Ask HN: Why are front end developers (esp React) in such high demand in 2022?

I would say that Frontend development in general (HTML+CSS) and the whole javascript ecosystem are a nightmare of patches on top of other patches, and endless exceptions and small components whose sole job is to plug some hole from a different technology under it. You need endless people and bruteforce to build on it and provide more value for the end user.

In comparison, Backend can turn bad sometimes, but a well designed, small Backend component can produce endless value and easy extensibility. I've never seen anything similar in Frontend.

I would say it's not so much about good or bad design, and more about which kinds of decisions, how many moving parts, and what consequences they have down the line. Like on backend you will have a choice of database, choice of language, and the design of the Schema/API, most of which are easy to detach and replace at some point.

While on Frontend from the beginning, specially i you are working with a team, you will have to make a lot of small decisions that can cause all kinds of trouble down the line:

- How you build the project, javascript transpilers and all that mess.

- Decide a CSS framework, or not use a framework and then decide on an internal style guide.

- Decide on a component library.

- Decide on how to handle state.

Or you can skip those above and use pure HTML+CSS+Javascript, but those usually end up as very spaguettified and idiosyncratic projects, I rarely see anyone even considering it unless it's a personal project. And for a good reason, the structure provided by component and state handling libraries reduces a lot of the inherent chaos that is structuring frontend web project. But each of those also comes with its own bag of new problems, and complexity that requires the developers to handle a lot of disparate information in their heads while working on a project.

There are 3 aspects in my opinion:

1- Companies understanding that a good user-interface is a must for their product. HN crowd are known for being anti-JavaScript, but modern web-apps are incredibly powerful and useful. This means you can't make your back-end developer glue together a JSP and call it a day anymore. So front-end overall is in high demand.

2- React helped standardize the way we do front-end. Yes Svelt, Vue and Solid are all great. But the ecosystem and the ability to hire from a large pool of talent without needing to train developers on your niche stack is a huge benefit.

3- React is easy to start, hard to master. When interviewing you'll likely be seeing a 10:1 ratio of boot-camp grads vs developers who have dealt with complex React apps at scale. This means an experienced React developer can ask for a higher salary.

> Like on backend you will have a choice of database, choice of language, and the design of the Schema/API, most of which are easy to detach and replace at some point.

This is absolutely not my experience. Every company I've worked at has had some long running back end tech debt, trying to swap out old tech.

Every problem you listed for the FE has a BE analog. Is it just that there are a lot of choices for FE tech? IMO that's a strength and not a weakness. There's also a clear leader in the tech for each part of the stack to choose to get something running quickly.

> Or you can skip those above and use pure HTML+CSS+Javascript, but those usually end up as very spaguettified and idiosyncratic projects, I rarely see anyone even considering it unless it's a personal project.

This is like saying you're seeing BE devs consider writing all their DB queries in raw SQL in a production system rather than use an ORM. Sure, it's done sometimes but most of the time it makes sense to use an abstraction layer.

Again, it's mostly whether or not engineers have the time to plan ahead and also update old code.

Memory is cheap.