Imo web development in the open source field is a lot more complex than say developing in a strictly Java or .NET environment.
Let's face it, most .NET or Java programmers are building some kind of CRUD app too.
Over 10 years ago i have started with PHP and Perl, going from horrible spaghetti code to full fledged Symfon2 apps that use abstraction layer upon abstraction layer. I have written NodeJS servers that analyze event streams of hundreds of servers and push realtime statistics to AngularJS frontend apps. These days i am building apps in React and am exited for the prospect of React Native. I have also worked in C# and Unity3D for game programming and built realtime multiplayer 3D action games. At heart, i consider myself a programmer who uses the right tool for the job and i work primarily on the web. I am still proud of it because it's one of the most vibrant fields of tech to be in and companies pay good money for my work.
Even though i did lots of PHP in my life, i never ever touched the code of Wordpress or Joomla or similar though.
The self-hating web developer
21–30 of 214 posts
Re: The self-hating web developer
#22Yeah, modern web development is actually really fucking hard mainly because you have to know so many different things. To build an application from scratch, and do it well, you have to have deep knowledge of, let's see... * At least one server side language * Probably a server side framework * HTML * CSS * Maybe a preprocessor language like SASS or CoffeeScript * SQL * HTTP * Probably a SCM like Git * At least one se…
DNS, Javascript, JSON, TLS and certificates, client side frameworks.
I always find it amazing that people recommend web programming to beginners. The amount of stuff you have to learn all at once as a programming beginner is really overwhelming when you are just writing a simple local program, never mind adding all the complexity of networking and deployment and server config and the half dozen web techs.
I think a lot of people forget just how overwhelming it is to first learn programming, either because it was so long ago for them, or because they learned it gradually as a kid. They take it for granted that everybody already understands DNS and CSS and server configuration and conclude that getting started on the web is easy because all you need to do is learn a bit of python/ruby/php/etc.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#23One reason for this is also that there are not many intermediate books on web dev. There are beginner books and then there are advanced books. Once you know the basics its a bit difficult to advance on the path without proper guidance. So you turn to other places and that is where you see the crazy linux hacking and you think OMG! this is real programming.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#24The "language hate" in programming is truly cancerous. I know several people who started programming only to get twisted and turned around by experienced developers saying, "Don't learn PHP" then "Rails is a joke and doesn't scale well." I talk to them a week later, and they're trying to build a simple web app in functional Haskell, and their environment is all messed up because they are using a zsh configuration the…
I agree with everything else you say, but please, for gods sake, do not put Php in the same basket as ruby or java.
Just don't start with PHP.
EDIT: I am being downvoted. But I will say this again. I do not care about what you use for programming in school. but, Do NOT, under any circumstances, start your programming career with P. H. P. Never. Never...ever.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#25Damn. The thing is, web programming is real programming. I work with low level system security components, and before that worked on medical software, i.e. what the author considers "real programming". However, during the IE 6.0 era I also did multiple corporate internal web UIs with PHP, ASP and JS, and projects on those platforms can be just as demanding as high performance low level C projects.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#26Disclaimer: I'm a civilian
If you generate value for an organisation by making a Web site work for them then I think you are a programmer!
By the same token, if someone could lose business/data as a consequence of a serious software error on a system you have implemented, then you are certainly a programmer and you have a lot of responsibility.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#27I worked several years in my early programming career in a big software company who developed mission critical software: traffic control software. You think they are bad ass programmers? You are totally wrong... the system (btw it was often Java or C based) we programmed on was so complicated that you need at least half of year day to day experience to know what you are doing there. And most frustrating part: There was no inner beauty in this beast! At the end you see a lot of ancient stupid code with the same stupid and dangerous ducktape as everywhere else. And the programmers there are no bad ass elite programmers... I would even say that many of them are below average young programmers because they worked several decades in their highly specialized area and have no clue about other technology (they will never be e.g. web developers). The most significant difference is that the whole building process: First there is a lot and a lot of specification (this sucks so much), then they adapt one ancient industrial system to this specification (this sucks maybe even more) and to get this thing ready for mission critical usage they do more than everywhere else Quality Assurance: Test, evaluation, verification, test, evaluation, test, evaluation, test, test, test... this sucks too. So after maybe 3-4 years they are ready and ship... and guess what... it is tested again. I'm happy I left this area... they are also very strict with software you could use, so the innovation process is F* slow there.
