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Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

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Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#61

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious. As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%. I also deeply resent the notion t…

A) Why are you assuming the entirety of the roadmaps are for beginners only? Obviously you have a beginning and an end. As you approach the end you are moving out of beginner territory. B) You don't have to literally "choose a path" and only do that, these are different aspects of web development and they are roadmaps for each that lay out a path that the author found useful from start to finish. You can hop between…

> Are you purposely being dense?

Your response has merit but it would be better if you assumed good faith. Even if you don't understand their thinking.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#62
post #57

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious. As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%. I also deeply resent the notion t…

> I also deeply resent the notion that you have to "choose a path." Yup. Been doing this since 1999. The whole "front end"/"back end" thing is an incredibly unrealistic and unnecessary division. Real life work is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I don't know of anyone, maybe outside of (as you said) huge companies, who works that way, having "picked a path" and entirely focusing on one side of the stack.…

>After you've been doing this for a few years you realize that code is code, whether it's running on a server, or in a browser, or on a desktop or mobile device. It's just code.

Except, it's not "just code". Front-end/back-end/ops, whatever, all have vastly different contexts. Hence the separate learning paths. You should know all three, but that doesn't mean you have to learn them at the same time or the same pace. You people are taking this chart way too literally.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#63
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Why are you assuming the entirety of the roadmaps are for beginners only? Obviously you have a beginning and an end. As you approach the end you are moving out of beginner territory. B) You don't have to literally "choose a path" and only do that, these are different aspects of web development and they are roadmaps for each that lay out a path that the author found useful from start to finish. You can hop between…

> Are you purposely being dense? Your response has merit but it would be better if you assumed good faith. Even if you don't understand their thinking.

You're right, it shouldn't be necessary, but their first sentence...

>I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious.

...is pompous and holier than thou. Being unable to see the value in this infographic doesn't mean it's trash, and I think it's unnecessary to comment with such an arrogant attitude like that, especially when it's obvious they're just either not the intended audience or they're misinterpreting the goal of the graphic.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#65

I've worked as a web developer for about half of the last fifteen years, and work as a senior front-end developer at a large web-focused company (Shopify). So I guess I'm fairly good at it? Here's a list of things I have never even heard of just from the "Front-end Roadmap" section: BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, Bulma, JSCS, ngrx, Vuex, Ava, Protractor, Cypress, Emotion, Radium, Glamorous, After.js, Universal, Nuxt.js, Carlo.…

I haven't heard of any of those except BEM. Which you are using at Shopify, you just might not know it's called that. And it's not really a tech, it's just the style of naming css classes, "block element modifier" like on your home page: "marketing-form__fallback-cta" - marketing-form is the block, "__fallback-cta" is the element (only has meaning within the block), and if you had something like "--purplesmoke" that would be the modifier. Super simple, link here: http://getbem.com/naming/

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#66

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious. As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%. I also deeply resent the notion t…

Webdev since '95, so we likely have moderately similar backgrounds. Let me offer a different take:

> If your stack...so complicated that you simply have no ability to understand ... and how to deploy it easily

You are correct. That said I don't share your reaction at all.

You don't need to understand all of these things to understand how one stack is built, or how to deploy, but you DO need to start understanding these things when it comes to making decisions.

I mean, look at the list. Sure, you don't need to know Bootstrap, BEM, etc to work on a website. But if you're a webdev, soon you should know what Bootstrap is, and a few of the competitors. You should understand what the pros/cons are. If your shop uses BEM, that's all you need to know...but once you're no longer new and are starting to make decisions, you need to understand WHY BEM is the way it is, that it's basically trying to NOT cascade, and thus why random CSS advice you read may or may not apply. (and then begin to decide what BEM is good/not good at, and what the alternatives are).

Continue this for discussion for more than 30 seconds and you enter into territory where any realistic human has a path. I've been full stack, backend, frontend...but I always have a "current" path, because that defines what I'm keeping up with, because I can't keep up with it all. So yeah, you have to choose a path, by definition of human limitations. If you don't choose one consciously, you're still choosing one.

Starting webdev? Understand the very very basics of HTTP, add HTML, and realistically add CSS. Read/Write from DOM with JS. Add some templating framework on the backend or frontend. CSS preprocessors show up quick if you're doing anything of any real size or complexity. Front end quickly hits bundlers and transpilers and minifiers...After a year in the biz the list gets pretty long. 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?

The list of topics I can barely mumble about is huge, but that still leaves a big list of items. OAuth? OIDC? Web Services? CORS? SOP? cookies, localstorage? IndexedDB? The field is vast and any individual may only cut one path through each roadmap, how do you know what path is appropriate? Someone might have a path on any number of the roadmaps listed, or just one: They appear to just be a separation between domains, not a declaration that you must have only one (and they're pretty fair IMNSHO - You can definitely focus on just one roadmap fairly naturally).

Where do you feel you must "choose a path"? Why do have such "deep resentment" when I don't see that being said at all? This just shows the topics at different scopes of knowledge, separated by domains that may or may not apply to you, but are natural domain boundaries anyway.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#67

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious. As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%. I also deeply resent the notion t…

I had a slightly different perspective, as someone who's been a web-ish developer for the last ~8-10 years: I've picked up a lot of this as I've gone, and it's fun to see it all listed out this way and think about it holistically. I think it could be intimidating for a beginner to think, "Damn, I've gotta learn all these things" and you totally, totally don't. But as you work in this space for a while, you'll encount…

Agreed - what I like about these is that they give a scope - you can hear a term, check it here and say "oh, I'm way not ready for this" or "oh, it's in this scope that I already understand, I can go look it up without frying my brain".

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#68
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am too young to have ever used tables for anything else than table data. I am almost 30 years old today and have worked as a dev my whole career. We sure have made some progress!

I take it, that you've never had to work with html emails then? groans You lucky soul!

Creating HTML emails for Outlook is what I imagine the entire web was like several decades ago.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019

#70
post #57

I was convinced for a while there as I scrolled down that this was a joke. "Good parody!" I thought to myself. Then I realized to my horror this is actually serious. As a web developer since 1997, currently working in both the Rails & JAMstack spaces, I can assure any and all beginners out there you don't need to know anything about at least 50% of this stuff, probably closer to 70%. I also deeply resent the notion t…

> I also deeply resent the notion that you have to "choose a path." Yup. Been doing this since 1999. The whole "front end"/"back end" thing is an incredibly unrealistic and unnecessary division. Real life work is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I don't know of anyone, maybe outside of (as you said) huge companies, who works that way, having "picked a path" and entirely focusing on one side of the stack.…

This is interesting. The whole having to specialize thing has been scaring me a bit lately as I really do like the fact I can be jumping back and forth between the paths when working. I have been told that I should find something to specialize in as most of the companies require you to be specialized and there is no place for generalists anymore, which sounds weird to me. So are you a specialist in anything? It seems you have close to a 20-years career so I was either lied/misguided or you have expertise in one of those domains?
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