Front-End Developer Handbook • Hacker News Board

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#41

Post by baron816 » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

swirepe wrote: post #33

baron816 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making a large refactor without types is the wild west. Types help provide structure/understanding about the data flowing through your system. If you’re working on a large, unstructured project that you’re trying to refactor, you’re problem probably isn’t with the types. It’s that the people working on it used types as a crutch so that they thought it was okay to write classes that were thousands of lines long with…

I don't know why you're conflating using a type system with writing large classes.

At question is whether the benefits of static typing outweigh their costs. From my experience (purely anecdotal) static typing provides a false sense of security that encourages bad practices, thus turning the benefits of types into costs themselves.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#42

Post by dhimes » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #36

Blackstone4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Some sell out completely to Typescript and the Microsoft way of doing things" > "this trend is subjective dogma not objective value" Ironically, the author own phrasing is not objective and somewhat hypocritical. S/He described the use of Typescript as "selling out and the Microsoft way of doing things". S/He's trying to leverage anti-Microsoft sentiment to boost her/his argument. Feels more like a smear campaign…

To be fair, the anti-Microsoft sentiment didn't just pop up out of nowhere. I've been burned by Microsoft's bullshit so many times that I will go out of my way to deny them any semblance of power, lest they try to leverage it for some new anti-consumer vendor lock-in scheme. How's that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 47 times, shame on me.

won't get fooled again :)

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#43

Post by JamesBarney » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #34

daviddahl wrote: post #14

"Here's a guide for you to make 75K a year, learning all of this will take 10 years." LOL

Can you show me where this was said or inferred in the article? I'm a front end engineer and I make, well, a LOT more than 75k.

The picture inserted from payscale or salary.com

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#44

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #39

pjmlp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is surely not the default frontend on many business that still rely on native apps, on mobile devices, device displays, air gaped networks, factory automation and robot control systems, ....

Yes, but the web browser is ubiquitous so it's naturally going to sponge up defaults. If someone's mad that people don't auto-assume they design robot neural interfaces when they call their self a front-end designer, then they're just fighting their own ego.

That is just like saying that we should all start calling our compilers transpilers, given that the word misuse is so ubiquitous among JS devs.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#45

Post by lwall » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

jpd- wrote: post #18

"A developer who can code the front-end, back-end, API, and database isn't as absurd as it once was (excluding visual design, interaction design, and CSS). Still mythical in my opinion, but not as uncommon as it once was." I see this attitude expressed a lot among people who identify as "front end" developers and it seems like psychological projection to me. I would count myself and a number of close friends and asso…

Fully agree. I work on a small team (3 devs + 1 designer) and all three devs are, to some degree, full-stack. We all have areas of relative strength and weakness, but all can and do work across the full stack.

It also seemed pretty absurd to me that the author suggested the only reason any kind of full-stack developer is conceivable is JS on the backend, as if the main issue is needing to know more than one language.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#46

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #17

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back and forth between code and docs just to remember the shape of returned objects is annoying and probably the worst for productivity. I imagine most people using vanilla JS have significant amounts of objects memorized.

IDEs like webstorm can ostensibly be quite helpful if you use jsdoc style annotations. However, in my experience, once a code base is big enough, you can open almost any file and find documentation that's out of date, incorrectly copy-pasted, or some other major issue. TS, on the other hand, at least forces you to stay correct, which is ultimately what convinced me to switch.

Edit: I meant jsdoc-style, not "style annotations".

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#47

Post by buildbuildbuild » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

jpd- wrote: post #18

"A developer who can code the front-end, back-end, API, and database isn't as absurd as it once was (excluding visual design, interaction design, and CSS). Still mythical in my opinion, but not as uncommon as it once was." I see this attitude expressed a lot among people who identify as "front end" developers and it seems like psychological projection to me. I would count myself and a number of close friends and asso…

This is my first encounter with negative sentiment around the phrase "full stack engineer" and I would caution newcomers to the industry to take OP's advice with a heavy dose of salt.

