Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#141

Post by HaoZeke » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 12:49 AM UTC

I don't really understand the point of these sort of posts. They're very popular but they basically boil down to knowing basic web development (html css js), adding the productivity tools as applicable (scss, typescript) and understanding the react documentation.

The reason it's always going to be this way is that it's a library for web developers. So all you need are basics.

Also this is wrong in the sense that one usually learns a single style of css naming. Even though you need to be aware of say BEM vs the rest, highlighting it is wrong.

As far as npm et all goes, if people stopped using web IDE rubbish to learn the basics they will set it up out of necessity.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#142

Post by statictype » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #106

statictype wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not so much about re-inventing the wheel but more about understanding how the underlying system actually works. So yes, go ahead and use a framework if that helps but when your UI Designer gives you something that doesnt neatly fit into a framework component you need to know enough to implement it yourself right? Also - understanding how it actually works also helps when the JS community rallies around the next b…

I don't know if "difficult" is the word I would use. Is a mail merge in Microsoft Word "difficult"? I think probably not. But it would still take me longer to get a mail merge working in Office than it would for me to implement and test a topological sort or a breadth-first graph traversal. That's approximately how I feel about the level of difficulty involved in DIY-ing CSS and layout. I could get really good at it,…

I dont disagree with you.

I guess you’re coming at this from “I need to put this together and it needs to look decent.”

I’m coming at this from “here are the psds from our design team - go implement that”

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#143

Post by iKSv2 » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 4:21 AM UTC

tfolbrecht wrote: post #129

igneo676 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exact ideology hindered me when I first started learning to program. If I had decided to learn Just Enough To Get Crap Done I would've fared much better and joined the industry much sooner. Thankfully I found a good mentor who helped steer me away from all the terrible specifics and trying to learn the full stack and only learning what I needed

Any advice on finding a mentor?

This might sound bullshit but I found one via "LinkedIn Career suggestion" and he's given me some great perspectives.

Not "perfect" but sure its good

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#144

Post by amorphid » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

RussianCow wrote: post #86

robertAngst wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, I feel like once you are a programmer, you are a programmer. Even after a decade of programming, it still takes me a few days to learn new concepts/libraries. My thing is, if you already know it, copy paste and edit. If you dont know it, build the code for the first time. I feel like this is the difference between a 10 year programmer and 2 year programmer. I have the foundation for sql databases, so it would t…

This is true to some extent, but sometimes you really do need a specialist. Some fields, such as databases and machine learning, are deep enough that there is a huge difference between someone learning it on the job and someone who has been doing it for 10 years.

I think it also might be easier to get interviews and job offers for specialist positions where there's less demand. I'm not prepared to make a strong case for that, but I did feel like selling myself as a Ruby on Rails developer made certain portions of technical interviewing a lot more straight forward than when I was interviewing for "I'm a software engineer" roles. Just a feeling.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#145

Post by darepublic » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

kansface wrote: post #93

tptacek wrote: post #63

I understand this is opinionated and "personal", but on the off chance that this might make React less intimidating, let me chime in and say that you can do professional work (and build pretty much any reasonable application) without: - really understanding "semantic HTML" (if you know what div's and span's are, you're ready to get to work), - understanding flexbox (you can, and many pro developers do, just use a CSS…

I have no idea what "professional work" could possibly mean in that sentence. The things that you have deemed superfluous are the tools of the trade. We don't use every tool on every job, but when we do use them, its because they make our work easier! Someone who doesn't know that lodash exists will reinvent lodash, and do it poorly because JS has crazy edge cases. Someone who hasn't experienced Bootstrap's crazy, ne…

You wouldn't want to use an application that uses array prototype.map > _.map? That's quite the dogmatism

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#146

Post by tfolbrecht » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

iKSv2 wrote: post #143

tfolbrecht wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice on finding a mentor?

This might sound bullshit but I found one via "LinkedIn Career suggestion" and he's given me some great perspectives. Not "perfect" but sure its good

Appreciate the reply. No need for perfect :^)

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#147

Post by tptacek » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 3:16 PM UTC

statictype wrote: post #142

tptacek wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if "difficult" is the word I would use. Is a mail merge in Microsoft Word "difficult"? I think probably not. But it would still take me longer to get a mail merge working in Office than it would for me to implement and test a topological sort or a breadth-first graph traversal. That's approximately how I feel about the level of difficulty involved in DIY-ing CSS and layout. I could get really good at it,…

I dont disagree with you. I guess you’re coming at this from “I need to put this together and it needs to look decent.” I’m coming at this from “here are the psds from our design team - go implement that”

In my experience consulting for basically every kind of company that ever makes software, most front-end development follows the former pattern, not the latter.

I agree preemptively that you aren't going to get a job on the front-end team at Square without an intimate knowledge of how modern HTML layout works. But that's not the problem we're trying to solve with posts like these; rather, it's "where do I start". Here's where to start.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#148

Post by whatyoucantsay » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

tuesdayrain wrote: post #110

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd much rather work with a developer proficient with C, Java, JS, React, DDD and a deep knowledge of Unix than someone who has spent the majority of their time on JS, Backbone/Knockout/Angular/Ember/React/Vue/Mithril, Redux/MobX/Vuex and Grunt/Gulp/Brunch/Webpack. Knowing how a technology works is important. Knowing technologies needed to accomplish tasks to be done is important. Knowing seven different technologies…

Your entire JS ecosystem should be narrowed down to React, Webpack, and maybe Redux. Easy

My "JS ecosystem" no longer includes any of those three.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#149

Post by stickfigure » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

mastazi wrote: post #112

stickfigure wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly. GWT was a solid platform for quite a large number of years, and is still used in quite a large number of enterprises. Also, there are a lot of good ideas in there that the JS community is only just catching up to, like dead code elimination. A lot of modern javascript/typescript syntax is inspired by CoffeeScript. And CS is so trivially easy to learn that "saved a few brain cells" sounds like intellectu…

Honestly, have you ever stumbled upon a job offer requiring any of those while looking for a job? I'm not saying that job offers requiring e.g. coffeescript don't exist, I'm asking how much more likely you are to find a job that suits you because you know coffeescript?

Today? Not many coffeescript projects getting started today since ES6+ adopted much of the syntax. But there were tons of GWT and CS jobs before... actually, there still are plenty of GWT jobs.

Re: Roadmap to becoming a React developer in 2018

#150

Post by tptacek » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #135

tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've invested the time to derive a first-principles understanding of why every element in a React environment works the way it does, and what the alternatives are, and why you're going to use any given alternative, I can understand being irritated with the idea that there's a happy path that people can traverse to get to your level of productivity with 1/50th the amount of effort. What I don't really get is the…

> It's a weird quirk of web development, not shared by any of the other kinds of front end development I've been exposed to in the ~22 years I've been shipping code, that "pro" UI has to be done from scratch. Back in the 2004-2008 these frameworks were not well maintained and their coverage (the amount of elements/styles) they have was very small. They also were, uh, pretty ugly. I think that what made my opinion abo…

For (on a limb here) ~80% of all applications built professionally, making it look better or even just different from the default Bootstrap look-and-feel is a waste of time and money. Users don't care.

There are applications where they do care. The pathology is, people who talk about UI development online act as if the ratio were reversed, and that not looking like stock Bootstrap should be a top-of-mind concern for people building random business applications.