The self-hating web developer • Hacker News Board

Re: The self-hating web developer

#151

Post by steveax » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #143

prophet_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just do stuff." Along the years I have come to admire more and more those who take what they do know and put the effort into just that: building something. The idea of purpose is key here. Once you have a purpose, a goal, finding the right tool for the job is no longer that difficult and you will suddenly realise that a lot the languages/frameworks people have been evangelising to you may make no sense at all. "If y…

Somehow this turned into a thread of people debating the merits and faults of PHP. There's a place for that, to be sure, but that's not really the point. The point is that getting started is the most important thing, and moving forward is the next most important thing. I'm not saying if someone comes to you and says, "I want to build a web app" one should say, "Do it in PHP." But if someone says, "I'm building my fir…

Or as a friend says: "the worst dancer in the world is better than the best non-dancer"

Re: The self-hating web developer

#152

Post by kelseydh » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #103

kelseydh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

One day its SQL, the other day its NoSQL. One day its Bootstrap, next day its material design. I think you've been spending too much time in the SV echo chamber if you think those two examples are pertinent.

Where do you think the most successful web apps (like Slack recently) are emerging? From the SV echo chamber.

To be a talented full-stack web application developer for a successful consumer facing app, you sort of need to have an obsession with UI/UX design trends. Finished web apps that delight customers have an attention to detail that put them over the edge into the realm of being successful.

What you need to learn to become a top web app developer is actually punishingly brutal. People now expect all web apps to operate with the smoothness of having AJAX everywhere that you see with apps like Youtube, Gmail and Facebook. Web app developers who can actually build web apps to that level of quality are extremely valuable.

Web development is not easy if you really specialize in it. By that I mean people who have really accumulated best practices and knowledge over common core problems of the web. These are the people who within a month can return you an app fully loaded with user accounts, multi-tenancy, notifications, emails, subscriptions, the ability to upload documents, search, credit card payments, google maps, API gateways, chats etc.

In addition to having programming chops, a lot of their value actually comes from having spent time collecting good "widgets" of useful software they can use for new projects. These "widgets" allow them to build impressive experiences quickly. Examples include having an opinion about what a "joyride tour" javascript widget looks like, having an opinion about what makes a good date-time picker, mastering form validation, -- the list is nearly endless, but they all come down to the person having an informed opinion about what UI/UX paradigms are best from a human-computer interaction perspective, and knowing that these paradigms change quickly. A person who I would call an elite (front-end) web developer is somebody who builds their own widgets frequently just to see what works.

Such sideskills of a web developer only come from constant learning. In my opinion it is one of the most brutal sectors of software in terms of how quickly your skills fall out of date and how much you constantly need to be learning in order to remain competitive.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#153

Post by harryf » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

prophet_ wrote: post #17

austenallred wrote: post #9

The "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…

"Just do stuff." Along the years I have come to admire more and more those who take what they do know and put the effort into just that: building something. The idea of purpose is key here. Once you have a purpose, a goal, finding the right tool for the job is no longer that difficult and you will suddenly realise that a lot the languages/frameworks people have been evangelising to you may make no sense at all. "If y…

Exactly. For me the real art of programming lies in the getting stuff done. KISS, YAGNI ... the smartest programmers I've ever worked with - the ones I'd want to work with again - were masters of getting results on-time or even before-time with clever, minimalistic solutions.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#154

Post by vinceguidry » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

zuck9 wrote: post #124

vinceguidry wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Front end vs. back end.

Where does JavaScript belong then? I believe it's the most important thing for a front end dev.

Parent didn't specify, but usually on the front-end. I would disagree that it's all that important, certainly not more important than being able to lay out a page and style it without it turning into a mess. I've cleaned up crappy CSS work before, the only real solution is to throw it out and start fresh.

At my company where I'm the back-end guy, our front-end guy does most of the Javascript, but he has to get my help whenever he has to do anything non-trivial. Only a few projects a year ever has him needing my assistance.

Most companies' Javascript needs should be similar. Every once in awhile there will be a marketing push wih non-trivial Javascript needs, most of the time they can get by with basic jQuery. Hide this element, show it when there's an event.

Unless you're working for a news agency, making Snowfall every month, I'd be surprised if the business actually did need more. Of course, if the front-end guy decides he has to learn React, well, I'd say, go ahead, knock yourself out. But don't kid yourself into believing it's really necessary.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#155

Post by codygman » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #108

thomasahle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell us perfectly fine to start with. It's just Haskell + zsh + git + archlinux + vim + cool-tech aren't things you should learn all at once. Heck, 12 years in, and I'm still lot fluent in all of those. We can still tell people about cool stuff, just encourage them to take one step at a time, in their own time.

Haskell may not be the wisest language to start with. It's different from almost everything out there.

I feel learning one Algol derived language such as Python followed by Haskell is a good solution. Perhaps even better (of not more painful) would be to learn C followed by Haskell.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#156

Post by vezzy-fnord » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

kelseydh wrote: post #152

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day its SQL, the other day its NoSQL. One day its Bootstrap, next day its material design. I think you've been spending too much time in the SV echo chamber if you think those two examples are pertinent.

