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The boring front-end developer

thebfed.com

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Re: The boring front-end developer

#61

Post by brlewis »

vlunkr wrote: post #29
smacktoward wrote: post #14

> “As a Lead JavaScript Engineer, I try to get my team to write as little JavaScript as possible.” I would argue that the wisdom of this goes beyond JavaScript to all programming. Or, to put it slightly differently: how can you tell the difference between an inexperienced programmer and an experienced one? The inexperienced programmer thinks of every line of code as an asset. The experienced one thinks of every line…

That's a great quote! (the last line) That's something I've experienced but hadn't really been aware of until I read that.

Perhaps you want this 1988 quote from Edsger W. Dijkstra:

My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#62

Post by wwweston »

cnp wrote: post #24

I worked for a few years at an agency that adhered very closely to these principles, and you know what? When things started to rapidly change around 2013 everyone was consumed and overwhelmed, and when it came time to necessarily onboard them on new technologies such as build systems, css preprocessors and the like, the skepticism was so profound, and caused such a problem for those of us looking to make everyones li…

> someone not ready to handle the incredible momentum of the industry

The momentum of the industry certainly presents some credibility questions, but I'm not as sure as you are if they're about anyone who isn't content with a treadmill as their professional lot.

Here's big quote of the article: "The BFED will develop a site based on the context of the problem and provide a solution accordingly."

A BFED isn't necessarily someone who's reflexively resistant. Skeptical, maybe, because another way of describing the "momentum" of the industry would be that it's filled with tools whose adoption is often carried along by their own adoption/social proof as much as their unique merits as solutions (and that's the good case, we're not talking about the problem of hyped products whose merits might be deeply in question).

And if CSS preprocessors are an example of industry momentum presenting necessity... well, I've worked on lots of projects with LESS and SASS and lots without. They can be nice, but there's no way I'd draw them inside a circle of necessity. There's a set primary problems they can address relating to keeping source keystrokes down and keeping values defined in single places. They tend to produce some of their own problems (emitted code size and source mapping). There are other solutions a good team that knows CSS and a good text-editor well can use -- good enough I'd be willing to bet on such a team's ability to keep up with (or surpass) than a team that reflexively uses LESS or SASS and considers their problems solved because that's How We Do Things Now™.

What about build tools?

http://blog.keithcirkel.co.uk/why-we-should-stop-using-grunt...

http://blog.keithcirkel.co.uk/how-to-use-npm-as-a-build-tool...

Not a repudiation of the concept but the "momentum" of the industry has given us some questionable implementations.

And they're hardly new ideas being born. They're new implementations. Any developer worth their salt is going to think first about their problems, and second about whether these new implementations should be adopted.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#63

Post by minitech »

nahiluhmot wrote: post #18

> The BFED realises that while not all experiences will be identical, all browsers can be used to consume a website, even gasp, IE6 and below. Where would we be if we supported all legacy software? Does there not come a point where cutting support for a class of platforms is a good thing? This article makes some good points, and I think a lot of frontenders (myself included) would benefit from being a bit more "borin…

It’s not so much about supporting legacy software as having something that’s likely to show something in any browser, from Firefox to IE6 to Dillo to Lynx.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#64

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

Azkar wrote: post #31
hiou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a company almost go under(shrank to almost no employees) after exactly what you described. The BFEDs(including the CTO) refused to update their skills and the company tools/stack and the company was beaten out by competitors.

I worked at an organization that didn't let us use stored procedures or OOP because the older devs couldn't understand them (it was a Navy contractor, so there were guys that had been there 15+ years). If you decide not to use a technology because the developers can't or are unwilling to learn them, you've got bigger problems than technology choices.

CRUD isn't technology anymore.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#65

Post by minitech »

curiousjorge wrote: post #46

WISYWIG UI builders that are slowly picking up momentum will eventually end up commoditizing this role. There will come a day when a product designer can just create the UI from mockups, generate tested, clean plumbing code much faster and more reliable than getting a front-end developer to do it. I would start learning to get proficient with upcoming UI builders and whichever framework it ends up supporting (most li…

Yes, I remember when FrontPage achieved this very same revolution.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#66

Post by serve_yay »

copperx wrote: post #33
cnp wrote: post #24

I worked for a few years at an agency that adhered very closely to these principles, and you know what? When things started to rapidly change around 2013 everyone was consumed and overwhelmed, and when it came time to necessarily onboard them on new technologies such as build systems, css preprocessors and the like, the skepticism was so profound, and caused such a problem for those of us looking to make everyones li…

> There are too many good ideas being born right now to risk falling into rigid patterns of thinking. The problem is that there are too many ideas out there, period. It's almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. See: JavaScript libraries.

But it does not follow from that that the wheat and the chaff are pretty much the same since they came out around the same time.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#67

Post by vilmosi »

alanh wrote: post #51
vilmosi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what's wrong with SPA?

The author write and linked to an article on the downsides. While I haven't read it, I do rage every time I click on a link to a Blogger.com-hosted article and watch some fucking Blogger logo animating as they load a web app to show me some static text. There’s no need for anything to load before showing me the blog page. The experience has been degraded and made more fragile, not enhanced.

I've read many articles about SPA issues. I don't think any of them can't be overcomed.

But when I say webapp I don't mean blogs or regular mostly static websites. I mean Web applications.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#68

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

krapp wrote: post #54
phil248 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is the technology industry, we don't have time for new technology!"

The industry that still argues about which text editor from the 1970s is the best tool to code in has a problem with rapid paradigm shifts? I'm shocked.

The people commenting here are not those people for the most part.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#69

Post by pc86 »

Azkar wrote: post #31
hiou wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a company almost go under(shrank to almost no employees) after exactly what you described. The BFEDs(including the CTO) refused to update their skills and the company tools/stack and the company was beaten out by competitors.

I worked at an organization that didn't let us use stored procedures or OOP because the older devs couldn't understand them (it was a Navy contractor, so there were guys that had been there 15+ years). If you decide not to use a technology because the developers can't or are unwilling to learn them, you've got bigger problems than technology choices.

For about 4 months I worked at a place where the senior dev's first question regarding any technology would be whether or not it could be done in VB6 (this was circa 2009 or so). If it could, he'd make the decision that it just had to be done in VB6 because that's what the shop was using at the time.

Re: The boring front-end developer

#70

Post by talmand »

brlewis wrote: post #61
vlunkr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great quote! (the last line) That's something I've experienced but hadn't really been aware of until I read that.

Perhaps you want this 1988 quote from Edsger W. Dijkstra: My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.

I think the idea of reducing lines of code as a means of success can go too far.

Sure, you can squeeze that block of code down a few dozens of lines of code, but then how hard is it to follow along behind you and deduce your intentions? You may be saving something today to just be needlessly spending it tomorrow.

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