Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

rachsmith.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 162 posts

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

#61

Post by schwartzworld »

katzgrau wrote: post #43
omegalulw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> backend devs get more respect than front end

This has not been my experience. FE are expected to know a lot, and most backend devs I've known respect that.

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

#62

Post by quickthrower2 »

the__alchemist wrote: post #29

I've found the way to reduce churn the most is discard frameworks and DSLs whenever possible. This morning, I rewrote a page of frontend code for a scheduling webapp. I'd initially built it in TS/React years ago. Switched to Rust/WASM with a custom VDOM-based framework a year ago. I'm reasonably confident I won't rewrite it again in a new framework: the new page is an HTML document with an included JS script that per…

Why was the TS/react rewrite needed? Had react or ts broken it’s api?

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

#63

Post by gjs278 »

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.

you will never be a woman

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

#64

Post by metalliqaz »

dclusin wrote: post #53
gentleman11 wrote: post #44

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 p…

As a back end Dev it looks like build tooling has largely materialized into a few choices and doesn’t change as fast.

As a firmware dev it looks like all yalls crazy

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

#65

Post by morty_s »

57844743385 wrote: post #48
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.

Eh, idk. We could have lisp, x-expressions, macros, and DSLs instead of most frameworks. We could even use lisp dialects to “write C” (eg Chicken Scheme).

I do think a lot of frameworks are fashion statements, but that’s okay because style matters when doing creative work.

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

#66

Post by smoe »

I stopped following news back in 2011 while previously being "addicted" to it. Whether about about tech, music releases, world news, etc. Turns out, if something is important enough for me to know, it will reach me eventually one way or another without me having to proactively track everything. If I start something new or a have a problem to solve, I research what an adequate, modern way to do it would be.

I was frontend developer at time time but moved to more backend dev again. When I last year did a frontend project with react that I knew only conceptually from people talking about it for the first time, I didn't had any problem using it productively in a couple hours. The only thing that was a bit jarring, was that many people seem to have forgotten that there are html tags besides `div`.

While software certainly moves fast compared to things, that have been around for hundreds or thousands of years, I feel, for the most part it just moves fast on the surface. The fundamentals have been pretty much the same since I started and I reckon for decades before that.

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

#67

Post by quickthrower2 »

smitty1e wrote: post #9

I'm extremely jealous of what technologies I invest time and study in. The 'framework of the week' club has never held my interest. If https://webassembly.org can liberate us from traditional web development, that's fine by me.

It might fragment things further, eg imagine a job posting for a C++ programmer with web experience, browser knowledge and use of a specific C++ front end web library.

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

#68

Post by taeric »

gentleman11 wrote: post #44

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 p…

The speed with which Google moved things around 2012 was just stupid. Gwt to angular was fast and left basically no real migration path. Or recompense for having jumped on in the first place.

I believe angular got better, but I didn't stick around to find out.

React has at least been steady. It has some parts that I'm personally in the camp is over engineered. But, I think that is more that the scene encourages highly engineered solutions. Reminds me a lot of the j2ee days where there was just so much ceremony on a basic ui.

The rest of the technologies you list are similar to me. Not wrong or bad choices, at large. Also not typically needed, at large.

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

#69

Post by smitty1e »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #67
smitty1e wrote: post #9

I'm extremely jealous of what technologies I invest time and study in. The 'framework of the week' club has never held my interest. If https://webassembly.org can liberate us from traditional web development, that's fine by me.

It might fragment things further, eg imagine a job posting for a C++ programmer with web experience, browser knowledge and use of a specific C++ front end web library.

The idea would be to map the existing e.g. Tcl/Tk wrapper to target WASM.

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

#70

Post by windows2020 »

Been ignoring it for maybe 15 years now. The DOM API is looking great these days. OO style JavaScript has never let me down. Prerequisite: ability to write concise HTML and CSS. One newer thing I do utilize is TypeScript which makes developing and refactoring more complex web apps much easier.
Post reply on HN