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How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

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Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#31

Post by pjmlp »

tibbon wrote: post #11

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.

I do front-end, but native fronted.

WPF, XAML, iOS, Android, Qt.

None of them suffer from the same craziness of the web world.

I used to do web and don't miss it. Actually it was my experience in Web projects that changed my mind that web should have stayed HTML/CSS.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#32

Post by natmaster »

dhruvkar wrote: post #21

I couldn't get through the entire thing. Even knowing that it's a fun/sarcastic piece of writing, the portrayed pain is all too real, as someone just starting to dive into the front-end. In all honesty, can I still use jQuery for new projects without issues in 2016? Is there a real reason not to?

React is really very simple. It only takes a short amount of time to learn it, and then when you do you won't get headaches all the time trying to keep track of state.

You don't need to know all the toolchains and crap if you just use create-react-app.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#33

Post by vladimir-y »

Article title is absolutely not correct, front-end developer is supposed to build an entire UI and corresponding client-side logic, not just write some abstract JavaScript code, code itself is nothing. So it's not about write JS code, but about building maintainable and scalable applications.

All that stuff is actually required to build something maintainable, especially modules. React is not a silver bullet, but nowadays SPA and components approach should be familiar for any front-end developer. I like Typescript was mentioned there.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#34

Post by pjmlp »

choicewords wrote: post #13
tibbon wrote: post #11

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.

I already get amazing job offers in native frontends....

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#35

Post by krylon »

This makes me think of a sentence I read years ago: "We love to fight complexity with complexity."

I think whoever said this referred to the various IPC methods on Windows, but I do not remember for sure. Seems like some things never change.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#36

Post by at-fates-hands »

You also have to keep in mind a few things:

1 - I've never referred to myself as an "engineer" since I don't see myself as one, nor do I have an engineering degree. This includes the fact I do not have a four year CS degree either.

2 - Front end development has now split. Being a web "designer" means you know HTML5, CSS3 which includes LESS, SASS, PostCSS and other CSS pre-procssors

3 - Being a web "developer" means you're more likely to be a Javscript developer. Meaning you're familiar with Angular, Backbone (I know its soooo 2014 isn't it?), React and other JS frameworks. Every interview I've done in the past two years has almost exclusively focused on JS and how well I know standard JS. Closures, inheritance, debugging, etc. Nobody cares if you know much else other than that.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#37

Post by choicewords »

tibbon wrote: post #19
choicewords wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough. I've hit a sweet spot now in having done Ruby for ~8 years, so I can get away with saying, "having someone else deal with the front end. I just want to talk about data". 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.

I'm in the same boat. I'm no longer interested in the plumbing, much more the type of questions that can be answered with large scale data, and other types of efficiencies that are dormant with 'pure' code.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#38

Post by choicewords »

jordache wrote: post #25
choicewords wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For a developer role, and in the context of web applications(CRUD-ish) what do you think is the ceiling potential (in terms of earnings) Comparing JS/frontend positions vs backend development?

I don't do that type of analytics, but what I can see is that's it's quite hard to hire a good FE guy.

Backend can be hard as well when looking for specialized stuff like Elixir, OCaml, Scala, Rust, etc. On the other hand, pure Ruby - Python - Java - C++ that's fairly common and not as likely to fetch high salary, since you'd be competing with a larger talent pool.

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#39

Post by jordache »

zzalpha wrote: post #27
jordache wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if ALL you are displaying is a table, then you can write a quick little jQuery(or native JS) function to remap the array and re-draw the DOM. If your fancy little table is part of a large app, or even a simple app, it is much easier to implement the entire app using a framework like Angular. The model view concepts really help to tie things together.

Your use of the word "easier" is questionable. Even for trivial SPAs it's often easier to roll the basic functionality yourself. Flipping over to something like Angular introduces technical and cognitive overhead that often isn't worth the trouble for something simple.

What about maintainability? You want everyone who touches your code to figure out your custom solution for data binding? Or you could just follow the conventions established by an industry popular framework that is instantly consumable by another developer?

Re: How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016

#40

Post by mklim »

zzalpha wrote: post #27
jordache wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if ALL you are displaying is a table, then you can write a quick little jQuery(or native JS) function to remap the array and re-draw the DOM. If your fancy little table is part of a large app, or even a simple app, it is much easier to implement the entire app using a framework like Angular. The model view concepts really help to tie things together.

Your use of the word "easier" is questionable. Even for trivial SPAs it's often easier to roll the basic functionality yourself. Flipping over to something like Angular introduces technical and cognitive overhead that often isn't worth the trouble for something simple.

It depends on where you draw the line for "trivial". Does it need routing/browser history? What browsers are you supporting, any legacy ones? Does the frontend do any kind of translations or visualizations with the data it's getting from the server? Does the layout have a bunch of panes and reusable views? Do you want your frontend code to be testable? All of that is an order of magnitude simpler using an actual SPA library or framework. And if you're not doing any of the above, you're probably better off making a server side rendered app with some AJAX sprinkled in anyway. At that point making it an SPA at all is probably overkill.

The huge frontend frameworks have an upfront learning cost and tend to be unfortunately leaky abstractions, but they're still much easier to maintain than a jQuery/JS mess with a bunch of DOM-manipulation code and HTML strings living right next to the business logic. They at least force the code into an understandable architecture and separate the view from business concerns. Experienced developers know how to structure their frontend JS already, but novice ones--the same ones that would feel the pain of learning a framework/ecosystem on top of JS when they first try to pick it up for an SPA--almost certainly won't.

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