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The self-hating web developer

joequery.me

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Re: The self-hating web developer

#91

Post by Arun2009 »

There are a couple of problems that I see with the entire premise behind this article.

1. Web development can be challenging. Writing a simple blog or wiki system in PHP might be "easy", but creating a wordpress.com or wikipedia.org is a whole different ballgame. Latency, scalability, architecture, high availability, manageability, security - the challenges are endless.

2. I don't understand why software developers tend to value the "difficulty" of the technology used in a product over the utility of the final product to end customers. Creating a web app in PHP for sharing daily tidbits in your friends' lives may not be as challenging as writing a compiler for a functional language like Haskell, but its end value may far eclipse that of the latter. Facebook and Twitter after all started as fairly simple applications but are multi-billion dollar companies now. I would even say that there is a certain unix-like elegance in using the easiest, simplest technologies to create the maximum returns in terms of utility to humans. And that, IMO, is far from being a "brain-dead" skill.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#92

Post by kelseydh »

pmichaud wrote: post #6

Yeah, 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…

Some people argue web developers have it harder than iOS developers. In fact, good full-stack web developers arguably need learn more about technologies in a faster period of time than many other specialties within software.

Why? Because the web, and the skills needed to make a competitive web app, evolve extremely quickly. Just on the Javascript side, in one year, you're learning Prototype or jQuery, the next year you're learning Angular, then React, etc. Browser standards change -- wildly, as do the frameworks used to build things. One day its SQL, the other day its NoSQL. One day its Bootstrap, next day its material design.

In comparison Native iOS developers have had an evolving but relatively consistent set of API's from Apple to learn for iOS / Objective-C to stretch into useful skills for nearly 10+ years now.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#93

Post by tim333 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #65
anon1385 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Setting up something like XAMPP is not as friction filled as setting up something like a *NIX development / production environment. In some cases you could get away with using shared hosting or spinning up a simple DigitalOcean LEMP box to some degree. On another note: I personally prefer to recommend Python due to a lot less friction, and semesters of helping students with learning C as their first language: "Don't…

As a beginners thing for web dev, Meteor is pretty good. Although it can get complicated when you get in to it like most stuff.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#94

Post by BellsOnSunday »

Arun2009 wrote: post #91

There are a couple of problems that I see with the entire premise behind this article. 1. Web development can be challenging. Writing a simple blog or wiki system in PHP might be "easy", but creating a wordpress.com or wikipedia.org is a whole different ballgame. Latency, scalability, architecture, high availability, manageability, security - the challenges are endless. 2. I don't understand why software developers t…

The article is about people who use things like wordpress and maybe write little plugins for them, rather than designing the frameworks in the first place. Those types of work are, undeniably, very different, one common analogy being the difference between car mechanics and automotive engineers. I don't see the author's work as brain-dead (neither is the work of car mechanics), and the author clearly implies he doesn't either. But he is surrounded by people that sneer at it -- that certainly seems believable to me.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#95

Post by imakesnowflakes »

lowmagnet wrote: post #79
imakesnowflakes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Php is still a super effective lever for people starting out. It has some really bad technical warts but it has the shortest path to "shit's on screen" amongst web-based scripting languages. I may not like it, but it has its place.

>but it has the shortest path to "shit's on screen" amongst web-based scripting languages

Let us see. You follow the shortest path to make a service/web app. I use your service/app. You get hacked. (By the way, has the php community yet have a clue how the php.net site got hacked, like, I don't know, 2 years back?), I am fucked.

Who wins?

Instead, what if you put in the effort to actually educate yourself about the stuff you need to know before you put a service online? What if you actually use a language that is not a complete mine field. What if you actually use a language that will actually tell you that you are wrong, right to your face, instead of conveniently working half of the time?

And the funny thing is that it is not even the shortest path to "shit on screen". Check out how easy it is in python to put stuff on screen

http://flask.pocoo.org/

The worst thing right now is people who are actually promoting php to new comers! My earlier comment was removed from here, because I told not to start programming careers with PHP.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#96

Post by [deleted] »

noir_lord wrote: post #75
justuk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP is perfect for newbies. It's flexible. Has lots of functions built in. Several mature frameworks available. It's in active development. Hugely popular so lots of people to ask. Easy to set up a dev environment. No need to learn server admin as almost all hosting services supports it. I could go on and on.

I don't think you are going to change his mind, he seems very set on it.

[deleted]

Re: The self-hating web developer

#97

Post by oriolid »

im3w1l wrote: post #42
therealmarv wrote: post #27

I 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 w…

It is (was?) quite popular to hate on "enterprise" too.

And there's a good reason for that.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#98

Post by atlih »

I find web developers in general more knowledgeable. Sure they are not working in low level programming, but those that are working in low level programming often don't know what DNS, FTP or SQL is.

Remember that those who work in low level programming had nothing to do with writing the language or building the compilers. They just got a degree and started working.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#99

Post by Udo »

justuk wrote: post #69
imakesnowflakes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PHP is perfect for newbies. It's flexible. Has lots of functions built in. Several mature frameworks available. It's in active development. Hugely popular so lots of people to ask. Easy to set up a dev environment. No need to learn server admin as almost all hosting services supports it. I could go on and on.

As someone who did a lot (and still does some) server-side development in PHP, I disagree about the newbies part, I think it's deceptive.

Doing PHP right is challenging, and for bigger apps it requires more insight into the internals of the server and the client than, say, a comparable application written for Ruby on Rails. PHP certainly gives you enough rope to hang yourself, and while I personally do enjoy the length of rope it gives me, it's also very clear that newbies have no chance of making the right decisions given this tool.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#100

Post by codingdave »

skrebbel wrote: post #12

For 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…

"uploading WordPress isn't web development"

Sure it is. I know people who make a living at setting up Wordpress. They do it very well, and they work hard at it. They do design work that I cannot hope to match. And they do it all without writing any more code than some HTML and CSS.

I'm not going to insult them by saying that they are not developing web sites. They absolutely are.

Coders do not own the label of "web developer". Because that is all it is -- a label.

Call yourself whatever you want to call yourself. Let others do the same.

FWIW, when people ask what I do, I no longer get specific. I just say, "I write software."

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