11–20 of 198 posts
Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.
This was actually a didactic piece. While criticizing the current state of affairs, it gives a nice overview of many of the emerging technologies and how they fit together, even if for some tasks it feels retarded to pull such an entangled mess of dependencies. You can then go insane diving into any particular one :)
This is pretty much why I don't do front-end. I'm fully capable of it, but I just don't like keeping up with this flavor-of-the-week. It just doesn't feel like programming to me, or at least not the programming I enjoy. Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.
If you do keep up, you'll get amazing job offers.
If you manage to really be on the edge, you can give talks as well, expose yourself as a consultant.
That's much easier in JS than with Ruby, Python or whatever else.
Reminds me of "starting Rails today is like starting to watch a soap opera in the 7th season" http://words.steveklabnik.com/rails-has-two-default-stacks Be thankful, at least it's not 2013, the new-js-framework-on-the-front-page-of-HN-every-day era.
Seems quaint now.
This is pretty much why I don't do front-end. I'm fully capable of it, but I just don't like keeping up with this flavor-of-the-week. It just doesn't feel like programming to me, or at least not the programming I enjoy. Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.
"Easiest" area of programming to get a decent job and enter the industry. It's so much easier to find a job in big cities if you know Angular or React. As long as you keep yourself up to date in frameworks and tools you can theoretically stay employed for a long time.
That said, I have heard of plenty of people who had done the above getting burn out or bored after about a decade.
What are the 2 or 3 top-priority things I should get started with, if I have experience with Django/HTML/JQuery, and want to expand into more advanced frontend programming?
This is pretty much why I don't do front-end. I'm fully capable of it, but I just don't like keeping up with this flavor-of-the-week. It just doesn't feel like programming to me, or at least not the programming I enjoy. Strangely, I see so many new developers rushing toward the front-end, which seems much more complicated in many ways than just building solid web API services, analyzing data, etc.
There is a money issue. If you do keep up, you'll get amazing job offers. If you manage to really be on the edge, you can give talks as well, expose yourself as a consultant. That's much easier in JS than with Ruby, Python or whatever else.
The new problems I'm working to learn to solve are with ML, NLP, etc. I'd like to step away from web services completely soon, and just live completely with data.
Reminds me of "starting Rails today is like starting to watch a soap opera in the 7th season" http://words.steveklabnik.com/rails-has-two-default-stacks Be thankful, at least it's not 2013, the new-js-framework-on-the-front-page-of-HN-every-day era.