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I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

rachsmith.com

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Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#41

Post by brundolf »

I spent over a year away from React at a company using a very obscure front-end framework. Afterward I felt slightly behind on the uptick in NextJS and Hooks usage (these both existed but were uncommon before), but... it really wasn't a big deal. I picked it up. A couple months later I'm quite comfortable with both (I have opinions about hooks, but that's for another day)

I think people overblow how big a burden it is that things keep evolving. Especially once you know the language/platform pretty well (that part doesn't change so much) and you've been around the block a few times ("oh, this is like X but different in a couple ways"), it just really isn't a huge thing to learn the next trend. Sometimes it's a genuine innovation, sometimes it's a familiar pattern coming back around in a new set of clothes. Neither case is a catastrophe.

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#42

Post by floxy »

divan wrote: post #24

I switched to Flutter 2.5 years ago for frontend. The blessing of having incredibly well designed UI framework that gives you NATIVE iOS/Android/WEB/MacOS/Linux/Windows app from the single code (in a decent language and without a gram of html/css/js crap) is hard to describe. I'm stunned by how many devs yet to discover flutter. Web frontend ecosystem is just a pile of hacks on top of hacks compared to what Flutter t…

Dead tree Flutter book you would recommend?

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#43

Post by katzgrau »

omegalulw wrote: post #16
peterkelly wrote: post #4

Obsession with the latest frameworks and the proclivity to refer to someone as an "X developer" for some X ∈ {popular frameworks} is a sign of ignorance/immaturity, both for developers and hiring managers. Those with a solid understanding of the underlying principles (both computer science theory and, in the case of front-end development, the core web standards) are the best positioned to make the most impactful cont…

> Focus on mastering stuff that doesn't change, or changes slowly. AKA Fundamentals :)

AKA, be a backend developer, because tech changes less frequently there and backend devs get more respect than front end and "full stack" devs, regardless of how talented they are.

Sorry I said it, but it's true.

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#44

Post by gentleman11 »

Haha. I ignored the web dev scene for a year or two to work on something else. Angularjs vanished and nobody will hire you unless you have worked with react. Rest is gone and everyone is obsessed with graphql. Kubernetes really took off. React alone isn’t enough though, it’s nextjs and everyone is looking into trendy redux replacements now. Typescript is everywhere. Everyone assumes you can’t code your way out of a paper bag if you haven’t worked with their exact stack for one year longer than it has existed, even though it’s all incredibly easy to learn. Also interviews are even more nuts and irrelevant. It’s depressing that your relevant important skills don’t matter at all unless you are self employed

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#45

Post by david_allison »

divan wrote: post #24

I switched to Flutter 2.5 years ago for frontend. The blessing of having incredibly well designed UI framework that gives you NATIVE iOS/Android/WEB/MacOS/Linux/Windows app from the single code (in a decent language and without a gram of html/css/js crap) is hard to describe. I'm stunned by how many devs yet to discover flutter. Web frontend ecosystem is just a pile of hacks on top of hacks compared to what Flutter t…

I'd like to trust Google, but they deprecate Android functionality at an astonishingly fast rate. It's a significant risk factor that should be taken into account.

Doing a quick "Find usages" on java.lang.Deprecated in my current project returns over 4,000 instances from Google/Android libraries and it's a significant frustration within the Android developer community

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#46

Post by 908B64B197 »

crazy_horse wrote: post #5
peterkelly wrote: post #4

Obsession with the latest frameworks and the proclivity to refer to someone as an "X developer" for some X ∈ {popular frameworks} is a sign of ignorance/immaturity, both for developers and hiring managers. Those with a solid understanding of the underlying principles (both computer science theory and, in the case of front-end development, the core web standards) are the best positioned to make the most impactful cont…

It's also a big part of the hype cycle that is an actual industry with Patreon etc now. The first rule you should remember when reading HN is the real world is not HN.

https://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/

This sums it up quite nicely.

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#47

Post by foobar33333 »

denvaar wrote: post #15
crazy_horse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a big part of the hype cycle that is an actual industry with Patreon etc now. The first rule you should remember when reading HN is the real world is not HN.

> The first rule you should remember when reading HN is the real world is not HN. Can you explain what you mean by that?

HN would have you believe the whole frontend scene is totally replaced every month. At our company we started using React about 3 years ago and React is still the industry standard today and likely will be 3 years in the future.

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#48

Post by 57844743385 »

peterkelly wrote: post #4

Obsession with the latest frameworks and the proclivity to refer to someone as an "X developer" for some X ∈ {popular frameworks} is a sign of ignorance/immaturity, both for developers and hiring managers. Those with a solid understanding of the underlying principles (both computer science theory and, in the case of front-end development, the core web standards) are the best positioned to make the most impactful cont…

None of this is true.

The latest frameworks aren’t just “trends”, like fashion.

They’re improved ways of doing things. Better, simpler, more reliable.

Advocating to use tech that changes slowly, or avoid latest frameworks is advocating being slower and less productive.

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#49

Post by colecut »

PrincessJas wrote: post #26
spoiler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Thank you for pointing that out! I was a bit silly and somehow came to the (wrong) conclusion that "Lucas" (the first commenter) was the name of the author... I don't even know what to say lol. I just went a bit derp there.

Stop assuming that names are indicative of gender, dude.

Sorry dude

Re: I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

#50

Post by morty_s »

crazy_horse wrote: post #33
selfhoster11 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has a huge exposure in the programming community. I may not know how to write it, but I sure know what it is. It's not just limited to HN in awareness.

You say that but my exposure to Rust was through HN. That same team I'd sit down and chat with the CS PhD majors that were doing machine learning. It genuinely surprised me when a brilliant student said he'd never heard of Rust. TIOBE is a garbage metric, but Rust's numbers are paltry there. It's key to some really important projects, but it still isn't a widely-used language.

Was reading through some C++ at work the other day and was like “why is this reference.. assigned to… copy constructor?… oh, yeah…”

IMO it’s better (explicit) to see a call to `.clone()`, but maybe this is because I’m not up to my elbows in C++ everyday. Either way, I think Rust will continue to grow in popularity (C as well).

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