My experience has been that if I do not accurately represent my skills in an interview screening as a full stack engineer, I am less likely to make it to the next stage of the interview process.

Most importantly, be honest about your strengths and weaknesses.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#48

Post by renw0rp » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #36

Blackstone4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Some sell out completely to Typescript and the Microsoft way of doing things" > "this trend is subjective dogma not objective value" Ironically, the author own phrasing is not objective and somewhat hypocritical. S/He described the use of Typescript as "selling out and the Microsoft way of doing things". S/He's trying to leverage anti-Microsoft sentiment to boost her/his argument. Feels more like a smear campaign…

To be fair, the anti-Microsoft sentiment didn't just pop up out of nowhere. I've been burned by Microsoft's bullshit so many times that I will go out of my way to deny them any semblance of power, lest they try to leverage it for some new anti-consumer vendor lock-in scheme. How's that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 47 times, shame on me.

apple is the new Microsoft, and people keep throwing money at them...

also, even though the MS anti-sentiment didn't pop up out of nowhere, it's not relevant in the static-vs-dynamic typing discussion...

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#49

Post by gary__ » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #25

poof131 wrote: post #7

"A whole lot of developers adopt static type checking for mostly subjective reasons or band wagon emotions. Some sell out completely to Typescript and the Microsoft way of doing things while others take on a slower approach with Flow. One thing is for sure, most developers don't need types, they are simply complicating already complex problems and solutions. Like most things, most of this trend is subjective dogma no…

> Making a large refactor without types is the wild west. Types help provide structure/understanding about the data flowing through your system. If you’re working on a large, unstructured project that you’re trying to refactor, you’re problem probably isn’t with the types. It’s that the people working on it used types as a crutch so that they thought it was okay to write classes that were thousands of lines long with…

I can't relate to this line of thinking at all.

Your one big method interview example - so you think had they not been able to reply on static typing for refactoring in their previous work they would have gravitated toward cleaner code? That just seems wildly speculative as a counter to me. A fair amount of projects don't get the refactoring they need in the first place, so developers working on those don't get the experience to begin with. Developers who write large functions often have reasons like "if you use multiple functions you have to jump around to see whats going on." If i'm attacking a straw man, its unintentional.

Anyway having unit tests in a projects would encourage smaller units more, you can have tests easily in static languages - so you get the best of both worlds - smaller units and the ease static typing brings to refactoring.

The go-to sources on writing good code in c#/java land are proponents of keeping methods and classes small as well - that's where i learnt from. (Not to start any wars on over use of design patterns)

Your comment assuming we'd all agree choosing a static language is a bad choice for a small example is also very strange to me. When i'm under pressure id go with what i'm most familiar with, likely C#. Though, with JS and PHP being my dynamic alternatives, i may just be sounding like a very bad programmer to you ;)

I've seen plenty of very long functions in javascript (and c#), and dont think it has anything to do with static typing.

Re: Front-End Developer Handbook

#50

Post by brandall10 » Sat, Apr 14, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

swebs wrote: post #36

Blackstone4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Some sell out completely to Typescript and the Microsoft way of doing things" > "this trend is subjective dogma not objective value" Ironically, the author own phrasing is not objective and somewhat hypocritical. S/He described the use of Typescript as "selling out and the Microsoft way of doing things". S/He's trying to leverage anti-Microsoft sentiment to boost her/his argument. Feels more like a smear campaign…

To be fair, the anti-Microsoft sentiment didn't just pop up out of nowhere. I've been burned by Microsoft's bullshit so many times that I will go out of my way to deny them any semblance of power, lest they try to leverage it for some new anti-consumer vendor lock-in scheme. How's that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 47 times, shame on me.

Anti-MS sentiment is related to its business practices and perhaps dev community itself, not tooling.

I've never seen a person who actually is familiar with Typescript say anything negative about it, and it has huge uptake in the open source community.