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The self-hating web developer

joequery.me

111–120 of 214 posts

Re: The self-hating web developer

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 d…

You are right, or course, in terms of semantic politeness. The OP is, however, referring to the difference between say a ruby developer versus someone who just writes html and css. If both are within the category of web developers, what are some names to distinguish the two?

Front end vs. back end.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#112
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…

Don't forget to mention time budgets. If I were making a desktop application for windows using the standard windows libraries, my clients would expect it to take a while and wouldn't even expect to see anything for a few weeks.

In web development doing the same app, I have far less consistent tools and loads of square peg problems, yet the client believes development should be seeing a demo in a couple days and a finished product a little after that.

Learning all of that is hard and the market is booming, so I'm in huge demand as a good JS developer. Even with the demand, the supply of good devs is short because of that barrier of entry. Programming noobs get eaten alive and most devs with experience in more traditional fields take a lot more time to adjust than they think the will going into the web profession. JS isn't an easy language to learn (especially after you've been programming in a traditional C-like language for years).

I'd say that this state is a silver lining to the learning problem, but because of the perception of web development barrier of entry and the swath of noobs, the market in general still doesn't pay equal to the real demand. I'm lucky enough to work at a company that respects JS devs, but when I worked as a contractor, I passed on loads of jobs and job offers (even from fairly large companies) because they had no idea what a good web developer knows/does let alone how to tell a good dev apart from a poor one.

Most of these companies go on to hire inexperienced devs and paying a huge price. When I went back to fix some of these issues later (I was too expensive for them until they started contacting other experienced devs/shops looking for someone to fix everything). Most of the good devs aren't going to go down the trial by fire path in order to get a worse-paying job (and let's face it, the companies that pay well know that only a year or two of JS experience is a dealbreaker despite an excellent resume with 20 years as a C++ programmer).

Re: The self-hating web developer

#114

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…

I worked in embedded programming, systems programming and, now, web dev. No. The "quality of people" is not generally the same or, more specifically, you're less likely to find PHP coders among system developers.

If you don't mind my asking, why aren't you still doing embedded programming? I'm a web developer looking to move to embedded programming and I'm always curious to hear about why people made the opposite decision. :)

Re: The self-hating web developer

#115
post #20

There are few things in life more important than choosing one's peer group well. The Internet gives you many more options than we had available prior to the existence of it. Choose wisely and re-evaluate that choice periodically to see whether your peer group continues to represent your goals and values. Why? Your peer group literally gets arbitrary code execution on your brain. (It's a flaw in MonkeyBrainOS 1.01 whi…

Where would one go to find a better peer group? Irc?

Re: The self-hating web developer

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hatred of PHP amongst a certain type is hilarious, they automatically assume that if you chose PHP (or worse program in it because it was what you inherited as well) you are a "lesser programmer". I choose to use PHP despite been capable of using most any language I wanted, over the years I've used and forgotten many languages and for the requirements I have PHP was a good fit. Also modern PHP really isn't like o…

> if you chose PHP (or worse program in it because it was what you inherited as well) you are a "lesser programmer". If you choose php, I will assume that you. 1. Either is not aware of that php has a million gotchas that you need to avoid at every step. Take a look at the ever growing (!) list at /r/lolphp. 2. You don't see the significance of the aforementioned gotchas. For eg, you can show things like php's regist…

Your post is a perfect example of what the author is referring to: stupid people in the community trying to make others feel inferior for programming in a certain technology. When it comes to PHP, such posts are inevitable (that's how I know PHP is actually a good, useful language). About the people who post them, I will assume that you:

1. Are incredibly stupid (register globals has been deprecated for years) 2. Are incredibly closed minded because you make comments like "These things does make a difference. But only on the surface, not deep down where it is really rotten" 3. Can't actually program in PHP and have not written large production apps in it 4. Probably can't actually program any language because you don't realize every single language has a million gotchas

My assumptions may be wrong, but it really doesn't matter. That's the problem with assumptions ... the damage is already done.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#117

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…

>we pass functions to functions all the time (way too much)

Functional programming is not real programming!

Re: The self-hating web developer

#118
post #20

There are few things in life more important than choosing one's peer group well. The Internet gives you many more options than we had available prior to the existence of it. Choose wisely and re-evaluate that choice periodically to see whether your peer group continues to represent your goals and values. Why? Your peer group literally gets arbitrary code execution on your brain. (It's a flaw in MonkeyBrainOS 1.01 whi…

Where would one go to find a better peer group? Irc?

Most of mine are face to face real people - some of those started out from blogs and IRC, in a kind of incubation stage. Some have been graduated from Twitter to a kind of incubation where I await meeting them in person before I afford them "write access to my brain". I find meeting people in person, one is able to really gauge people's personalities, passions, sense of humour, side interests and the like. And the side effect of meeting your heroes is that they appear to be just as human and fallible as yourself!

Re: The self-hating web developer

#119
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…

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…

I think JS in the browser is a great way to start developing these days. The setup is close to zero (a script tag), the dev/build/deploy cycle amounts to saving the file and reloading the browser, and the language itself, while far from perfect, is quite typical of many widely used C-type languages. I'd say this is probably the optimal environment for someone looking to learn programming.

On the server, something like PHP is so ubiquitous, that even though the dev/build/deploy cycle is a little more complicated because it involves a server, it's still a good candidate. With preset stacks like XAMPP/MAMP, all the user has to do is write some code and upload the file to the right place and reload their browser. I think that can be manged. True, the beginner will not know about servers and things like that initially, but that knowledge is not essential or even important to starting out.

I think the big reason for suggesting web development to beginners is interpreters and their ecosystem. Learning an interpreted language is much easier, IMO, for beginners than JIT or AOT compiled languages because the tool chains dev/build/deploy are simpler and many times invisible to the user. Web development does use a lot of interpreted languages. Finally, getting real results on the screen is huge. Showing people they can build real things with only a few lines of code is very powerful and something that is much more powerful in a graphical web environment than on the command line. In web development, the product is graphical by nature, so that is also a huge plus.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#120
I can relate a bit to this article. Although, I never find myself "hating" what I do per se, but I definitely find myself looking for something more "difficult". I've done the same as the OP, bought C books, read a few pages, wrote some example apps, etc. But I quickly lose interest.

I work as a "software engineer" by day, which is basically a glorified title for a guy who writes a ton of JavaScript. But I like to put a positive spin as to why this profession is so easy: Maybe it's easy because I've been doing it for so long. Maybe it's easy because I really know what I'm doing.

I find it important to always challenge yourself and continue learning. Honestly the JavaScript community is great for that, hell every couple of days there is some new framework to learn.

Overall, it is sad how down the OP is on his self, I hope he can find his way again. Programming is one of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had, and I wish everyone could see that same enjoyment.

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