Where do you think the most successful web apps (like Slack recently) are emerging? From the SV echo chamber. To be a talented full-stack web application developer for a successful consumer facing app, you sort of need to have an obsession with UI/UX design trends. Finished web apps that delight customers have an attention to detail that put them over the edge into the realm of being successful. What you need to lear…

I wasn't making any value judgment on web development's difficulty. Bootstrap versus material design isn't some top-notch innovation like you portray it. It's a bikeshed issue. Most people use Bootstrap as a formulaic placeholder, and material design is a Google trend. It isn't any more relevant to the web development community at large than Microsoft's Metro is.

NoSQL is ancient, and the value of NoSQL is in specialized data models and workloads. Modern SQL databases remain general supersets in terms of functionality, but the value of NoSQL is tuning features for data structured outside the relational model. It's by no means a generic tool, nor necessarily innovative, as you portray it.

AJAX everywhere has been going on for quite a while. It's not necessarily relevant for all web-based CRUD and no, it's not expected universally. The boring truth is that most web apps are still best suited to standard server-side pages with more dynamic content sinks for certain parts of the app (though there's been a concerted effort to redefine "web app" as SPA). HTTP is a dumb file server, at the end of the day. Rest is very flimsy client magic.

Finally, there's nothing special about Slack. It's successful. It's by no means interesting.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#157

Post by shkkmo » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #144

joesmo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are objective differences between programming languages and it's reasonable to have strong opinions about the relative merits and demerits of each. Yes, it's toxic when people who have no real-world experience with a language or platform rant about it, because this tends to be useless bile. But that does't mean PHP is just as good as anything else. If you only know a single programming language, you should have…

Of course languages are different. Some are better for some things than others. Choosing a language without knowledge of its tradeoffs is not a vary good idea.

The issue the parent is comments is judging someone based on their use of a language without knowing if that person has any knowledge of the tradeoffs is doing them a disservice. Spewing that judgement on the internet is actively harmful.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#158

Post by vezzy-fnord » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 6:17 PM UTC

atlih wrote: post #137

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but those that are working in low level programming often don't know what DNS, FTP or SQL is That's a very baffling statement that doesn't reflect any of my experiences (I don't think you realize just how big FTP is/was). How are you defining "low-level programmer" here?

Basically anything that has to do with non-web and non-mobile apps. The app for your nearest ATM machine for example.

Your definition is completely worthless, then. Someone writing Java EE apps is then a "low-level programmer", which is totally wrong.

In fact, ATMs these days more often than not have full operating systems like Windows CE with the software being a Java app that communicates over some standardized XML-based middleware to access ATM system and transaction mechanisms.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#159

Post by kelseydh » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #156

kelseydh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think the most successful web apps (like Slack recently) are emerging? From the SV echo chamber. To be a talented full-stack web application developer for a successful consumer facing app, you sort of need to have an obsession with UI/UX design trends. Finished web apps that delight customers have an attention to detail that put them over the edge into the realm of being successful. What you need to lear…

I wasn't making any value judgment on web development's difficulty. Bootstrap versus material design isn't some top-notch innovation like you portray it. It's a bikeshed issue. Most people use Bootstrap as a formulaic placeholder, and material design is a Google trend. It isn't any more relevant to the web development community at large than Microsoft's Metro is. NoSQL is ancient, and the value of NoSQL is in special…

Fair point, I bring Bootstrap up as an example of how frequently the actual frameworks relied on to build things on the web change. A better example of is the endless paradigms popping up to handle highly interactive javascript.

RE: NoSQL and SQL, I agree and I understand the nuance (my go-to database is PostgreSQL), I'm just pointing it out as "another thing" web developers need to understand.

And that's the point I was trying to make. When it comes to how many "other things" web developers must constantly be learning, I actually think developers in iOS or at the lower-level sometimes have things easier despite the stereotypes about web development being easy.

RE: Slack - Slack is interesting because it combines many elements of traditional web app design, and succeeds simply by executing on those elements extremely well. I believe web developers (particularly front-end ones) could learn a lot by studying how polished Slack's design and interactivity is.

Re: The self-hating web developer

#160

Post by hebdo » Sun, Jul 19, 2015, 6:29 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #149

patio11 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus is very talented. He is also a raging singularity of abuse who gets tolerated for it because he is extremely talented. I worry a little bit about logic which suggests that anyone who is insufficiently Linuxian in dealing with other people is thereby assumed simply to care less about programming.

> Linus is very talented. He is also a raging singularity of abuse Only if you have never worked in any team outside nice cosy polite and P.C. US programmers. And I wouldn't even consider him "abusing". He is ranty, fun, and vocal about what he thinks.

Exactly. It is not abuse to honestly review a patch or an idea, and block its progress pointing out serious deficiencies. This is just a way to assert quality, and apparently it is a very effective way - we do trust Linux.

You are not the code you write. Accept the critical comments and improve.