because assembly gets the job done.
The JS world makes my head spin - can't properly keep up with best practices and tools. I've always seen iOS and Android development as being very secure and some of the hardest positions to fill.
The JS world makes my head spin - can't properly keep up with best practices and tools. I've always seen iOS and Android development as being very secure and some of the hardest positions to fill.
Would you say it's worth getting into native Android development as a junior or they only want seniors to fill these positions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say it's worth getting into native Android development as a junior or they only want seniors to fill these positions.
Def worth getting into, and if you can't secure an Android job, at least you know Java, which isn't going away anytime soon. Def try and have a portfolio of non-trivial apps you could share during the hiring process.
I don't know if this is actually a niche, but since I don't see it mentioned frequently on HN, perhaps you could have a look at Google Apps Script [0], which is basically JS for automating and extending Google Docs (Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides), and integrating them into GCP. Tons of companies have whole departments living inside Google Docs, so I imagine they would pay for software making their lives easier. I would but I currently don't have the budget for it, so I am writing short scripts myself. Curiously, Bard and ChatGPT produce really bad Apps Scripts code, which would be to your advantage.
When I occasionally hire people, I do look at their repos to see how good they are in a specific language. Specifically, how easy to follow and idiomatic their code is, what the quality of their comments and documentation is, are there any tests, even if very rudimentary. I particularly enjoy original projects like home automation, custom keyboard firmware, an alternative Netflix UI, a ggplot extension, a basic Python wrapper for some overly-complicated API vs. your typical to-do app or yet another analysis of the Bike Sharing dataset. I don't expect all people to have public repos or FLOSS contributions because not everyone has the time for that. However, if you wanted to demonstrate skills in a technology you haven't used professionally, I think it is a good idea.
I think there's never been a better time to be a JS developer. JS is now everywhere. It runs on browsers, it runs on servers, it runs on mobile devices. You can use it as a scripting language if you really hate python and ruby. You can compile it to webassembly. There's game engines that use JS. Typescript is great as JS projects grow larger and more complex (if you can get over the fact that reading complex types is…