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

rachsmith.com

121–130 of 162 posts

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

#121

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.

Frontend devs who can also design (especially make impressive mock-ups) and talk OK are gods in meetings, which translates into better social standing (which can equal money, if they play their cards right and move into "product owner" and such, over time)

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

#122

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…

I agree with you in theory, but in practice, I find it really hard to get a job saying, "I'm acquainted with CS fundamentals." I once got bounced from a job interview for not knowing about a quirk of the newest XCode (less than a week old).

Out of curiosity, what was the Xcode quirk?

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this guy The author isn’t a guy! I agree otherwise, it’s refreshing perspective. I spent a few years fairly deep in backend work and worried quite a bit about going back to the front. Ultimately it ended up being a valuable break and pretty much all of the important things I’d learned before were still totally transferable. I think as long as you’re learning something, regardless of the discipline, your brain will…

> The author isn’t a guy! Says who?

I inferred it from their blog but happy to retract that if there’s evidence they identify as a guy.

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

#124
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.

Oh, no. Webasm is just a way to run arbitrary binary programs in the browser. You need a whole stack on top of that. And there are lots of choices.

You probably shouldn't be using webasm unless you're 1) writing something like a 3D application that needs all the CPU and GPU power it can get, or 2) you're writing some kind of obfuscated hostile code, probably ad-related.

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

#125

But why are you learning Go?

Go is a good choice for web backends. Google maintains the libraries for most of the things you need for web backends, so they're well-debugged and heavily used. The language itself is just adequate, as it was designed to be. It's not overdesigned.

I've used Go for a web backend. Partly because it's fast enough that I can get quite a bit of useful work done on a US$12/month shared hosting account. It's amusing to see how much you can get done on low-cost shared hosting.

I write high-performance 3D stuff in Rust, but wouldn't bother with it for webcrap.

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

#126

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…

I agree with you in theory, but in practice, I find it really hard to get a job saying, "I'm acquainted with CS fundamentals." I once got bounced from a job interview for not knowing about a quirk of the newest XCode (less than a week old).

TBH, as an Apple dev it's really your responsibility to be up on the latest and greatest platforms and dev tools.

Apple broke development on OS X 10.3 in order to have a new C++ ABI ready for 10.4. Want to compile programs for 10.3? You need to use Xcode on 10.4 to do that. You don't have 10.4 yet? What kind of loser are you?

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

#127
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://veekaybee.github.io/2019/05/10/java8/ This sums it up quite nicely.

Thank you for sharing this. This reflects the large part of my experience working in the Government and banking IT sectors. I don't see my previous employer (a Federal government) running workloads on K8s anytime soon. However, I do hope they've finished their migration from Windows Server 2008 by now though (we started this project in 2018, but I left halfway through).

If you are interested in government work, why not go in the private sector and come back through the US Digital Service? [0]

Alternatively, why not engage with them?

[0] https://www.usds.gov/

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

#128

I hate javascript front-end stuff with a burning passion. I wanted to make a small widget, and somehow I needed 100+ libraries for this. The compilation/build/etc process makes no sense whatsoever, and I just type magic commands and hope it works. I am seriously considering just using something like blazor or phoneix live view so I can ignore front end entirely.

Last year, I built a little widget thing in plain JS with Parcel[1]. It took away 100% of the tooling I used to spend a couple hours nailing down just to get started. When I need small JS projects that don't need a framework, etc, I'm likely to use Parcel in the future.

1. https://parceljs.org/

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone is looking into trendy redux replacements now What's wrong with redux? I've been using it in my last 2 companies, it scales amazingly and I think that's one of the stack in react that I'm comfortable with

I enjoyed it while I used it but my main issues with it were with the developer experience and how many files the logic was spread across: actions, action constants, reducers, etc. When you have to edit 4 different files just to add a loading flag then I feel like something has gone wrong. If it solves your problems and you’re happy though, no need to let anyone convince you to change!

On really big frontend apps, redux with 4 files becomes the easiest part of the day.

It may be verbose, but it’s the one thing that all the other devs won’t be implementing in some weird, proprietary way.

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

#130
post #73

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.

>Rust has a huge exposure in the programming community. And it's used exactly nowhere. Can you name one project that is rust based and isn't part of the rust toolchain?

Discord: https://blog.discord.com/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to...
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