My advice: Change your inner attitude and thinking about programming. And the most important part: Do not care about what people think... only care about yourself. I've seen so many programmers (and I hate this attitude) who think they are so much more bad ass because they program in this and this language or area... so what? And why? I don't care and I do not need to compare myself with them.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#28I worked several years in my early programming career in a big software company who developed mission critical software: traffic control software. You think they are bad ass programmers? You are totally wrong... the system (btw it was often Java or C based) we programmed on was so complicated that you need at least half of year day to day experience to know what you are doing there. And most frustrating part: There was no inner beauty in this beast! At the end you see a lot of ancient stupid code with the same stupid and dangerous ducktape as everywhere else. And the programmers there are no bad ass elite programmers... I would even say that many of them are below average young programmers because they worked several decades in their highly specialized area and have no clue about other technology (they will never be e.g. web developers). The most significant difference is that the whole building process: First there is a lot and a lot of specification (this sucks so much), then they adapt one ancient industrial system to this specification (this sucks maybe even more) and to get this thing ready for mission critical usage they do more than everywhere else Quality Assurance: Test, evaluation, verification, test, evaluation, test, evaluation, test, test, test... this sucks too. So after maybe 3-4 years they are ready and ship... and guess what... it is tested again. I'm happy I left this area... they are also very strict with software you could use, so the innovation process is F* slow there.
My advice: Change your inner attitude and thinking about programming. And the most important part: Do not care about what people think... only care about yourself. I've seen so many programmers (and I hate this attitude) who think they are so much more bad ass because they program in this and this language or area... so what? And why? I don't care and I do not need to compare myself with them.
Re: The self-hating web developer
#29The "language hate" in programming is truly cancerous. I know several people who started programming only to get twisted and turned around by experienced developers saying, "Don't learn PHP" then "Rails is a joke and doesn't scale well." I talk to them a week later, and they're trying to build a simple web app in functional Haskell, and their environment is all messed up because they are using a zsh configuration the…
I agree with everything else you say, but please, for gods sake, do not put Php in the same basket as ruby or java. Just don't start with PHP. EDIT: I am being downvoted. But I will say this again. I do not care about what you use for programming in school. but, Do NOT, under any circumstances, start your programming career with P. H. P. Never. Never...ever.
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Re: The self-hating web developer
#30For all of those who, like the OP, believe web dev isn't real programming: - it is - uploading WordPress isn't web development I worked in embedded systems for a few years, and let me tell you, the quality of people is exactly the same as in web dev. They do pointer arithmetic all the time (way too much), we pass functions to functions all the time (way too much). They use ancient compilers and tools, we invent a new…
The problem is that "web dev" covers such a wide range of roles. "Uploading WordPress isn't web development" is a subjective statement, and a lot of people who can only do CSS and very minor code copy/paste/tweak get to call themselves "web devs." This OP sounds like someone who got in a rung or two above "uploads WordPress" and has convinced himself he needs to transform into a full-fledged ninja programmer in order to shed the image of "low level web dev." And he thinks the path to that goal is to pick something smart sounding, like kernel/crypto/driver hacker, and become it. Unfortunately, this is a bit like a kid who's taken one guitar lesson deciding his career plan is to become Eddie Van Halen.
But it doesn't matter. What he needs to understand is that there's absolutely no shame whatsoever in the "web dev" role precisely because it covers so many different levels of ability. He sees his own skills as lacking and therefore concludes that his title is a title of shame, whereas what he should be thinking about is the fact that a lot of real bad-ass coders share that title. Get better at what you do and what you're interested in, rather than chasing what you think sounds cool to others but you have no actual interest in.
OP, I know a guy who spent a couple of decades as a C/asm bad-ass and was recently forced to learn some HTML/CSS/JS in order to put a web front-end on a project. He's completely hooked and I don't think he's going back. There literally is no level of expertise implied by the term "web dev."